A long-vacant stretch of land near Detroit's Eastern Market now holds 78 newly built, income-restricted apartments, the product of a $23.9 million development called The Hive on Russell. City officials and the project's developer marked the opening with a ribbon-cutting, even as plans for a second phase aimed at senior housing are still working their way through the approval process.
The Hive on Russell sits at the corner of Gratiot Avenue and Russell Street, offering income-restricted apartments near Eastern Market, Lafayette Park and the Dequindre Cut, according to Develop Detroit, the project's developer. The building includes 39 studio apartments, 33 one-bedroom apartments and six two-bedroom units, all of them rent-restricted through the Low-Income Housing Tax Credit program. As reported by MLive.com, the apartments are reserved for households earning between 30% and 60% of the area median income, translating to roughly $33,000 to $63,000 a year.
City officials have pointed to the condition of the site beforehand as a marker of how far the project has come. Detroit City Council President James Tate said the opening marked a significant turnaround for a property that had been defined by deteriorating and vacant buildings, per the same MLive account. Developers who later sold the property to Develop Detroit had assembled it from about a dozen different owners; Develop Detroit had controlled the site for years before construction got underway.
A Decade-Long Vision Finally Breaks Ground
The 78-unit building represents only the first part of a larger campus that Develop Detroit originally envisioned for the site — one aimed at working families and longtime Detroiters near Eastern Market and the neighborhood's other amenities. Those broader campus plans were disrupted by the pandemic and subsequent shifts in financing and construction markets, according to MLive's reporting. Sonya Mays, Develop Detroit's founding CEO, has led the project through that stretch, and Crain's Detroit Business describes the opening as the culmination of roughly a decade of work, noting the development formally opened on Thursday with its 78 apartments, as reported by Crain's Detroit Business.
Financing for the project drew on a mix of public and private partners, including the Michigan State Housing Development Authority, PNC Bank, Cinnaire and the Kresge Foundation, per MLive. The city of Detroit also contributed roughly $4.5 million toward the development. That includes $4 million in American Rescue Plan Act funds, a figure that appears in city council filings tied to an October 2023 appropriation for “The HIVE on Russell,” and an additional $445,000 from the city's Affordable Housing Development and Preservation Fund, added the following year according to Detroit City Council meeting documents.
Mixed Signals On The Opening Timeline
Accounts of the project's status aren't entirely aligned. The city of Detroit announced a ribbon-cutting celebrating the opening of The Hive on Russell and its 78 new affordable homes in the Eastern Market and Lafayette Park area, according to the City of Detroit. Yet Develop Detroit's own project page still describes the development as scheduled to open in fall 2026, a discrepancy that remains unresolved across the available materials.
Beyond the apartments themselves, the project calls for 16,000 square feet of retail space along Gratiot Avenue, with Develop Detroit's materials describing a mix of apartments, live/work units, workshops, galleries, shops and food venues planned for the site. The developer has also pointed to rapidly rising rental and occupancy rates in the surrounding area as a sign of strong demand for housing options.
Senior Housing Phase Still Awaiting Approval
Develop Detroit is now partnering with CSI Co-op, which operates a cooperative affordable housing model exclusively for seniors, on a proposed second phase. That phase would add 70 affordable apartments for seniors and, if completed alongside the existing building, would bring the total across both phases to 148 affordable homes on the site, according to MLive's reporting. The senior development is not yet under construction, and Develop Detroit was submitting its tax-credit application for that phase on the day of the ribbon-cutting. The plans also call for demolishing two existing buildings still standing on the property.
Mayor Mary Sheffield used the occasion to frame affordable housing as a deliberate priority of her administration, saying it should remain part of Detroit's growth as investment continues across the city, per the MLive report. The city's broader 2025-2030 Affordable Housing Strategy calls for annual progress reports on its goals, with the first expected in late 2026, according to the City of Detroit. Separately, the city and the Detroit Housing Commission have also sought a development partner for housing redevelopment tied to the Forest Park Diggs Community Plan near Eastern Market, part of a wider push to add affordable units across the area.
