A big chunk of Gateway Marketplace, the sprawling retail center at the corner of Woodward Avenue and Eight Mile Road, is now on the market — but the Meijer supercenter that has anchored the site since 2013 is not part of the deal. The listing covers much of the rest of the development, leaving the grocery giant's store untouched.
Gateway Marketplace has been described as a grocery- and fashion-anchored regional power center, according to REDICO, which also says nearly 175,000 customers, representing more than 65,000 households, live within three miles of the property. The open-air retail mall sits on Eight Mile Road and was built atop a 36-acre brownfield site remediated at the southeast corner of Woodward and Eight Mile, per the New Markets Tax Credit Coalition.
A Long History Tied to a Food Desert
Meijer opened its first Detroit store at Gateway Marketplace in July 2013, a milestone covered at the time by Crain's Detroit Business. Reports from that period differ on the store's exact footprint — MLive described it as a 190,000-square-foot supercenter, while the New Markets Tax Credit Coalition put the figure at 214,000 square feet. The two outlets also diverged on the broader development's size, with MLive calling it a 360,000-square-foot shopping center and the coalition elsewhere describing a planned 361,000-square-foot retail center ahead of its 2013 opening. Cost estimates varied too: MLive reported a $62 million development, while the coalition listed the total project cost at $58.5 million.
The coalition's project page says the Meijer store provides affordable groceries to residents in a federally designated food desert, describing a neighborhood with a 48% poverty rate and median family income below 30% of the area's median. Gateway Marketplace has also been recognized with the CREW Detroit Impact Award, according to REDICO.
The project was built through a public-private financing structure, not just a retail lease-up: Gateway received $57.6 million in tax-credit financing alongside a loan from the city’s General Retirement System. The coalition estimated the development would create nearly 900 permanent jobs. The coalition’s project profile describes the financing and the original job projections.
A Cooling but Still-Tight Retail Market
The sale comes as metro Detroit's retail sector shows signs of resilience even amid turnover. Vacancy across the region was compressing toward 5.6% heading into the third quarter of 2026, according to data cited by Friedman Real Estate. Asking rents in the market averaged $17 per square foot on a triple-net basis in the first quarter of the year, more than 34% below the national average of $25.89, per the same source.
Friedman's mid-year analysis also found that medical retail, boutique fitness operators and quick-service food chains were competing hardest for neighborhood strip-center spaces under 3,000 square feet, while grocery-anchored centers in strong suburban submarkets were trading at cap rates between 6.0% and 7.0%. The firm noted that big-box backfilling, which accelerated through late 2025, has continued, with replacement tenants generally smaller and more varied in creditworthiness than the chains they replaced.
The broader metro retail picture is mixed rather than a straight-line cooldown: vacancy fell across all submarkets in the final quarter of 2025, then edged upward from that low, while some suburban corridors recorded especially strong leasing in the first half of 2026. Limited new retail construction could help landlords fill existing space, but conditions differ by location and property type. Institutional Property Advisors’ third-quarter outlook says the metro rate was expected to rise modestly by year-end.
For Gateway Marketplace, the open question is what becomes of the portion being offered for sale if a buyer takes it over.
A separate financing issue adds a near-term wrinkle: a foreclosure notice involving Detroit Gateway Park schedules a public auction for Dec. 3, 2026. The broker listing, meanwhile, describes a 134,585-square-foot center, leaving buyers to assess how the foreclosure relates to the marketed interest.
