Arbor South Ann Arbor is a 20 acre mixed use redevelopment at South State Street and East Eisenhower Parkway in Ann Arbor, MI 48108, directly across from Briarwood Mall. The approved plan calls for 1,069 residential units, more than 200 permanently affordable apartments, a 150 room hotel, ground floor retail and restaurants, public plazas and structured parking, delivered in six phases.
Arbor South Ann Arbor is the largest redevelopment ever approved on the city's south side, and it is going up on ground most drivers have only ever seen as a parking lot. The site covers roughly 20 acres at the northeast corner of South State Street and East Eisenhower Parkway, a few hundred feet from Briarwood Mall and minutes from the I-94 interchange.
For a city that has spent two decades debating how to add housing without touching its single family neighborhoods, this is the test case. It is the first major project approved under Ann Arbor's TC1 transit corridor zoning, it carries a public financing package larger than most Michigan downtowns have ever assembled, and it will take years to build out.
Here is what is being built near Briarwood Mall in Ann Arbor, how it is being paid for, and what it means for anyone who owns or is shopping for a home in Washtenaw County.
Arbor South at a Glance
| Detail | Figure |
|---|---|
| Location | Northeast corner of South State Street and East Eisenhower Parkway, Ann Arbor, MI 48108 |
| Site size | About 20 acres across six parcels |
| Residential units | 1,069 |
| Permanently affordable units | More than 200, owned and managed by the Ann Arbor Housing Commission |
| Hotel | 150 rooms |
| Ground floor commercial | More than 93,000 square feet |
| Parking | Three structures, 2,476 spaces |
| New buildings | 15, built around two existing buildings |
| Total project size | More than 2.2 million square feet |
| Capital investment | More than $651 million |
| State tax capture cap | $110,699,520 |
| Local work plan contribution | $201,850,416 |
| Combined public participation | About $312.5 million |
| Tax capture period | 30 years, through 2057 |
| Construction phases | Six |
| Zoning | TC1 Transit Corridor |
| Developer | Eisenhower State Land Development Company, a partnership of Oxford Companies and Crawford Hoying |
What Arbor South Ann Arbor Is and Where It Sits
Quick answer: Arbor South Ann Arbor is a 20 acre, six parcel mixed use district at South State Street and East Eisenhower Parkway, built around the existing 777 East Eisenhower office building and directly across from Briarwood Mall.
The six parcels
The site assembles six parcels: 777 and 789 East Eisenhower, 2803, 2845 and 2991 South State Street, and 2800 Boardwalk. That land is mostly surface parking, with two office buildings and a longtime gas station in the mix.
The 777 East Eisenhower building, a 303,000 square foot Class A office property completed in 1975 and home to Oxford Companies, stays put and becomes the anchor the new district is designed around. The neighboring 789 East Eisenhower building also remains.
Why this corner matters
This intersection is one of the first things a visitor sees coming off I-94 into Ann Arbor, which is why the city has long treated it as a gateway. It is also almost entirely asphalt. The redevelopment turns that gateway into a walkable block pattern instead of a collection of parking fields connected by driveways.
Proximity is the whole argument for the location. The site is walkable to Briarwood Mall, a short drive from Pittsfield Township, Saline and Lodi Township, and sits between the I-94 interchange at State Street and the South State Street commercial corridor running north toward central campus. Ypsilanti and Washtenaw Community College are a straight run east on Eisenhower Parkway.
What Is Being Built at Arbor South
Quick answer: What is being built near Briarwood Mall in Ann Arbor is a 15 building district wrapped around the two existing ones, including eight apartment buildings, a 150 room hotel, three restaurant buildings and three parking structures.
The housing
Arbor South is approved for 1,069 residential units ranging from studios through three bedroom floor plans, with a group of for sale condominiums included alongside the rental inventory. Spread across eight apartment buildings, that is a neighborhood's worth of housing dropped onto land that holds none.
For scale, that single project adds more homes than most Washtenaw County communities permit in a decade.
The commercial and hospitality program
The commercial side runs to more than 93,000 square feet of ground floor space in the city approved site plan, with the state approved work plan describing more than 100,000 square feet of retail, dining and entertainment at full buildout. Three standalone restaurant buildings sit separately from that ground floor retail.
A 150 room hotel brings lodging to a side of town that has never had the kind of walkable dining district the rest of Ann Arbor is known for. Event space and a public plaza are programmed for farmers markets, live music and similar community use.
Parking and total scale
Three parking structures hold a combined 2,476 vehicle spaces, which is how a site this dense absorbs cars without paving the ground. All in, the development covers more than 2.2 million square feet and is delivered across six phases. That phasing matters more than any single number in this article.
How Much Ann Arbor Affordable Housing Arbor South Adds
Quick answer: Arbor South includes more than 200 permanently affordable apartments, owned and managed by the Ann Arbor Housing Commission and integrated throughout the development.
Why permanent is the key word
Most subsidized housing carries an affordability period that expires, after which units convert to market rate and the community is back where it started. Housing commission ownership removes that clock. These units are built to stay affordable indefinitely.
Early proposals put the affordable share at roughly 10 to 15 percent of units. The approved plan goes well past that, and city staff review describes roughly 200 units of Ann Arbor affordable housing ultimately owned and managed by the housing commission.
Where the affordable units sit
The affordable apartments are distributed across the development rather than concentrated in a single building on the back edge of the site. Residents land within walking distance of jobs, transit, retail and services, which is the hardest thing to deliver in Ann Arbor affordable housing and the reason the housing commission pursued the partnership in the first place.
Families in those units feed into Ann Arbor Public Schools, with the south side served by Allen and Bryant Pattengill elementary programs and Pioneer High School. That school access, in a submarket where land cost normally makes affordable development impossible, is the part that is genuinely difficult to replicate anywhere else in the city.
How Arbor South Ann Arbor Is Being Paid For
Quick answer: Total anticipated capital investment exceeds $651 million. The Michigan Strategic Fund approved state tax capture capped at $110,699,520, and the local portion of the brownfield work plan is valued at $201,850,416, putting combined public participation at roughly $312.5 million.
Two numbers people constantly conflate
The state cap and the local contribution are different buckets, and coverage of this project has repeatedly merged them. According to the Michigan Strategic Fund approval issued in September 2026, the state piece tops out at $110,699,520 while the local piece is valued at $201,850,416. Added together, total public participation is roughly $312.5 million, substantially larger than either figure alone.
What brownfield tax increment financing actually is
Brownfield tax increment financing is a mechanism that lets a developer be reimbursed for eligible redevelopment costs out of the new property tax revenue the finished project itself generates. The project does not receive a check up front. The Washtenaw County Brownfield Redevelopment Authority administers the capture, and the Ann Arbor plan runs the full statutory window of 30 years, through 2057.
Here is the part most people misunderstand about the word brownfield. Michigan's brownfield act was written for environmental contamination, but it also covers property classified as functionally obsolete. At the Boardwalk and South State parcels, that classification rests largely on surface parking lots and a gas station rather than a contaminated industrial site. That is legal and common, and it is also why the size of this package drew extended debate before City Council approval in February 2026. Ann Arbor's own brownfield policy guidance contemplates developer reimbursement below 20 percent of total project investment, and this plan exceeds that guideline, which is why it took nearly a year of review and multiple postponements to pass.
The developer's side of the math
The state board's review of the project found the joint venture contributing 27.4 percent of project equity with traditional financing maximized, and put the 20 year internal rate of return at 5.2 percent with the incentives in place. That return figure is the entire argument for public participation. A mid single digit return over two decades is thin enough that most capital will not chase it, which is exactly the test these programs are designed to apply.
Whether that math justifies the package is a fair public debate, and reasonable people in Ann Arbor landed on both sides of it. What is not in dispute is that the approvals are now in hand at every level of government.
Why TC1 Zoning Makes Arbor South the Test Case for New Development in Ann Arbor
Quick answer: TC1 is Ann Arbor's transit corridor zoning district, adopted in 2021, and Arbor South is the first large project approved under it, which makes the outcome a template other Michigan cities will study closely.
How the TC1 height ladder works
The TC1 district covers close to 70 properties ranging from 0.21 acres to 13.6 acres, spanning more than 200 acres along Eisenhower Parkway east and west and State Street north and south. Every TC1 parcel must sit within a half mile of a transit stop, which is the rule that makes the district coherent.
Height is set by distance from the nearest residential zoning district, not by a flat cap:
- Within 80 feet of a residential district: 55 feet maximum
- Between 80 and 300 feet: 75 feet maximum
- Beyond 300 feet: 120 feet maximum
- At roughly 1,000 feet: up to 300 feet maximum
The district also requires a two story minimum with a first story at least 15 feet tall, which is what forces ground floor retail instead of another one story strip center.
Why Metro Detroit should be watching
That setback based ladder is the clever part of the ordinance. It lets a corridor go genuinely tall through its middle while stepping down to something neighborly where it meets existing houses. It is a direct answer to the most common objection to density, which is that it always seems to land on top of somebody's backyard.
Ann Arbor adopted TC1 to create density outside downtown along corridors that already carry transit and jobs, in a city that consistently ranks among the most livable in the country. Arbor South is the proof of concept for new development in Ann Arbor at this scale. If a 20 acre, multi phase, mixed income district pencils and delivers under this framework, the model travels, and corridors in Royal Oak, Ferndale, Birmingham and Rochester all have the same bones. If it stalls, every council in Southeast Michigan gains a reason to say no the next time a developer proposes something similar.
Own a home within a mile of the State Street or Eisenhower corridor and want to know what this does to your number? The Perna Team will pull your block's actual sales history and give you a current valuation, no cost and no obligation. Call (248) 494-4698 or start at thepernateam.com.
What Arbor South Means for Ann Arbor Home Buyers and Sellers
Quick answer: Arbor South adds rental supply rather than for sale inventory, so the direct effect lands on the Ann Arbor rental market while nearby homeowners are more likely to benefit from new amenities.
What it will not do
Roughly a thousand apartments and a modest group of condominiums will not meaningfully loosen the single family resale market in 48103, 48104, 48105 or 48108. Those markets are constrained by lot supply and by how little trades in a given month, not by apartment counts.
What it will do
It gives renters an option that did not exist. University of Michigan staff, Michigan Medicine employees, graduate students and young professionals compete for a rental pool that has not grown in proportion to the job base. Adding studios through three bedrooms at this scale, with real transit access attached, takes pressure off the segment of the market that bids up small single family homes for lack of an alternative.
For homeowners in the neighborhoods ringing the site, including the pockets off Boardwalk, the Lansdowne area and the Stone School Road corridor, the likeliest effect is amenity driven. Walkable dining, a deeper retail base and a programmed public plaza are the kinds of changes that show up in comparable sales slowly and then all at once. The same pattern played out in downtown Royal Oak and along Nine Mile in Ferndale.
The timing question
Sellers in the immediate corridor face a real timing decision, because construction disruption and finished amenities arrive years apart. Anyone weighing a move in Washtenaw County should understand the seasonal patterns that drive Ann Arbor list prices and days on market before setting a date.
Buyers should be equally realistic. Six phases means the first residents and the final certificate of occupancy are separated by years, not months. Anyone buying nearby on the strength of the finished renderings is buying a construction zone first and a finished district later.
Getting Around the Arbor South Area
Quick answer: The site is served directly by TheRide Route 67 along Eisenhower Parkway, with Route 6B connecting Briarwood Mall to downtown and Route 62 running the State Street corridor.
Transit at the door
Transit is not an afterthought here. It is the zoning rationale, and TC1 requires every parcel in the district to sit within a half mile of a stop. Route 67, the Eisenhower to Golfside line, runs the length of Eisenhower Parkway with stops at Eisenhower and Boardwalk and Eisenhower and Plaza, both of which sit on the development site itself. The line connects east to Washtenaw Community College and Trinity Health Ann Arbor Hospital.
Route 6B links Briarwood Mall to the Blake Transit Center in downtown Ann Arbor, and Route 62 runs the State Street corridor past the South State Street park and ride at 2694 South State. AirRide service to Detroit Metro Airport also serves the Briarwood Mall area, which is a genuine differentiator for a residential district in Michigan.
By car
The I-94 interchange at State Street sits immediately south, US-23 is a short run east, and downtown Ann Arbor is a straight shot north on State Street. The practical result is one of the few addresses in the city where a household can function without a car and still reach a hospital, a community college, an airport bus and a shopping center.
What Happens Next at Arbor South Ann Arbor
Quick answer: Every major approval is now in place, and what remains is construction across six phases.
The approvals already cleared
- July 2024: Zoning Board of Appeals granted a variance
- June 2025: Planning Commission conditionally approved the site plan
- February 2, 2026: City Council approved the brownfield plan and the development agreement
- September 22, 2026: Michigan Strategic Fund approved the Act 381 work plan
What to watch
The six phase structure is the whole story from here. The parking structures are planned as components of later phases, which means early phases have to work within the existing parking supply. Each phase carries its own financing, leasing and delivery risk, and large multi phase districts routinely shift their sequencing once ground breaks.
Anyone who wants to track it firsthand can follow the city's public project page for the site plan and the state's Strategic Fund board actions. Those are the two places where real milestones surface first.
For buyers, sellers and investors watching Washtenaw County, the thing to watch is not the renderings. It is whether phase one gets out of the ground on schedule. That single data point says more about whether Arbor South Ann Arbor delivers as promised, and about the pace of new development in Ann Arbor generally, than any announcement will.
What To Do Next If Arbor South Affects You
If you own a home near the corridor
Get a current valuation before construction starts, not after. A baseline number taken now is the only way to measure what the project actually does to your value over the next several years, and it costs nothing to establish.
If you are buying in Ann Arbor
Decide whether you want to be inside the disruption or outside it. Homes within a half mile of the site will see years of construction traffic before they see the finished plaza. Homes a mile out capture most of the amenity benefit with far less of the noise, and they price differently today than they will in three years.
If you are an investor
The rental comp set in 48108 is about to change in a way that does not show up in any current pro forma. Modeling a small multifamily or a rental single family near South State Street on today's rent roll, without accounting for 1,069 competing units arriving in phases, is the mistake to avoid.
The Perna Team covers Washtenaw County along with Oakland, Wayne, Macomb and Livingston, with more than 8,000 career transactions and a 99.1 percent list to sale ratio behind the advice. If you want a clear read on what Arbor South means for your specific situation, in your specific price range, call (248) 494-4698 or visit thepernateam.com and we will walk through it with you.
Key Takeaways
- Arbor South Ann Arbor is a 20 acre, six parcel mixed use district at South State Street and East Eisenhower Parkway in Ann Arbor, MI 48108, directly across from Briarwood Mall.
- The approved plan includes 1,069 residential units, a 150 room hotel, three restaurant buildings, three parking structures with 2,476 spaces, and more than 93,000 square feet of ground floor commercial space.
- More than 200 apartments are permanently affordable and will be owned and managed by the Ann Arbor Housing Commission, which removes the expiration date most subsidized housing carries.
- Combined public participation runs roughly $312.5 million, made up of a $110,699,520 state tax capture cap and a $201,850,416 local work plan contribution, captured over 30 years through 2057.
- The brownfield designation rests largely on surface parking and a gas station parcel rather than contamination, and the plan exceeds the city's 20 percent reimbursement guideline, which is why approval took nearly a year.
- TC1 zoning sets height by distance from residential, from 55 feet within 80 feet of a residential district up to 300 feet at roughly 1,000 feet, and requires every parcel to sit within a half mile of a transit stop.
- Buildout runs across six phases, so the effect on the surrounding market arrives over years rather than at a single opening date.
Arbor South Ann Arbor FAQs
What is Arbor South in Ann Arbor?
Arbor South is a 20 acre mixed use redevelopment at South State Street and East Eisenhower Parkway in Ann Arbor. The approved plan converts surface parking, aging office property and a longtime gas station into 1,069 homes, a hotel, retail, restaurants, public plazas and structured parking, built in six phases.
Where is Arbor South located?
Arbor South sits at the northeast corner of South State Street and East Eisenhower Parkway in Ann Arbor, MI 48108, directly across from Briarwood Mall. The six parcel site wraps the existing 777 and 789 East Eisenhower office buildings and extends to Boardwalk, minutes from the I-94 interchange.
How many apartments will Arbor South have?
Arbor South is approved for 1,069 residential units across eight apartment buildings, ranging from studios to three bedroom floor plans, with a smaller group of for sale condominiums in the mix. More than 200 of those homes are permanently affordable, owned and managed by the Ann Arbor Housing Commission.
How many affordable units are in Arbor South?
Arbor South includes more than 200 permanently affordable apartments, integrated throughout the development rather than clustered in one building. The Ann Arbor Housing Commission will ultimately own and manage them, which is what makes the affordability permanent instead of expiring after a set compliance period like most subsidized housing.
What is being built near Briarwood Mall in Ann Arbor?
The project going up near Briarwood Mall in Ann Arbor is Arbor South, a 20 acre district with 15 new buildings. Plans include eight apartment buildings, a 150 room hotel, three restaurant buildings, three parking structures and more than 93,000 square feet of ground floor commercial space.
Is Briarwood Mall being torn down for Arbor South?
No, Briarwood Mall is not part of Arbor South and is not being torn down. Arbor South sits on separate land across South State Street and East Eisenhower Parkway, on parcels holding surface parking, two office buildings and a gas station. The mall is a neighbor to the project rather than part of it.
Who is developing Arbor South?
Arbor South is being developed by Eisenhower State Land Development Company, a partnership between Oxford Companies of Ann Arbor and Crawford Hoying of Dublin, Ohio. Oxford is headquartered in the 777 East Eisenhower building at the center of the site, which the new district is designed around.
How much does Arbor South cost and who is paying for it?
Arbor South represents more than $651 million in anticipated capital investment. State tax capture is capped at $110,699,520 and the local work plan contribution is valued at $201,850,416, putting combined public participation near $312.5 million. The developers contribute roughly 27 percent of project equity.
What is TC1 zoning in Ann Arbor?
TC1 is Ann Arbor’s transit corridor zoning district, adopted in 2021 to add housing density along State Street and Eisenhower Parkway outside downtown. It covers close to 70 properties over more than 200 acres, requires a two story minimum, and sets height by distance from the nearest residential district.
When will Arbor South be finished?
Arbor South is planned in six phases, so there is no single completion date. The site plan was conditionally approved in June 2025, the brownfield plan and development agreement cleared City Council in February 2026, and the state work plan was approved in September 2026. Buildout runs for years.
How will Arbor South affect Ann Arbor home prices?
Arbor South adds rental supply rather than for sale inventory, so the most direct effect lands on the Ann Arbor rental market rather than single family prices. Homeowners in nearby neighborhoods along South State Street and Eisenhower Parkway are more likely to see value from new walkable retail and dining.
Is there bus service to the Arbor South site?
Yes, TheRide serves the Arbor South site directly. Route 67 runs Eisenhower Parkway with stops at Eisenhower and Boardwalk and Eisenhower and Plaza, both on the site itself. Route 6B connects Briarwood Mall to the Blake Transit Center downtown, and Route 62 runs the State Street corridor.
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