2022 Crown Communities Award winner: Auburn Road revitalization project in Rochester Hills, Mich.

The initial plan was just to repave a half-mile stretch of Auburn Road in Rochester Hills, Mich. It ended up being a multi-million-dollar revitalization project that brought new life to an economically depressed area of the region thanks in part to the city’s communication efforts with the business owners and residents in the area. That is why this project was selected as one of the 2022 American City & County Crown Communities award winners.

The Auburn Road corridor is one of the oldest areas in Rochester Hills, says City Engineer Paul Davis, with some homes dating back to the 1920s. Back then, the area was known as Avon Township, and in the 1950s, it was a lively part of town. “But then, over the decades, it just kind of stagnated,” Davis says. “There wasn’t a lot of reinvestment, because it was one of the older parts in the city as Rochester Hills really started developing. We became a city in 1984, and that’s when a lot of subdivisions started being built in the community. That area was just kind of—not forgotten—but one of the areas that just seemed economically depressed.”

Auburn Road was owned by the Michigan Department of Transportation (MDOT) and served as the old M59 expressway that ran through the community. When the new expressway was built, “Auburn Road still was under the state ownership, but it was really low priority from the state level,” Davis says. “It was a two-lane highway, and it was not on their list of priorities.”

That changed in 2017, when “the city really started focusing on Auburn Road. It was an area that the City Council and administration, the mayor, wanted to improve and I think we did that pretty dramatically starting in 2019 when it was reconstructed,” Davis says. “It started as just a road reconstruction project, but what we took it to was to focus on all the needs of the corridor, including the economic needs and pedestrian safety needs.”

The first step was to reach out to the community that was going to be affected by any change. Davis says it was a good example of planning and engineering working together. “Our economic development manager and our planning department director scheduled one-on-one meetings. We met with every single property owner along the corridor and discussed the project with them and ask them what their needs were.”

Parking was a major issue with everyone. There was not enough parking to support an active downtown area, and Davis explains, the road was really like a continuous driveway “where you could just pull off the road and park in front of these businesses, and there really wasn’t a lot of definition, so for pedestrians to trying to travel through that area with cars parked, it just was not as safe as what it is now.” As part of the project, the city went through and defined pedestrian walkways and created street parking to act as a buffer, “and yet still serve the business owners, because they were very concerned about losing their parking in front of their business.”

Working directly with the community and being cognizant of their needs had advantages in the improvement project. One example Davis cites was a sports bar in the middle of the corridor that had a limited number of parking spaces. At night, people parked in the streets and in other business’ parking lots. After meeting with the bar owner and adjacent businesses about the parking issues, the owner of the sports bar and another business owner offered to donate two homes that they owned adjacent to the corridor, at no cost to the city, and asked that the city build a public parking lot.

Parking was the biggest concern, and installing parallel parking was also one of the biggest challenges. The business owners were used to having direct access to the front of their buildings on Auburn Road, with 90-degree parking, where people could just pull up in front. The city planned to take away driveways, put in a continuous median and create short blocks, making a grid pattern. The median also took away direct left turns, but two roundabouts in intersections allow a different type of left turn. They also paved the alleys behind all the businesses along the corridor.

“There were some business owners that that were not on board at first,” Davis says. “But then, we showed them what we were going to do with our plan with the parallel parking to try and offset it. And even though they might not have liked the parallel parking at first, they could see what we were trying to do as far as improve the area and make it a walkable corridor, too, and they liked that, and they trusted the city enough to finally get on board.”

Rochester Hills also negotiated with MDOT to take over ownership of two miles of Auburn Road, receiving $1.2 million. “Once we did that, we had a lot more flexibility and probably the ability to make some improvements that the state might not have otherwise permitted,” Davis says. It was all part of the city’s intent to invest in the Auburn Road area. “Initially we thought it was going to be about a $2 million improvement that we were going to do there, to repair and rehabilitate the road,” Davis says. “We’ve probably spent upwards of $16 million now.”

Davis says the city was investing its major road fund monies into the project, as well as local road monies. They also applied for several grants, including a surface transportation program urban grant ($4,715,000) and transportation alternatives program grant ($481,000). They also received a $40,000 green infrastructure grant for the 49 rain gardens along the Auburn Road corridor. “We did that because we knew that we were in one of the few areas of the city that has really pretty good, sandy soils that could infiltrate stormwater, and we wanted to take advantage of that,” Davis says. “And in the public parking lots, we have structures that have open bottoms to try and encourage infiltration for the parking lot flows.”

The corridor has been spruced up with landscaping along with the rain gardens that include trees and native plantings, and artwork, to create an aesthetically pleasing neighborhood. There also is a public plaza that was created in a once-vacant property the city purchased, which features a popular splash pad.

Davis says they also have a project that started last fall and will be completed this summer to build more parking spaces. “The city has continued to seize opportunities for this project,” he says. “One of the nicest things is that we had all these unforeseen opportunities get presented, and the city, time after time, stepped up and invested, and agreed to spend more money for the benefit of this corridor.”

City involvement and support is important, but Davis says that without the involvement of both the businesses community and residents, the project would not have been the success that it is. “It built trust amongst us in the community and the business community,” he says. “The planning director and I went and tried to communicate with every single resident that was going to be adjacent to this corridor and let them know what we were planning on doing and trying to hear their concerns. I think our effort to try and meet with each one of them, one-on-one, really paid off. It was necessary for the project.”

The successful redevelopment of the Auburn Road corridor is showing positive returns in more ways than one. “I can tell you we’ve done studies for a couple of years and as far as the residential neighborhoods that are on either side of Auburn Road, the property values that we have from our assessing department have shown that they’re double the average of anywhere else in the city and these are some of the oldest homes in the community but it’s now, I guess it’s a desirable place to live,” Davis says. “Reinvestment is happening in the homes, the home sales are going up, we’re seeing more development down there, and the corridor itself is ripe for redevelopment in some areas. So, we’re seeing the business owners invest into their properties, and we’re also seeing some new proposals for redeveloping some of the parcels there that still vacant and some that are occupied.”