Growing Downtown Wixom: How the City continues to take an active role in building our future

The City of Wixom and its Downtown Development Authority have been working to build up Downtown Wixom for more than 30 years. The intersection of Wixom Road and Pontiac Trail has been the center point of the community before Wixom even incorporated as a City, as the first plat of the Downtown area was laid more than 100 years ago around the railroad, and the area became one of the more important train depots in the region. Even after a devastating fire burned down much of the original downtown structures in the early 1900’s, the area remained the heart of the community. After Ford Motor Company arrived with the Wixom Assembly Plant, the town was officially incorporated as the City of Wixom in 1957 – from there the City began to take shape as we know it today.

In recent decades, there has been a renewed effort to revitalize Downtown Wixom. This started in earnest with the creation of the Wixom Downtown Development Authority to help focus and fund the redevelopment of the area around Pontiac Trail and Wixom Road in the late 1980’s. In the early 2000’s, the City funded realignment of Wixom Road into its current location, which also brought the addition of new streetscaping and lamp posts to renew a sense of place to the area. In addition, the City took an active role in the commercial and residential redevelopment of the area through the purchasing and packaging of property to help facilitate new developments that otherwise would not have been feasible, including the Country Corners plaza, as well as the West Retail and Tribute neighborhoods in the early 2000’s. While the Great Recession of the late 2000’s did have slow development for a time, there has been significant residential growth in the last 10 years, which has brought the vision for the area into closer view.

However the work is far from done, and Downtown’s most recent major project has been the Air Line Trail, which repurposed an abandoned rail bed into a mixed-use pedestrian pathway that runs directly through the heart of Downtown Wixom, and connects the eastern and western portions of the project into the larger regional trail network. In order to complete the connection through Downtown, the City needed to acquire multiple properties along the north-western corner of the Pontiac Trail and Wixom Road intersection. But these purchases were about much more than just the trail, as the City ended up with more than 3 acres of under developed property that set the stage for the next great addition to Downtown. This area has been named the Renton Redevelopment Area, after the name of Renton Street which still runs into the site.

As many people have seen, the City authorized the demolition of the existing dilapidated structures on the Renton Redevelopment Area in August of 2024, and by fall the site will be shovel-ready for redevelopment. This project has required significant planning though, and the City has been preparing a vision for the site for many years prior to the work you see on the ground. In late 2023, the City released a Request for Qualifications to the development community to share the opportunity to build on that site, and what the community’s vision for the area is. The City and our partners have been marketing this as an opportunity to bring another high-quality, pedestrian-oriented, and mixed-use development to the Downtown area, and won’t settle until a development group is found that shares the Community’s vision for that area.

We believe that it is only a matter of time until the right project is identified, and a new project that brings new shopping, dining, and perhaps even housing options to that portion of the Downtown area. Until then, the City will continue to clean up the site, including a new, wider sidewalk later in the coming months, to prepare it with the collective vision in mind. If you are interested in more information about the Renton Redevelopment Area, head over to www.wixomgov.org/business/renton-redevelopment-area, or call the City’s Economic Development team at 248-624-3280.

Drew Benson, Assistant City Manager/Director of Economic Development for the City of Wixom