Detroit has debuted landscaping plans for the second phase of its effort to transform parts of some of the city’s most blighted neighborhoods into solar farms.
The city has plans to create solar arrays in five neighborhoods. Officials say the whole process has been resident-driven, and neighbors were heavily involved in designing the natural buffer zones around those sites.
Detroit City Council member Scott Benson said generating renewable power is a good use for the city’s vacant land. “We have over 150 acres of solar farm right here in the city of Detroit,” he said. “Over $25 million of investment into our neighborhoods, which were once seen as very low density and blighted.”
Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan said the city has acquired all the land it needs for the first phase of the project, and more than 80% of what it needs for the second phase. He expects to acquire the remainder within the next month.
Duggan said there were few owner-occupied homes remaining on the chosen solar sites, and all of those homeowners agreed to voluntarily relocate with city assistance. Some properties needed to be pursued through condemnation, but Duggan dismissed concerns about that as “landlords who wanted more money than what they were offered” and “vacant-land speculators who were hoping to get some large check, who instead got fair market value.”
Duggan said residents remaining in the areas adjacent to the solar arrays will benefit from the landscaping and beautification involved in the buffer zones, and from the money the city will generate by selling an expected 31 megawatts of solar power annually to Michigan’s grid.
“We’re using the money from the power we're going to be selling to improve the neighbors’ homes,” Duggan said. “New windows, the hot water heaters, the new furnaces — that’s what we're doing.”
City officials have said 31 megawatts is enough power to offset what's used by the Detroit's municipal buildings with a renewable energy source.
Construction of the phase one solar fields is expected to begin early fall 2025, according to city planners.
