Judge blocks steam line project on Lafayette Park property

A Wayne County judge has blocked a local heating and cooling company from doing work on a steam line project on Lafayette Park property in Detroit, a ruling some residents of the famed development are cheering.

Detroit Thermal, a company that provides heating and cooling to buildings through an underground network, said it will appeal the decision.

Detroit Thermal wants to upgrade and reconnect a steam line to the 1300 Lafayette East Cooperative. But residents who live in the housing cooperatives designed by famed architect Mies van der Rohe worry the project would damage their community’s landscape because it would involve excavation work.

Earlier this week, Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Annette Berry granted a permanent injunction, which the Mies housing cooperatives had sought.

Berry ordered that Detroit Thermal is enjoined, or prohibited, from entering on Lots 19-22 of the Lafayette Park Subdivision, excavating on the lots and using the lots for the purpose of installing a slip line into existing steam pipes.

“I think generally that we feel vindicated and … feel like it was important for us to stand up for our property rights,” said Randy Essex, a resident of the Nicolet Co-op, one of the housing cooperatives.

What is Lafayette Park?

Completed in stages in the 1960s, the Mies van der Rohe Residential District is considered one of America’s most successful post-World War II urban redevelopment projects, according to the Detroit Historical Society. Located east of the Chrysler Freeway and roughly bounded by Rivard Street, Lafayette Avenue, Orleans Street and Antietam Street, it was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1996.

It includes three districts in connected sections: 21 multiple-unit townhomes and a high-rise apartment building on the west side; Lafayette Park, 13 acres of greenery, recreation facilities, and a school; and twin apartment towers and a shopping center to the east.

‘Inappropriate use’ of old easements

Essex said the four housing cooperatives in the Mies van der Rohe Historic District believe Detroit Thermal’s planned work would be “an inappropriate use” of old easements. Essex said the cooperatives believe there are alternate routes for Detroit Thermal’s project.

Berry said Detroit Thermal and 1300 Lafayette East Cooperative must find an alternate solution to the cooperative’s problem. Detroit Thermal said previously that 1300 Lafayette East Cooperative was connected to the underground steam system until the 1980s, when residents installed their own boilers. The boilers failed a few years ago, and the community wants to reconnect to the Detroit Thermal system.

“We want 1300 Lafayette to have heat,” Essex said. “We just believe that Detroit Thermal was taking the shortest, most profitable route possible and that its plan was inappropriate, and the judge found illegal.”

Detroit Thermal calls decision ‘wrong’

Detroit Thermal said in a statement that Berry’s decision is “flatly wrong” and “dangerously framed” in a way that will have an adverse effect on Lafayette Park and adjoining neighborhoods.

“The ruling runs counter to a jury’s verdict that upheld Detroit Thermal’s right to access the public right of way alongside DTE Energy and other utilities,” the company said. “Not only does the Court’s order deny 600-plus Detroiters the heating system they need, but based on the Court’s reasoning, water, sewer, gas, electric, internet, cable, and telephone companies are barred from using these public utility easements to service 1300 Lafayette East Cooperative or any other property outside the Lafayette Park subdivision.”

Earlier this spring, Detroit Thermal applauded a Wayne County jury verdict that it said affirmed its right to access public easements in Detroit’s Lafayette Park neighborhood, but Essex said at the time that the company’s steam line project couldn’t move forward amid other legal issues.

asnabes@detroitnews.com