A controversial steam pipeline project in Detroit’s historic Lafayette Park was quietly pushed forward by city officials while members of Mayor Mike Duggan’s family stood to benefit from its approval, Metro Times has learned.
Internal city emails and planning documents obtained through a Freedom of Information Act (FOIA) request show top members of Duggan’s administration worked behind the scenes to override historic preservation staff and steer the project through Detroit’s Historic District Commission (HDC), despite warnings it would cause irreversible damage to the nationally recognized landscape.
At the center of the project is 1300 Lafayette East, a luxury cooperatively owned tower near downtown where boilers failed in 2022 and several of Duggan’s family members live.
After relying on expensive, rented boilers for heat, a co-op representing roughly 600 residents found a cheaper, longer-term solution by signing a 20-year contract with Detroit Thermal, a private utility, to receive steam through underground pipes. Trouble is, those pipes would run through historic Lafayette Park, a federally protected, 78-acre site that includes unique townhomes and high-rises, along with parks and green spaces with rare vegetation.
Among the high-rise residents who stand to benefit from steam heat are Duggan’s son, Patrick, who owns one of the units; Duggan’s brother, Dan, who owns another unit; and Duggan’s niece, Sydney, who lives there, raising concerns about conflicts of interest and preferential treatment.
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Jim Griffioen, a Lafayette Park resident and one of the project’s leading critics, says the administration’s outsized role in the process could undermine public trust in the city’s preservation process and cast doubt whether ordinary residents are being treated fairly.
“Now every Detroiter with an application rejected by the Detroit Historic Commission will wonder if the result might have been different if they were a corporation that donates to the right campaigns or if the project benefited the mayor’s immediate family,” Griffioen tells Metro Times.
City spokesman John Roach denied Duggan was involved, saying the mayor is close with people in the high-rise as well as the townhomes in the historic district, designed by famed architect Mies van der Rohe.
“The Mayor has current and former high ranking administration officials who live in the Mies van der Rohe community and former administration officials and family members who live at 1300 E. Lafayette,” Roach said in a statement. “Mayor Duggan has never taken any position on the Detroit Thermal issue, either publicly or privately. Any suggestion to the contrary is completely factually false.”
The steam project requires HDC’s approval because Lafayette Park is a city-designated historic district. The commission’s purpose is to protect the historic districts.
A day before an HDC meeting on May 13, HDC staff posted a report recommending that the commission reject the steam proposal, warning it failed multiple preservation standards and would cause “an indeterminate but substantial impact” on the site’s lush landscape, which includes original benches, clipped hedges, and 60-year-old honey locust trees.
At 6:32 a.m. on the day of the meeting, Alexa Bush, the city’s planning director who was appointed by Duggan, sent an email to Garrick Landsberg, the city’s director of historic preservation, but the response was completely redacted under FOIA. Shortly after, a revised version of Landsberg’s report was posted online to include language that permits the HDC to bypass its preservation priorities under a “Notice to Proceed,” a controversial mechanism that allows noncompliant work to proceed if it serves compelling community interest.
In notes to herself that morning, Bush mentions calling commissioners to “see what votes we have,” “reframing competing interests,” and reaching a “middle road” to “minimize impacts in LP [Lafayette Park], getting heat to 1300.”
The HDC is supposed to be an independent commission that serves as a safeguard for historic districts, and it’s tasked with basing decision on preservation expertise, not political pressure.
In a statement to Metro Times, Bush denied contacting HDC members to discuss their vote and said none of her involvement was inappropriate.
Five hours after Bush wrote the notes to herself, Landsberg notified the commission that the planning director would be taking his seat on the commission, allowing Bush to speak freely and advocate for Detroit Thermal.
“During this time I will sit with other HDC staff,” Landsberg wrote in an email.
In the note to herself, Bush writes, “kick to next meeting,” referring to the proposal before the HDC.
Sure enough, after a marathon HDC meeting, the commissioners kicked the proposal to a future session. Then for the first time since February 2022, the HDC set a special meeting. The sole item on the agenda was Detroit Thermal’s proposal, and the meeting was planned for two days before the Fourth of July — a popular time for vacations — rather than July 9, when the next regular session was scheduled.
The meeting date was meaningful because Landsberg was scheduled for vacation, and so was HDC Commissioner William Marquez, who had voiced the strongest concerns about the proposal.
“Since this process started, there have been red flags that the City was working behind the scenes to push this project through.”
Instead of deferring to HDC staff, Bush took over the commission’s staff report herself and recommended approval, despite no additional public engagement with Lafayette Park residents, as promised. Her report concluded that Detroit Thermal’s revised plan “minimizes impacts on the historic landscape,” a conclusion that townhome residents and a judge have rejected.
In a statement at the time, Detroit Thermal spokesman Harvey Hollins III said the company was “grateful for the Historic District Commission’s staff report.”
Metro Times perused dozens of HDC staff reports and found none prepared by a planning director.
“Since this process started, there have been red flags that the City was working behind the scenes to push this project through,” Angela Fortino, board member of the LaSalle Townhouse Cooperative, says. “We’ve been concerned that this was motivating Detroit Thermal’s lack of engagement with us. But we gave the City the benefit of the doubt and have been working in good faith to follow the legal process. To see now that a senior City official in charge was working all along to rig the system towards a predetermined outcome is extremely discouraging. We now see that we never had a chance for a fair hearing.”
A day before the special meeting, Griffioen called on Bush in an email to recuse herself because it “is clear that even before the last meeting, you had aligned yourself with the applicant and were seeking a way to get its application through the HDC any way possible.”
Griffioen added that the decision to hold the special meeting when Landsberg was on vacation “points to bias and impropriety.”
He said Bush’s report disregarded the expertise of historic preservation and arborist experts.
“For the sake of fairness and good city government, you must withdraw your report and recuse yourself from the July 2, 2025 meeting,” Griffioen said.
During the July 2 meeting, Bush played an integral role in advocating for Detroit Thermal. When commissioners hinted at deficiencies in the proposal, Bush intervened in defense of the utility’s plan.
As the meeting proceeded, commissioners went silent. HDC Chair Tiffany Franklin repeatedly asked, “Doesn’t anyone have anything they want to say?”
The commission fell abnormally quiet.
“These are people who will argue about window thickness for 45 minutes and none of them want to say a word,” Griffioen points out.
Townhome residents urged Bush to give them time to present their arborist’s report, which concluded that 33 trees and other landscape would be harmed. The request was denied, and each resident was given just two minutes to speak during the open public comment period.
Griffioen used some of his two minutes questioning Bush’s role in the process. He called Detroit Thermal’s proposal “sloppy” and “full of speculative language and empty of specifics.”
He told commissioners, “They stand here today to woo you with a vague proposal you would never approve from a private applicant, confident that this will be enough. Why? Because the city is their wing man. Director Bush thinks that you will rubber stamp her recommendations, the staff report written by her.”
Bush dismissed the allegations, saying there’s no “evidence of an evil strategy.”
Without much debate among commissioners, the HDC approved Detroit Thermal’s plan.
Griffioen says Lafayette Park residents put their faith in a system that failed them.
“Like many Detroiters, we went through the city council’s process to have our neighborhood declared a historic district,” he says. “That comes at a cost: we can’t make unapproved changes, but we accept that cost in the belief that the city, through the Historic District Commission, will protect our neighborhood’s historical integrity. By sending Director Bush to write the staff report and answer questions at the meeting on behalf of a corporation that wants to destroy our private property, the city put its thumb on the scale and politicized what should have been a fair and neutral process.”
Roach denied Bush did anything wrong, saying she “acted appropriately” and “consulted with legal counsel throughout to ensure her actions were appropriate.” Detroit officials also pointed out that the city issued a stop work order on the project in late April because it needed approval of the HDC.
But that decision came after Griffioen wrote a letter to the city’s top attorney, Duggan-appointee Conrad Mallett, informing him that Detroit Thermal was violating the law by failing to get HDC approval.
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“We believe that the City Law Department and the Ordinances at issue here exist to protect the rights of Detroit citizens and require corporations like Detroit Thermal to follow strictly set guidelines designed to further protect those rights,” Griffioen wrote. “We do not believe that city government should be siding with a corporation over its residents to circumvent these requirements.”
Hoping to learn more about the Duggan administration’s role in the process, Griffioen filed numerous public records requests for email exchanges involving Detroit Thermal, the mayor, his appointees, the HDC, and other city officials, along with text messages sent to and from Bush’s cell phone on the evening of the July 2 meeting.
On Thursday, the city denied a vast majority of Griffioen’s requests, arguing that Michigan law exempts cities from disclosing records to anyone engaged in a lawsuit involving a municipality. The city cited “an active civil action regarding this matter between you and the City of Detroit Historic District Commission.”
Without the records, Griffioen and other Lafayette Park residents are left wondering the full extent of the Duggan’s administration role in the process. Griffioen plans to appeal the public records denial.
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Despite all of this, the city’s involvement may have all been for nothing. Last week, Wayne County Circuit Judge Annette Berry sided with residents who filed a lawsuit against Detroit Thermal in late June that accuses the company of trespassing on their property and damaging historic landscaping. They argue Detroit has no legal easement to access their land.
Berry upheld a temporary restraining order that blocked Detroit Thermal from running steam lines through the historic neighborhood. Berry said the residents have a “likelihood” of prevailing in the case and warned that allowing the project to continue would cause “irreparable harm” to both residents and the property.
While watching TV news last week, Lafayette Park residents were reminded of the dangers of steam. A three-year-old girl was severely burned in downtown Detroit, and her mother was injured trying to protect her, when they walked over a manhole spewing scolding steam, Fox 2 reports.
More than 35 people, including children, suffered second- and third-degree burns from contact with Detroit Thermal’s steam infrastructure downtown, according to a 2020 lawsuit filed by Buckfire Law on behalf of 37 people.
Catastrophic failures have occurred in similar steam systems in other cities. In 2007, a steam pipe explosion in Manhattan launched a 40-story geyser of debris, killing one person and injuring 45 others. Other explosions have occurred in Baltimore, Boston, and Philadelphia.
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This article appears in Jul 23 – Aug 5, 2025.