Mixed-Use Development Fills Void in Downtown Sault Ste. Marie, Michigan

Osborn Commons is filling a void in Sault Ste. Marie on Michigan’s Upper Peninsula. Home to the world-famous Soo Locks, connecting Lake Superior with the lower Great Lakes, the rural city had a lack of sufficient housing for those working downtown and a food desert after a neighborhood grocery closed in 2012.

Sault Ste. Marie was selected as a handful of Michigan communities to be part of a statewide placemaking initiative by the Michigan Municipal League and Michigan State Housing Development Authority in 2013.

This initiative led to Osborn Commons, a mixed-use community developed by Woda Cooper Cos. The four-story development activates a dead space in the downtown and provides 65 units of housing, including 63 for households earning between 30% and 80% of the area median income and two that are market rate. Seven units have features for those with disabilities.

“There has been a chronic need for affordable housing over the past several years,” says P. Craig Patterson, senior vice president at Woda Cooper Cos. “This clearly helps the business owners and the service providers in the city of Sault Ste. Marie by having workers live close by.”

On the ground floor, the development includes the Market on Osborn, a convenience store selling hot and cold beverages, snacks, health foods, and other grocery and household items.

“We put in a service window, which allows the tenants to come down from their residents and get their food, snacks, coffee, and household goods right from the common space,” says Patterson. “They can do that without going outside in the winter.”

The LEED Gold-certified building also features a fourth-floor private viewing deck of the Soo Locks, where residents can watch freighters, and the Sault Ste. Marie International Bridge, which connects the U.S. to Canada.

The $13.9 million development, which opened in December 2020, received city and state support.