Very doubtful. Gilbert has only bought skyscrapers in the downtown area. He bought the buildings for what it would cost to rent that much space for a year in Manhattan. Lately Gilbert has been outbid at auction by Chinese investors so he's exhibited financial discipline.
This mystery bidder is paying $500 per house and it would cost ten times that much on the low side to tear down the house. Somebody needs a large chunk of land and for some reason wants it in that specific area. Maybe Piston's owner, Tom Gores, is planning a downtown stadium?
Tom Gores is a good guess, but I think the homes are too distributed to assemble a sizable plot of land. Besides, if you want to buy acreage in Detroit, it's easier to buy an couple old industrial lots than to pay $30m to tear thousands of homes down. Besides, it's hard to imagine a stadium in the middle of a residentially zoned neighborhood.
> "Business owner Dan Gilbert has bought more than 30 buildings with 7.5 million square feet of office space in Detroit’s central business district."
> "Now, Gilbert wants to get involved in Detroit’s neighborhoods."
> "Part of that deal is a new task force faced with the indomitable challenge of figuring out what to do with Detroit’s tens of thousands — no one really knows the exact number, some say 78,000 — abandoned buildings. "
> "Gilbert is on that task force"
> "'To get the neighborhoods going, we’ve got to take down the 78,000 or so — we don’t even know the exact number of structures that need to be taken down, mostly houses,' Gilbert said..."
This mystery bidder is paying $500 per house and it would cost ten times that much on the low side to tear down the house. Somebody needs a large chunk of land and for some reason wants it in that specific area. Maybe Piston's owner, Tom Gores, is planning a downtown stadium?