Commercial Real Estate in Redford, Michigan

About Redford

Redford's name comes from a river crossing. Native people and pioneers forded the River Rouge here, and rouge is French for red. Set up as Pekin Township in 1829 and renamed in 1833, it once reached east to Greenfield Road. Detroit annexed that eastern land in the 1920s, shrinking the township from 36 square miles to about 11, and the annexations ended in 1926 when the state gave Redford charter status.

That history explains a common mix-up. Old Redford, the neighborhood around the Redford Theatre on Lahser Road, went to Detroit in the annexation and is not part of the township. The township's own downtown is at Five Mile and Beech Daly Roads, where a Downtown Development Authority has worked since 1982, first funding public improvements along Five Mile.

The larger commercial corridors run across the township in both directions. Telegraph Road carries US-24 north and south, while Plymouth Road and Grand River Avenue are the main east-west retail streets. Around I-96 and Telegraph, auto dealerships cluster near Detroit Diesel, the engine manufacturer. A Norfolk Southern line follows the township's industrial corridor, so property here runs to roadside retail, dealership lots and industrial buildings.