A $4.7 billion international bridge at Detroit that opened in July 2026, a $3.2 billion second Poe-sized lock at the Soo, a $631 million student village at the University of Michigan, and MDOT rebuilds of I-696, I-475 and I-94 headline a public pipeline that runs from Port Huron to Grand Rapids.
*How to read the total: the sum of the published figures in the list below. Bases differ by project — most are total cost estimates, some are federal grants, program totals, or construction contracts as awarded. Each project's expanded view labels its own basis. We add them up with the labels showing rather than pretend they're all the same kind of number.
Hover a pin for the project snapshot. Pin numbers match the project list below. Locations are approximate (nearest city or corridor midpoint) on a schematic state outline.
Click any project to expand its full record — description, owner, dates, funding, the law behind it, and its source. Filter by who owns it and where it stands, or sort by cost.
18 major public projects: 9 in metro Detroit (Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties), 4 in Grand Rapids, 2 in Ann Arbor, plus Sault Ste. Marie, Port Huron, Flint and Troy. The listed figures sum to ≈$12.0B, dominated by two international-scale projects — the Gordie Howe Bridge (≈$4.7B) and the New Lock at the Soo (≈$3.219B) — whose bases are labeled on their records. This is a majors inventory, honestly labeled as such: MDOT lets dozens of smaller jobs a year under the $10M floor, and many mid-size Michigan public builds never publish a single firm figure, so the page counts the majors it can source rather than pretending to be a census of all public construction in the state.
How the big numbers are counted: the Gordie Howe Bridge is listed once, at the published U.S.-dollar figure (US$4.7B; contract value C$6.4B) — Canada funded construction and recovers it from tolls, with Michigan as partner and part-owner, which the record states rather than implying Michigan wrote the cheque. The Soo Lock figure is the $3.219B authorised investment; the Corps' lower 2025 certified estimate ($2.619B) is disclosed on the record. The Blue Water Bridge plaza record is openly the sum of MDOT's two published component figures ($36.3M + ≈$300M), and its unfunded Components 3 and 4 are not counted. For I-94 Package 1, MDOT publishes a range ($540–570M) and the tally counts the low end. Where MDOT's own releases disagree — I-696's final phase has appeared at $250M, $275M and $290M — the record uses the middle figure, marks it approximate, and discloses the range.
News-flagged sources: two rows rest on news reporting of official figures, flagged 'news-flagged' in the data — Restore I-94 (WDIV, MDOT figures; MDOT's testimony lists a $342M construction cost against the $353M investment figure used, disclosed on the record) and the Blue Water Bridge plaza (Times Herald, MDOT figures). Two further rows rest on delivery partners' own publications, flagged 'official-partner' — the Gordie Howe Bridge (Parsons, the owner's engineer) and Grand Rapids' two Convention/Arena Authority venues (Grand Action 2.0 / Grand Riverfront). Each record names the underlying official source. The softest record on the page is the I-696 final phase, whose cost genuinely moves between MDOT releases; it should be re-verified against MDOT's next letting documents.
Deliberately excluded: projects completed in a prior year, however large — U-M's Kahn Health Care Pavilion ($920M, opened November 2025), U-M's Leinweber Building ($145M, completed 2025), the I-75 Modernization Segment 3 in Oakland County (completed 2023), Revive 275 on I-275 (completed 2024), the I-96 Flex Route in Oakland County (completed 2024), the I-475 north segment in Flint ($141M, reopened September 2025), GRR's Concourse A expansion (completed 2024), and Flint's lead service line replacement programme (settlement lines completed July 2025, ≈$97M spent — the roughly 500 remaining opt-out lines resuming in spring 2026 carry no published project figure over the floor). Also excluded: the I-375 reconnection project in Detroit — paused in August 2025, restarted in November 2025 as a phased scheme whose funded first phase is estimated at $120–140M with construction from 2027 and the I-75 interchange unfunded; it is a plan in redesign, not a construction record, and will be listed when a phase is let. The Michigan Avenue (US-12) Corktown rebuild (≈$70M) is excluded while its $25M federal grant package is under federal review. Private and nonprofit builds of any size are out by rule — Ford's Michigan Central Station, Bedrock's Hudson's site, Henry Ford Health's expansion, Enbridge's Line 5 tunnel, and the Grand Rapids Public Museum expansion (a city-approved fund, but a nonprofit-operated museum) among them.