Robert Miller (’98, ’06): Transforming the Northville Downs site

Robert Miller was working in a family-owned ice cream shop when one of the owner’s sons – who was pursuing an engineering degree at LTU – told him he should be an architect.

“You’re always building models, always drawing and doing creative things. Every time I walk through that darned architect building, I see them doing all that stuff,” Robert recalls being told. “So, I thought, let me go see what this is all about.”

After touring LTU’s campus with his dad, his fate was sealed, even though he didn’t know anything about architecture. That led to drafting classes in community college to “really get an understanding of architecture” before enrolling in LTU two years later.

It’s a decision he doesn’t regret, even if he didn’t fully appreciate figuring out the more tedious aspects of design, like material specifications, for his classes. “I didn’t want to do that, I wanted to design cool-looking buildings!” the ’98 alum said.

But it was exactly that training that serves him well today, especially now that he owns his own design firm, M Architects in Northville. The firm, formed in 2017, has grown from one employee to 10 since 2020, when he hired his first employee. And he has an excellent recruiting tool in Sigma Phi Epsilon – the fraternity that served as his social outlet – often hiring LTU students for their strong “practical sensibilities” in addition to their conceptual abilities.

Another LTU alum, Brian Eady (BSAr’08, MAr’12), joined him last spring as a partner, bringing a robust technical background to Robert’s focus on constructability and design. The firm is working on the Northville Downs property, the former horse racing facility that closed in February 2024, alongside other developers and architects; plans to redevelop the site have been in the works on and off for about eight years, with M Architects’ involvement beginning about three years ago.

According to the Northville Downs website, The Downs will be a community of single-family homes, townhouses, row houses, apartments, condominiums and small businesses – plus 15 acres of public parks and green space.

“There’s no other project in the country of this size or magnitude that I know of with such proximity to a small downtown,” Robert said. “It nearly doubles the size of the downtown.”

Robert credits Northville architect Greg Presley for bringing M Architects into the project. “Initially, we were going to design seven of the townhouse buildings; then it turned into nine; and then it turned into Greg and our team designing every building except the large condo and apartment buildings.”

Though he’s a contemporary architect, Robert has an “immense love of historical architecture” and is sensitive to preserving the contextual importance of the site, which first opened in 1944. So instead of promoting “a standard cookie-cutter subdivision,” the design and development teams are weaving the overall appearance into the fabric of downtown Northville, diversifying the architecture and style of each home they design.

He’s awed by the trust city officials, the development team, “and everyone else who had an opinion on how the project was going to impact the community” had in his team. The projected completion date for The Downs – which spans 48 acres of land – is 2027.

“We’re very aware of the responsibility we’ve been given so we want to make sure we’re doing the right thing for the Northville community, and we really hope in the end it will be.”

AUTHOR: Pam Houghton