It's been more than four months since the Ilitch family missed a deadline related to a key Woodward Avenue property and it's not any clearer when they will become compliant with terms of an agreement with the Downtown Development Authority.

The Detroit Economic Growth Corp., which staffs the DDA, and the family's real estate company are refusing to answer questions on why a development plan for a vacant property at Woodward and I-75 across from Little Caesars Arena hasn't been submitted.

Both sides are only saying they are in conversations about the site, which has been envisioned as a hotel.

Here's some background: Effective June 28, the Ilitch family's Olympia Development of Michigan real estate company, subsidiaries of which have received nearly $400 million in public funding for the new arena, has been in violation of an agreement that requires a development plan for the parcel.

In previous years, the DDA has given Olympia one-year extensions to submit a development plan for the site, thereby keeping the Ilitches in compliance with the agreement.

However, the DDA has not approved one to date, meaning that the Ilitches have been in violation ever since the deadline passed.

The DDA board has met since the deadline lapsed, but has not granted an extension. It also has a meeting tomorrow, but an extension is not on the agenda.

The secrecy from the DEGC and the Ilitches is nothing new.

The DEGC has long been criticized for being too opaque. I reported in December 2016 on the secrecy behind the DDA committee meetings on the deal to lure the Detroit Pistons to the new arena. A lengthy 2014 Metro Times story raised numerous questions about negotiations around the deal on Little Caesars Arena, which at that time was not yet named. Those are just two examples.

The Ilitches for weeks declined to be interviewed for a story my former colleague Bill Shea and I did in March on the lack of progress of The District Detroit (more than two months later, Christopher Ilitch granted an interview), and likewise didn't participate for a story that HBO did on the project (Olympia later responded only after it aired by calling it a "self-interested, sensationalized and inaccurate" report).

The family has also never answered questions about why it took so long to install pizza slice-shaped windows at the Little Caesars Global Resources Center on Woodward next to the Fox Theatre downtown.