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Detroit-based contractors sought for $17 million hotel renovation, 80 other projects
By KURT NAGL
Crain's Detroit Business
September 27, 2017
The historic Hotel Savarine in Detroit's Jefferson Chalmers neighborhood was once home to legendary beat writer Jack Kerouac. It has been vacant since the 1990s.
-Outreach event is 1-3 p.m. Thursday
-$17 million renovation planned for Savarine Hotel
-Renovations of neighborhood storefronts sought to boost curb appeal
A contractor outreach session is scheduled for 1-3 p.m. Thursday at Thinkers Coworking Spaces, 14346 E. Jefferson Ave. The free event is being hosted by D2D, Motor City Re-Store and Jefferson East Inc. with the goal of attracting Detroit-based contractors to bid on $20 million worth of work across 80 projects citywide.
"We need to see to it that Detroit-based contractors get the work," said Keith Rodgerson, program manager for Motor City Re-Store. "It's not just because we're using taxpayer money. We are using our resources to keep people in the city employed and to help generate money back into the city from having healthy businesses."
The local outreach is part of a broader goal of employing Detroiters for projects in which they can take pride, like Little Caesars Arena, said Charlotte Fisher, spokeswoman for Detroit Economic Growth Corp. A similar event a couple weeks ago for construction of the Pistons headquarters and Henry Ford medical facility drew about 60 contractors, she said.
The 80 projects being put up for bid this week largely include storefront renovations to boost curb appeal of neighborhoods around the city, Rodgerson said. Much of the emphasis is on the Jefferson-Chalmers neighborhood on the city's lower east side.
"Enhancing retail nodes along the corridor and helping to create an amenity for the neighborhood there" is the goal, Rodgerson said.
Detroit-based Shelborne Development Co. LLC is leading renovation of the Hotel Savarine in that neighborhood, with Jefferson East, also based in Detroit, as a partner with 25-percent stake. The historic "stag hotel" has fallen from grace since opening in 1926. The hotel closed in the 1990s and after a failed renovation attempt in 2006, it sits gutted and tagged with graffiti.
The plan, again, is to restore the building for housing, said Joshua Elling, executive director of Jefferson East. Construction is expected to begin late next year.
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http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article...-renovation-80
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Detroit bathhouse cleans up its act
North End sauna booted swingers, is investing in rehab work
By Nancy Derringer
Bridge Magazine - Crain's Detroit Business
September 26, 2017
....
The Schvitz was born in an earlier era, when hot running water was less common, and working people needed a place to get clean, relax and escape. It's being reborn in a neighborhood with many problems and much potential. Detroit's real-estate comeback is pushing north from the central city. Lynch's handsome house is only few blocks away, but the one across the street from the Schvitz on Oakland Avenue is burned; a nearby church is active, but with some boarded windows. The neighborhood could use some more viable businesses, but the last thing Lynch wants is to be just another yuppie gentrifier.
It will be a tall order, he acknowledges. The building is nearly a century old, its plumbing not much younger, its reputation falling somewhere between colorful and infamous. It won't be cheap; the current budget of $250,000 will do a lot, but not everything. Cash flow is a big question mark.
But the Schvitz is also a place its regulars have kept running for decades, one they feel connected to in ways they express in near-religious terms. It's a place of purification, of cleansing, a sanctuary where troubles are exorcised in puddles of sweat. It's a hard place to turn your back on.
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The Schvitz reopens Oct. 1, with an open house for old and new customers, neighbors and the general public. It'll still be a work in progress, Lynch concedes. But in some ways, it's always been one.
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The Schvitz's founding is rooted in Judaism; it opened in 1918 as a Jewish cultural and community center for the North End neighborhood. The basement was dug out later, when the steam room and a cold-water pool were added; tilework on the pool deck says 1930, and it was sometime around then that its clientele grew to encompass the Purple Gang, the fearsome criminal mob of the city's Prohibition era. The Schvitz was run by members of the Meltzer family from the 1930s to the mid 1970s. Rick Meltzer, whose father and grandfather were the proprietors, said during that time it was largely a men's club — ladies-only on Wednesdays — that served up steam, relaxation and big meals afterward.
"My dad always said the Purple Gang guys hung out there, but they didn't run the place," Meltzer said
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By the late '70s, the club was following the decline of the city. It was sold to a succession of owners and entered an era many modern Detroiters have at least heard about, that of the infamous "couples night."
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"The phone rang for weeks," said Jessie Nigl, the third party in the new management, who will supervise its daily operation. One day she let another employee answer, she said, lacking the heart to "disappoint another displaced swinger," and overheard her telling the caller, "This is a de-sexualized space now."
"We thank those people for helping keep the lights on for many years," said Lynch. "But it's time for something new here."
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http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article...ans-up-its-act
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Private investor group buys mostly vacant Lincoln Park Plaza
By TYLER CLIFFORD
Crain's Detroit Business
September 27, 2017
Lincoln Capital LLC, an investment group based in Okemos, has purchased the 175,506-square-foot Lincoln Park Plaza from Lincoln Park Plaza LLC, Farmington Hills-based Friedman Integrated Real Estate Solutions LLC announced Tuesday.
The package includes 3574-3636 Fort St. in Lincoln Park.
Terms of the deal, which closed Aug. 22, were not disclosed.
The retail center is anchored by Ace Hardware and includes Dollar Tree, Check and Go, H&R Block and Hallmark Cards. It opened in 1955 — the first major shopping center to open Downriver, according to downriverthings.com. A Farmer Jack grocery store closed in the early 2000s.
Nearly 150,000 square feet of vacant space is available in nine storefronts in the complex, according to property manager and investor Mike Zhang of California's Bay Area. Zhang is one of more than five investors, the rest of whom were not named.
"The objective is to have those vacant spaces occupied. We welcome any new tenants that are interested in the locations and we will do whatever we can to rent out those spaces," he said. "We want to see this place come back where the neighborhood and people can come down for entertainment and more activities."
Zhang said the vacant spaces would be renovated based on tenant needs.
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http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article...oln-park-plaza
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Bloomfield Park redevelopment gets $24.7 million tax capture
By KIRK PINHO
Crain's Detroit Business
September 26, 2017
The Michigan Strategic Fund has approved $24.7 million in local and school tax captures for the Village at Bloomfield project in Pontiac and Bloomfield Township.
The $123 million project by Southfield-based Redico LLC and California-based Pacific Coast Capital Partners LLC, or PCCP, is a redevelopment of the Bloomfield Park project that failed nearly a decade ago in the wake of the Great Recession and created one of Oakland County's most prominent eyesores.
Redico and PCCP plans a mixed-use development that involves demolition of multiple structures on the site at Telegraph and Square Lake roads.
The joint venture plans 432 multifamily units averaging about 900 square feet each, 120,000 square feet of senior assisted living with about 100 units, a 106-room hotel, 237,000 square feet of home-improvement retail, another 89,000 square feet of retail space, a 1,050-space parking deck, almost 1,800 surface parking spaces and another 77,000-space-foot retail/commercial building. Another 21.2 acres of recreation/open space are planned, according to an MSF memo.
Crain's reported in December that the home-improvement component of Village at Bloomfield is expected to be a Menard Inc. store. In metro Detroit, the chain has stores in Wixom, Warren, Livonia, Chesterfield Township and Ann Arbor.
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http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article...on-tax-capture
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