Former Lelli's restaurant site in Detroit sold to VA for Fisher House project

Former Lelli's restaurant site in Detroit sold to VA for Fisher House project

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The U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs late last month bought a 1.27-acre site that had been home to Lelli's Inn, which served Northern Italian cuisine for more than six decades at that location, said Terence Edmondson, president of Detroit-based Exclusive Realty, which was the brokerage firm on the deal.CoStar Group Inc., a Washington, D.C.-based real estate information service, says the purchase price was $3.3 million. The property, situated at Woodward Avenue and Bethune Street, sits immediately north of the Penske Tech Center for the QLine streetcar that runs between downtown and the New Center area.
Edmondson said in an email that the VA intends to convert the site into a Zachary and Elizabeth M. Fisher House development following the sale, which he described as a "relatively easy process" after he reached out to gauge the department's interest.

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https://www.crainsdetroit.com/real-e...etroit-sold-va

Good to see development on that long dormant site, but the rendering strikes me as an odd choice for that parcel fronting Woodward Avenue.

What a great restaurant. Loved the Zip sauce. The one in Auburn Hills just didn't have the same atmosphere.

Can't find any images of what is planned, but former Preservation Wayne Executive Director Francis Grunow, post on the New Center Commons page on Facebook, mentions that Fisher Houses around the country all have the same basic layout, and have an unfortunate resemblence to a ho-hum suburban funeral home... :eek:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/117329646978/

This design for the main street in Detroit.... really? Ewwwww... :eek:

Totally inappropriate for Woodward frontage. Go back 20 years, maybe this would have flown, not today, not in such a prime location. I'm all for their mission as an organization, but this looks like a stain on the landscape.

Hopefully the city can stop a design like this from going through:
https://detroitmi.gov/departments/pl...0zGxEWOaG4wzhU

You better believe that if there is some public comment meeting for this I'll be there.

Suburban funeral home is exactly what it looks like. Truly inappropriate design for Woodward.

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Originally Posted by Gistok

Can't find any images of what is planned, but former Preservation Wayne Executive Director Francis Grunow, post on the New Center Commons page on Facebook, mentions that Fisher Houses around the country all have the same basic layout, and have an unfortunate resemblence to a ho-hum suburban funeral home... :eek:

https://www.facebook.com/groups/117329646978/

This design for the main street in Detroit.... really? Ewwwww... :eek:

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They all look similar depending on fundraising/donors. Here's the Ann Arbor copycat:
https://www.clickondetroit.com/all-a...d-in-michigan/

WTF? Reject this immediately.

What! a corner parcel of land on the Woodward Ave. for a funeral home look-a-like. Who came up this horrific ideal? That area is zoned for mix used residential and commercial buildings.

This is some of their other home and design’s,normally they are on the grounds of major military installations.

If the area is zoned mix use residential and commercial ,why would this not fit in?

Same argument could be made for the mansion that is surrounded by comercial that hosted some famous parties.

The concept is to make it look and feel like a home because people entering are going through trying times.

You can look at some of the other designs they have and suggest one of those maybe.

https://www.theplancollection.com/bl...ectural-flavor

people refer to it as a funeral home design without remembering funeral homes were put into grand old houses as a second use,they were not actually designed as funeral homes like that.

Historic wise,what were the common building materials used in Detroit ?

If you look at all the other designs in the other states,they do actually fit the local architecture pretty good.

I think one is overlooking the bigger picture,haveing somebody like Zachary and Elizabeth Fisher put something like this in the city of Detroit is no small potatoes,they team up with the Rockefellers and was on the board of directors at Carnegie hall.

Which makes me wonder why Mr Grunow would make the statement he did when referring to people at the top of their game in the country and have received presidential recognition,these are the kind of movers and shakers that you want looking at Detroit,just their involvement alone carries alot of weight,so why would somebody in the city go out of their way in order to try and disrupt that or paint it as a bad thing even worse somebody that knows that stuff already ?

Sorry I forgot,they are considered outsiders.

It really is a pity that 105 East Bethune, the old Michigan Bell Offices and Exchange wasn't directly on [and facing] Woodward... and this Fisher home project would be just fine behind it on East Bethune. But not the other way around!

https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3729...7i16384!8i8192

105 East Bethune [as the 12 story Art Deco building is known] is truly one of Detroit's lesser known [and beautifully maintained] architectural gems.

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Originally Posted by Gistok

It really is a pity that 105 East Bethune, the old Michigan Bell Offices and Exchange wasn't directly on [and facing] Woodward... and this Fisher home project would be just fine behind it on East Bethune. But not the other way around!

https://www.google.com/maps/@42.3729...7i16384!8i8192

105 East Bethune [as the 12 story Art Deco building is known] is truly one of Detroit's lesser known [and beautifully maintained] architectural gems.

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What a gorgeous building,and built as an office building,looks like on loop net it has been converted to apartments?

I still say a lot of the buildings in Detroit should be on the national trust,you do not find examples like that in other cities.You can tell Detroit was world class,you see other historical buildings in other cities but not office buildings like that,most were built strictly utilitarian.

The House is going to be on Woodward because of the easy excess to the street car downtown and other public transportation.When the families are staying there they are going to want to have a break and go out and eat and take the children out,shopping etc.

What they do is raise funds through donations and build the building and then turn them over to the VÁ só families can spend time with recovering veterans and help them through that trauma.

The VA is landlocked in Detroit so they had to do it off property,they are simular in concept to the Ronald Mc Donald houses but these are built on a smaller scale so one feels like they are recovering in a actual home setting.

The build is not taxpayer funded it’s all donations even though it becomes federal property it is one of the few projects that is actually going to get built and not be reliant on the local taxpayers to build it.

Look at it as a free improvement.

I read the report for the Main Street plan for Woodward there,red brick is the preferred facade but then it becomes contradictory with wanting to have 60% of the front facade glass,that thought process is 1970s Main Street strip mall where it was a wall of glass down the entire street.

The push to make Woodward a recreation of Main Street USA with commercial street front and residential apartments on the top is a stretch,it’s to long and to many lanes,what will end up happening is the chains will end up coming and giving you what you want but then you end up recreating the suburbs in the city.

Take something like Woodward and put it in Florida and you can go 100 miles and see the exact same thing mile after mile and the exact same brands.

Is Woodward better off as a softer comfortable blvd where it is walkable,bicycle,and transit friendly that has its own identity verses trying to mimic everything else?

I kinda think when places develop their own little identity it’s what makes them desirable and special,trying to recreate the same pattern over and over again tends to become sterile after awhile.

The reality is this proposed building is a commercial building,not much different then if somebody proposed building an BNB on Woodward or a small hotel,alongside of the curb with all glass,but everybody is different because to me,that would be yuck.

Some of these concepts sound good in theory but it reminds me of the whole front porch thing,everybody back in the day sat in them and chatted with people walking by,not anymore,it like with a old house people say wow I love the porch,like on grand Victorians with the wrap around porch,but nobody actually sits on the porches anymore.

I opened mine back up after it was enclosed in the 1950s and everybody said cool you opened the porch back up,I love porches,I have probably sat on it twice in 5 years maybe when I get in my 70s it will come in handy with a rocker and I can yell at the youngsters to get off of my grass.

The concept and desire that surrounds it is cool but outside of that it is pretty much useless.

Its tough to recreate Main Street anymore,people are different,they just go about their business afraid to talk to others.

You already have walkable downtown,streets packed with people?

Richard, you brought up an interesting point about Detroit. True it was never as big as NYC or Chicago, but in the 1920s we were the fastest growing city [percent wise], during what was arguably the 20th century's most artistic decade, architecturally speaking.

Here is a closeup of the details of an anonymous 1920s Detroit Apartment Building... with flourishes that are a dime a dozen in Detroit. We probably do take it for granted that we have a rich and prolific surviving assortment of artistic buildings that just don't exist in great quantity in many other cities, as they do here.

Someone should file paperwork to make 1920s Detroit a UNESCO World Heritage Site. I could see that happening as more of the old city is restored and reborn.

I think Detroit was something that NYC and Chicago was not at the time,a world class city because it was also impacting and shaping the world.

In the gilded age you see massive private homes that were built influenced by the owners world travels and incorporating those architectural styles into their private homes,just like the country estates built in the UK.

Detroit is really the only city in this country where you see that influence in what would be considered mundane buildings,it also shows the mindset back then of how the citizens understood the role they were playing on the world stage.

Even back then those were expensive to build and they could have saved costs by just building plain non descript buildings,but they did not they built showcases because they knew the eyes of the world were upon them.

I can see how it one lives there they just become another building but they are special and I agree that they need to be seriously looked at on the national level as national treasures that were built in an important time in history.

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Originally Posted by DetroiterOnTheWestCoast

Suburban funeral home is exactly what it looks like. Truly inappropriate design for Woodward.

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Agreed. The city should require that it be walled in for aesthetic and security reasons.

Actually for S&Gs look up images for Suburban Funeral homes then look up images for funeral home designs.

Like I posted in the past many funeral homes were established in grand old homes and are not ment to look clinical.

It switched from funeral parlor,where you displayed your deceased loved one in your actual parlor of your house,which is also why you see two front entrances on a lot of vintage houses,easy excess for guests without having to go through your whole house.

When Lincoln was assassinated it was the first time it changed to funeral home because it was a central location where the public could view him.

Whoever coined the phrase Suburban Funeral home is a moron because there is actually no such thing and architectural style outside of the actual 1970s commercial aspect they resemble the home,city or suburban and that was the whole point.

You might as well be saying every suburban home looks like a funeral home.

But then again there are suburban neighborhoods house styles that range from the 1800s all the way up to today so one would have to be a bit more specific.

It still looks better then the modern buildings that look like somebody glued a bunch of bedroom mirrors together in order to create a building.