New mixed-use development planned across from Westin Book Cadillac

[MSUguy]

If you’ve been outside the Westin Book Cadillac Hotel in the past year or so, you’ve likely noticed the building directly across the street and its colorful, distinctive artwork that wraps around its first floor.
You can expect to say goodbye to it soon, developer Richard Karp told me this morning. He plans to tear the building down to make way for a mixed-use development with a multifamily component. Formally known as the Gateway Center building, the exterior of its first floor is wrapped in black-and-white and color portraits, including some of women and lollipops — a piece of artwork Karp said he commissioned. [[He referred to it as the "lollipop girl" building during our conversation.)

“But it’s not historic. It’s not architecturally significant. So there’s no [[financing) incentives available for it from a historic standpoint. For us to spend the money rehabbing it, we are better off doing a larger structure encompassing the surface lots to the north,” he said.

Details on his planned development — including time frame for starting and concluding demolition and construction, how large it will be, etc. — are not yet being disclosed.

His other properties include a surface parking lot to the north, which he purchased from the Detroit Transportation Corp. a year ago for $650,000, according to CoStar; and a 20,000-square-foot retail building with two stories at 1242 Washington Blvd. that he purchased in March for an undisclosed price. The surface lot would become part of the mixed-use development

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This could very be a interesting project like he's talking about building a "larger structure". I just hope whatever they design really takes advantage of that intersection

http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article...-book-cadillac