Yet another Boutique Hotel in Midtown - Near "District Detroit"

**Gistok** · April-04-19, 01:05 AM

Lowell, please merge this with the old "Temple Detroit" discussion.

Developers will have this boutique hotel open by 2020... the former 8 story Standard Accident Insurance Co. building becoming a 100 room boutique hotel, and 70 residential units. The location is 640 Temple St. 1/2 block west of the Masonic Temple, and across the street from the former Kresge Headquarters. The building faces Cass Park. The Albert Kahn designed $72 million developed building will be known as "Temple Detroit".

Although the building doesn't look that large from the park, it goes deep to the next street north of Temple. And 192,000 sq. ft. is 1/2 the square footage of the Guardian Building... so this is a larger building than it looks.

https://www.detroitnews.com/story/ne...20/3355211002/

What stands out here is that among the developers is Gretchen Carhartt Valade, Detroit's Jazz matriarch, and a deep pocket donor towards WSU's expanded Hillberry Theatre complex's $75 million performing arts expansion. Ms. Valade is the matriarch to a $1.2 billion Carhartt's family fortune.

Also, this will show that as the Ilitch's own parts of 'District Detroit' languishes... other projects in the area are happening in spite of them.

**NSortzi** · April-04-19, 01:25 AM

This project was announced over a year ago and has been underway since last spring or summer...

**Gistok** · April-04-19, 01:41 AM

Originally Posted by NSortzi

This project was announced over a year ago and has been underway since last spring or summer...

Actually nearly 2 1/2 years ago...

https://www.freep.com/story/news/loc...ding/95491462/

Planning to open next year.

**Gistok** · April-04-19, 10:16 AM

Since this boutique hotel would open up likely much earlier than anything fun or lively the Ilitch's do in District Detroit... that could set it up for a big fail for an expensive hotel surrounded by parking lots and no street life... Who wants to stay around that, until other properties are developed?

With the usual Ilitch big promises about a vibrant district, and then no results to show for it... it almost sounds like a future lawsuit against the Ilitch's in the making....

**SammyS** · April-04-19, 10:49 AM

Originally Posted by Gistok

Since this boutique hotel would open up likely much earlier than anything fun or lively the Ilitch's do in District Detroit... that could set it up for a big fail for an expensive hotel surrounded by parking lots and no street life... Who wants to stay around that, until other properties are developed?

With the usual Ilitch big promises about a vibrant district, and then no results to show for it... it almost sounds like a future lawsuit against the Ilitch's in the making....

I’m with ya on that. Big money puts investment security first.

**CrashDummy** · April-05-19, 02:35 PM

Originally Posted by Gistok

Since this boutique hotel would open up likely much earlier than anything fun or lively the Ilitch's do in District Detroit... that could set it up for a big fail for an expensive hotel surrounded by parking lots and no street life... Who wants to stay around that, until other properties are developed?

Excellent point, but you could probably make the same argument in reverse, couldn't you? Larger scale projects like this sure could incentivize Ilitch developments as well. Frankly, before this, Chemical Bank, and the Park Avenue House announcements there hasn't been a whole hell of a lot of activity in that neck of the woods and there are PLENTY of non-Ilitch owned properties to choose from. I think it's great that people are no longer sitting on their asses and waiting for things to happen. Now, guys like Forbes and Harrington have been great stewards to their properties in the past, but they just don't have the resources to push development to the next level, and have already begun to cash out. And that's certainly good for them.

Now, as far as suing for promises made and not delivered? If that were possible I'm sure we could get a class action lawsuit going with hundreds, if not thousands of defendants responsible for the last 50 years...

**Gistok** · April-05-19, 04:45 PM

One thing disturbing about the Ilitch land purchases... in the last 20 years I cannot recall a single instance of the Ilitch's selling a single parcel of Ilitch owned land for someone else to develop... not one. And it seems that some folks who might be interested in developing some of their buildings... they have all walked away from it. I would like to know why that is [[although I can probably guess the answer).