Adam Noel, 40, co-owner of Timeless Properties Detroit, wants to transform the building at 9851 Hamilton Ave. into 49 market-rate apartments with a ground-floor café and other commercial space. The building dates to 1920 when it opened as a local church's community center, and more recently it operated as Catholic Social Services of Wayne County [[complete with a "Madonna Room.") Although just outside the boundaries of Boston-Edison, the building and its surface parking lots abut a row of stately Boston-Edison homes. And on the opposite side of Hamilton Avenue, the building faces the grand Motown Mansion, once owned by Berry Gordy.
https://www.freep.com/story/money/bu...t/77936686007/But the building's other neighboring properties — further outside Boston-Edison — are significantly less grand. They include a couple vacant and boarded-up houses. So 9851 Hamilton straddles the edge of a prominent upper-middle-class neighborhood and another still showing signs of distress.
Among Boston-Edison residents, the redevelopment proposal is now a major controversy. That came as a surprise to Noel, who says he never anticipated so much pushback against a plan to bring an empty building back to life.
Some neighbors have said they would prefer the Hamilton building stay empty, or maybe become a community center again — not an apartment complex buzzing with vehicle traffic and packed with renters and perhaps some Airbnb occupants.
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