Hotel St. Regis to feature Motown Music

[Ramcharger]

This venture sounds unique enough to actually succeed. It could bring some badly needed night life to the New Center area.

Twelve signature recording artists join to take ownership of New Center hotel, music cafe

[statedude3]

This sounds very interesting. I think this might actually fly. The New Center area has so much potential, and this would only help it's progression.

[Zissou]

The photo of the restaurant i saw looked like a nursing home with zero Motown flair. Im hoping maybe i saw a lousy photo or something.

[Southernyank]

I think that that is a really cool Idea. I know that I personally would enjoy it.

[wolverine]

The photo of the restaurant i saw looked like a nursing home with zero Motown flair. Im hoping maybe i saw a lousy photo or something.

LOL, well you have to start somewhere. This sounds like an excellent idea.

[tomo]

I think New Center has huge potential due to the new high intensity mixed use zoning and a great set of old commercial buildings that make it more compact than Midtown, most of the existing buildings already built out to lot lines with potential for ground floor retail. I wish something better than townhouses would have filled in between the center and the group of old highrise apartment buildings just a bit to the north but there's still the possibility of new construction to really tie the two areas together. The future residential conversion of the Argonaut will of course make a huge impact as well as the other buildings converting into lofts. Techtown is coming along to tie the area to Midtown. As for nightlife, there's already the theater, there's a few restaurants, and there's the Northern Lights Lounge which Paxahau has thrown some parties in that went on late into the night. The owners of Wall Street Cafe are opening a coffee shop soon in a much better location than their current one, but I think new news will continue to be a trickle until the hundreds of people start moving into the new lofts over the next two years. Now if some nightlife could be injected into the Woodward strip between the Blvd and the Amtrak station...

[RustTown]

I've always had a huge vision for New Center, and have been told again and again to drop it. lol I envision it as being, not a second downtown as originally planned, but rather a "streetcar suburb" in build. By that I mean I envision the area filled with residential towers being connected to downtown and midtown by a light rail so people could "commute" into midtown/downtown. It would kind of be like the last bit of truly urban fabric before you go into the more suburban-styled areas up Woodward. It would be a node, kind of like North York in Toronto but with a completely different purpose.

[Ramcharger]

I like the Toronto analogy but I would like to see the New Center become more like the Yorkville neighborhood around Yonge and Bloor Streets.

[hudkina]

I don't know if New Center has the market yet for residential highrises. For now the focus should be on the riverfront, as that is where developers have the best shot of attracting new residents. If the city could turn New Center into a thriving entertainment district, maybe residential will follow (think Royal Oak), but for now I don't think demand would warrant your vision, LMich. Though it would be great to see something like that somewhere down ther road. In fact, I wouldn't limit it to just residential. Just image what New Center would look like if the highrises in Southfield were built there.

[tomo]

Hudkina, I am skeptical of the market for any new residential highrises in New Center as well. But there is already a cluster of quite a few tall apartment buildings north of New Center, condos in them going for pretty cheap relative to all the new luxury condos and lofts. Talk of new highrises may be premature until the Argonaut fills out and all those others are converted into lofts, which should represent a huge increase in density there although I don't know exactly how large. But if all the empty space is developed into lowrise buildings there'll be no more oppurtunity for new highrises. Baltimore between 2nd and the Lodge, where the Northern Lights Lounge is, has the buildings that would be appropriate for lots of bars and restaurants in becoming a nightlife district and I think the same is true for Grand Blvd around Milwaukee Junction, which will hopefully see more art galleries as its path to becoming a vibrant district. Lmichigan, I think New Center has the potential to be a bedroom community for people commuting south on Woodward but also into the suburbs -- it just needs to be a vibrant, urban neighborhood to live in. Of course, if the $100 million study recommends commuter rail from Ann Arbor to New Center with light rail down Woodward, New Center could be a streetcar suburb for downtown, Dearborn, and Ann Arbor..

re: Southfield... yeah, what a shame in every way. Even moreso that it's being killed by Troy. Emblematic of the region, leaving behind the old for the new and fashionable new construction on greenfields. Wonder if they'll ever unsterilize Southfield's office highrise area.

[RustTown]

I forget who it was, but an architecture firm did a conceptualization of making the Southfield Towne Center more urban. It looked pretty nice...for a suburban town center, anyway. I fear Southfield's best days are behind it. I fear that even if there is a movement back to the center it will be downtown Detroit that shines in terms of attracting large tenants. The problem with Southfield is that it is an inner-ring suburb, but built like and outer-ring sprawlburb. That's not going to bode well for it if the movement back towards the center even accelerates, IMO. Not that it is doing incredibly bad right now, but save for the actual office towers, the smaller office parks and retail establishments have been hurting for a few years now.

[tomo]

Perhaps transit would be the motivator for taking the towers of Southfield and making them urban contributors to the region. For example, a bus rapid transit line using the shoulders on the Lodge, starting downtown and stopping at Corktown (Michigan Ave), New Center (West Grand Blvd), Northland Mall, then doing a circulation of the Southfield Town Center. This could cause the Town Center and the area around Northland to become more pedestrian friendly, with the construction of ground floor retail infilling the surface lots on Central Park Blvd, Northland, and perhaps 9 Mile. Well, enough dreaming for now.

DetroitFunk's last photo blog post is of a soon-to-be loft building in New Center's TechTown area. Check it out