The structure at was built in 1916, and expanded with another 21-story tower in 1927. The hotel enjoyed a nice heyday until the Great Depression, and then demand slowly waned, and the property was permanently closed in 1998. The dark hotel joined other properties with similar fates in Downtown Detroit, until a recent resurgence Downtown has encouraged developers to reuse the historic buildings.
The development team includes Emmett Moten, the former chief of development under former Mayor Coleman Young, as well as Chevron USA, the General Retirement System of the City of Detroit, the US Department of Housing and Urban Development and ShoreBank. The project is expected to be complete by spring 2009.
Michael O'Callaghan, chief operating officer and executive vice president for the Detroit Metro Convention and Visitors Bureau, says the new rooms should help in attracting conventions Downtown. "We're suffering from not having a large inventory of hotel rooms," O'Callaghan tells GlobeSt.com. "We've struggled for so long with so few rooms, we haven't been to successfully attract large, city-wide conventions, they don't like to have to do the bus-in thing from the suburbs. Now we have the opportunity to build those numbers back up again."
The Pick-Fort is far from the only hotel room project Downtown. All three of the Detroit casinos, including Motor City, MGM and Greektown, are building 400-room hotel additions. Also, the similar Book Cadillac building is getting retrofit with 400 hotel rooms. "I think for right now this should pretty much do it for the time being," O'Callaghan says.
However, many local hotel experts wonder if the demand exists for a city that has suffered as much as Detroit, with high vacancies in office, retail and residential space. O'Callaghan says time will tell about demand. "There has been a renaissance of late in downtown, you're seeing a lot more office space being used, and more residential coming in," he says. "If the city isn't ready yet for this much hotel space, it will be soon."
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