The hotel to replace Kroger selected

Last year, I asked "A hotel to replace Kroger?"  The answer is yes.

Royal Oak Patch: Planning Commission OKs Hotel Complex

By a 7-2 vote, the Royal Oak Planning Commission approved a special land use and final special redevelopment site plan for an 8-story hotel complex at the site of the former Fresard auto dealership at 400 N. Main St. at its meeting Tuesday.

The plan will now move to the Royal Oak City Commission for its approval of a development agreement.

The site and landscaping plan for an 8-story hotel, an 8-story apartment building, a pair of office buildings and a 4-level off-street parking deck has essentially not changed very much since it last appeared before the planning commission in December, said Royal Oak City Planner Doug Hedges.

That was last June.  At that time, there was one precondition to getting the project approved.

In his comments, Hedges strongly went over the Planning Department’s recommendation that a hotel be part of any first phase of the project.

“I can not emphasize enough how adamant the director of planning (Tim Thwing) is that this contingency be included,” Hedges said, adding, “It is our strong opinion, and it’s been stated in the public hearing, that the whole project as been more or less predicated on the hotel. And, it is our opinion that that needs to be done first before anything else. It may be harsh but our opinion is no hotel, no project.”

Hedges remarks drew approval from the audience. The closest resident to the proposed development, Nikki Martinez on Pingree, acknowledged she was excited about the hotel and would not be a fan of the development without it.

To date, the petitioner has not named a hotelier and no contingency was added about naming one.

That hurdle has now been cleared.

Royal Oak Patch: Royal Oak Hotel Development Moves Forward with Hyatt Place

After months of silence, an announcement is made regarding a proposed 8-story hotel complex at 400 N. Main St., the site of the former Fresard auto dealership.
...
"The 400 N. Main project is still moving forward," said [Architect Jason] Krieger, who is also a DDA director. "I know it's been quiet, but they had to do their due diligence and their feasibility study. The (hotel) picked is going to be the Hyatt Place."
...
"I will say I have stayed in Hyatt Places many times. They are very nice hotels," said Jay Dunstan, DDA chairperson. "It going to be a great addition to downtown."

I'm looking forward to the the completed hotel.  I've even looking forward to the construction.  It's more entertaining to walk past a construction site than a vacant lot as I head downtown.  As for driving, I have alternate routes to avoid the congestion and I'll be happy to put up with the traffic to see this all done.

Also, there is enough tourism to keep the hotel afloat, what with the Dream Cruise, the Detroit Auto Show, and the Detroit Zoo, to say nothing of downtown Royal Oak as an entertainment destination for people coming in during business trips and relatives coming in to visit residents during the rest of the year.  When all that stops, we'll have bigger problems to worry about then whether the town can support a hotel.

A hotel to replace Kroger?

Remember this from last August?

[T]here will not be a Kroger on Main Street in Royal Oak.
...
Time for plan B. I wonder if Whole Foods is interested in buying a $3.5 million dollar property and complying with Royal Oak's master plan?

Whole Foods has other plans that don't involve Royal Oak, but Plan B has materialized.

A real estate brokerage representing Fresard Investments LP is shopping plans for an eight-story hotel in Royal Oak to the city's Downtown Development Authority to gauge its interest in the project.

Southfield-based CBRE Group Inc. is working with Fresard on plans for the site. Preliminary plans, submitted to the DDA to provide context for a discussion at its Wednesday meeting, call for redevelopment of the former Jim Fresard Pontiac-Buick-GMC auto dealership at 400 N. Main St.

Plans also include a banquet facility and five-story mixed-use development with apartments and retail.

Here's what it looks like.


 Full sized version here.
Looks to me like the design has "storefront continuity," which the Kroger didn't have, but the Planning Commission will decide that. As for whether this is an improvement, I'd say yes. I'm sure there will be more traffic in the evening, but I like the idea of making this mixed use. I promise to keep you all posted about developments of this story as I find them out.

Storefronts: Open and closed, mostly closed

I drove down Main Street in Royal Oak and then up Woodward to Bloomfield Hills this afternoon, so I was able to follow up with my own eyes on the subjects of the previous two entries, as well as the subject of an even earlier entry.

First, the three stores that have been closed since last Saturday are still closed. Either the structural engineers haven't been able to see the locations yet or they got a negative report.

Next, the Ann Arbor Borders wasn't the only one closed for the last time. The one in Birmingham appeared completely empty. Even the going out of business signs had disappeared.

Finally, I also drove past the Kroger in Birmingham. As I did, I thought of the plan for the Kroger in Royal Oak that was turned down. A site plan like Birmingham's would have been approved.

I have more to write, but I want to watch Real Time. See you all later!

UPDATE: Hermann's Bakery is open again

Follow-up to Kroger in Royal Oak

Remember my promise from June?

I have a lot more to write about this issue, including coverage from Royal Oak Patch that follows up on the meetings and the provides more detail and my personal opinion of this (it's a very local issue for me, as the site in question is within walking distance of where my wife and I live--she has an opinion, too), but I have to run an errand and go to work. Stay tuned!

I never got around to doing that until now. I do have a good excuse, which was that I got distracted by Julie Bass and her fight with Oak Park over her vegetable garden, but it's still an excuse. In the spirit of better late than never, here are the highlights of what I missed during the past two months.

First, there was another hearing on July 12th, as WXYZ reported.




Debate over Kroger in Royal Oak

That didn't go so well. As the Royal Oak Daily Tribune reported, there will not be a Kroger on Main Street in Royal Oak.

Borders Books 1971-2011

WTNH on YouTube: On Thursday, Borders will ask a judge to begin liquidation of the company.

Reuters has even more details.

Borders Group Inc, the second-largest U.S. bookstore chain, said it has canceled an upcoming bankruptcy auction and will close its doors for good.

The company said in a statement Monday it was unable to find a buyer willing to keep it in operation and will sell itself to a group of liquidators led by Hilco Merchant Resources.

Borders' roughly 400 remaining stores will close, and nearly 11,000 jobs will be lost, according to the company.

"We are saddened by this development," Borders President Mike Edwards said in the statement. "We were all working hard toward a different outcome, but the headwinds we have been facing for quite some time ... have brought us to where we are now."

As someone who lived in Ann Arbor from 1989 to 1999 and hung out in Ann Arbor regularly until earlier this year, spending much of that time in the Ann Arbor flagship store, I find this very sad for me personally, as you can see by my previous two posts on the subject at my LiveJournal.

As someone who blogs about sustainability, including sustainable business and a just society, I find it distressing, if for no other reason that it was a Michigan company. I don't like seeing any of those go under.

The worst part of this? I'll let Schuyler Carroll, a bankruptcy attorney at Perkins Coie LLP, explain.

Carroll said the most significant loss associated with Borders' closing is that of jobs.

"It's one more knife in an economy that really doesn't need that," he said. "And for people who may be living on the edge right now and may not be able to quickly find a new job, they may not do very well."

Neither 11,000 lost jobs nor 400 empty large buildings will be good for the economies of the places where Borders currently still has stores. Just the scramble to fill the retail spaces will be ugly, as Royal Oak is finding out as the city is trying to replace a vacant auto dealership with a supermarket--and that is an example where there is a replacement. What happens if there isn't one?

Finally, this is not good news for John McCain Barnes and Noble.

For all its innovations on the digital side, Borders' main retail competitor, Barnes & Noble, remains in its own difficult straits, Carroll said.

The company put itself up for sale in August amid years of declining print book sales, saying its shares were undervalued. It is examining a $1 billion takeover offer made in May by John Malone's Liberty Media Corp.

David Strasser, an analyst at Janney Capital Markets, said liquidating Borders could make Barnes & Noble more valuable.

"This is perhaps an opportunity for a higher negotiated bid via Liberty or an entrance of another bidder," Strasser said last week in a note to clients.

But Carroll isn't so sure.

"Barnes & Noble is having its own problems," Carroll said. "I don't think one less store down the street is going to solve them."

The news didn't even help Amazon.com, as the company's stock dropped more than $4.00 today before finally recovering enough to close down $-1.34 (-0.63%).

About the only silver lining is that some of Borders' stores might be picked up by Barnes and Noble.

Barnes & Noble was thought to be interested in buying a handful of Borders stores after Glenn said at a hearing last week that the company had voiced some interest in select Borders locations.

Barnes & Noble CEO William Lynch said in February that certain Borders stores appeared attractive to the company, which operates more than 700 stores.

Borders' statement did not address whether Barnes & Noble had made an offer, and a Barnes & Noble spokeswoman declined to comment.

Sigh. I think my wife and I will go to the Birmingham Borders on Friday for a going out of business sale.

R.I.P. Borders, although I don't think that P will stand for peace, but instead for pieces.

Kroger in Royal Oak, the videos

In the intro to part one of last week's sustainability news linkspam, I mentioned "a local sustainability issue that looks like just a zoning and development issue, but has turned into something else entirely" in passing. In the spirit of "a picture is worth 1000 words," I give you these videos from WXYZ-TV. Issues of sustainable local business and sustainable built environment pop up all through both videos, including a mention of Royal Oak's walkable neighborhoods and walkable downtown. Then, there's the accusations of corruption by a lobbyist for the convenience store competitors of the proposed Kroger. And you thought city council meetings were boring.








I have a lot more to write about this issue, including coverage from Royal Oak Patch that follows up on the meetings and the provides more detail and my personal opinion of this (it's a very local issue for me, as the site in question is within walking distance of where my wife and I live--she has an opinion, too), but I have to run an errand and go to work. Stay tuned!