by Mike Martindale
Pontiac —
Once a poster child for urban blight, this city is reinventing itself as
a mecca of hipness with loft apartments and cool entertainment.
Before
his recent exit as Pontiac’s emergency manager, Louis Schimmel
expressed enthusiasm about how the city had re-created itself.
It
was no exaggeration. Over the past few years, Pontiac has not only shed
itself of millions in debt and costly, underused facilities such as the
Silverdome, but it has also opened its doors to new development.
Pontiac,
like other aging communities, has been struggling to generate interest
in a downtown business district largely empty most of the day. Now,
examples of adaptive reuse — finding new uses for old structures — is
everywhere. Former bank buildings and a department store are now loft
apartments. Vacant retail storefronts have been transformed into
offices, trendy cafes, a bakery and wine cellar.
“I
think Pontiac is on track to become the next Ferndale, Plymouth or
Royal Oak,” said Lee Todd, owner of a Pontiac residential and commercial
management company.
“Just a few years ago,
two out of three buildings looked vacant,” Todd said. “Now on any given
day you can drive through the city and see property owners replacing
doors, up on ladders installing new windows or cleaning up the
buildings.”
In an effort to bring in new
blood and make their business district more “user-friendly,” Pontiac
yanked out dozens of parking meters to provide free street parking and
entice visitors. Once-empty streets are now lined with parked vehicles —
a blessing and partly a curse, Mayor Leon Jukowski said.
“You
used to be able to find a place to park along Saginaw without
difficulty,” Jukowski said. “That’s no longer the case, partly because
some of the new businesses coming in have employees taking up spaces.
It’s a problem we have to resolve.”
Fits and starts
The city’s rebirth, if it can be called that,
hasn’t happened overnight. A once thriving business district a
half-century ago was hit hard by sprawl and new shopping malls.
After
several stops and starts over the past few decades, a few nightclubs
may have thrived, but little else. Restaurants came and went. Empty
storefronts outnumbered active businesses. And the August 2008 beating
deaths of two homeless men in separate incidents just days before the
annual Arts, Beats and Eats festival chilled enthusiasm for that
once-popular Pontiac attraction.
The killers were caught and sent to prison, but the Labor Day event moved on as well, to Royal Oak. .
Three
years ago, a business-spurred Rise of the Phoenix project — which
offered one year’s free rent to new businesses that signed multiyear
leases — worked to reverse that situation. The project initially
attracted 67 businesses, of which about a third remain today.
Todd,
who supervised the effort, said fresh activity downtown, among other
things, has attracted about two dozen more businesses.
“Disbanding
the police and contracting with the Oakland County Sheriff has been a
big plus — as was an emergency manager finally balancing the (city)
budget,” said Todd.
“There’s an abundant
supply of cool historic buildings in Pontiac that can be converted to
other uses; it’s in a great location and there has been federal money to
help fund some projects,” Todd said. “We knew about a third of the new
businesses would fail, but new interest in Pontiac attracted others, and
there was a net gain about 60 businesses.”
The
startups include “several attorneys who had recently passed the bar and
found that instead of paying $26 a square foot for office space in
Birmingham, Rochester or Troy, they could get it for $10 a foot here,”
Todd added.
Kyle Westberg and his West
Construction firm transformed a defunct Sears store, built in 1929 and
closed in 1972, , into 46 lofts, a fitness club and a fresh food market.
A block away, James Cunningham converted an old bank building on Huron
Street to 14 residential lofts and some retail.
“Two
things we needed downtown was a grocery and more people — these
projects brought both,” said Todd, who envisions converting the top five
floors of his Chase Bank building at Saginaw and Lawrence into 53
additional lofts. He bought the building last year.
At
the same intersection is a three-story, long vacant building with the
sign “Whiskeys.” It’s being transformed to offices, a wine club,
Artist’s Lounge, bakery and pizzeria.
“We
were able to purchase this entire building for what a year’s rent would
have cost in Birmingham,” said James Riley, operations manager for the
RE Fund investment group that purchased Whiskeys and is looking at three
other buildings nearby. “And we can convert it to whatever we want it
to be.”
Riley and others, who previously
worked out of offices in Birmingham and Sterling Heights, transformed
the building’s forgotten basement into a rustic fieldstone and brick
wine tasting room where members receive discounts on wine to take home
or enjoy on premises. The room also doubles as a rental space for
private functions. Riley said some businesses have already booked the
room for holiday parties.
The city’s hopes
received a boost recently with news an area bank is considering taking
over Bloomfield Park, an 80-acre office, retail and housing project
along Telegraph, which stalled five years ago. The $500 million project
never advanced beyond skeletons of an unfinished parking structure and
buildings.
Plans taking shape
Other activity creating a buzz:
- The M1 Concourse, located on a former auto plant site along Wide Track, plans to create climate-controlled “car condos” and a test track for owners. Half of the condos are already reserved.
- The long-closed, city-owned Strand Theatre was sold to the West group and plans to reopen in 2015 with a lounge, restaurant and plays, concerts, films and comedy.
- The 70-year-old Salvation Army building was purchased by the operators of Erebus, which boasts the “World’s largest haunted house” a few blocks south on Perry Street. Erebus hasn’t announced plans for the site.
- Architect William Massie is planning to open the first major grass court tennis club in North America in more than 100 years. On the grounds of a former city recreation site closed for more than decade, the club is planning to build 24 grass courts and four hard courts.
The
Wessen Lawn Tennis Club, which will require membership but be open to
the public during tournaments, is set to open in May, he said.
“This
will be like Wimbledon but in Pontiac,” said Massie,
architect-in-residence at Cranbook Academy of the Arts in Bloomfield
Hills. “Pontiac is a great city. It deserves this.”
(248) 338-0319
Reference Link: http://www.detroitnews.com/article/20130902/METRO02/309020009/Pontiac-gaining-new-life-trendy-makeovers-new-businesses
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