Dan Gilbert acquires closed boutique hotel on Detroit riverfront
Dan Gilbert’s real estate firm this week bought a recently closed boutique hotel on Detroit’s east riverfront, near other buildings the firm recently purchased.
The 109-room Roberts Riverwalk Hotel, 1000 River Place Drive, once known as the Omni Detroit Hotel at River Place, was sold Thursday to Bedrock for an undisclosed price, according to Damon Jordan of The Swearingum Group, the principal broker for the seller.
The seller, Michael V. Roberts, had owned the hotel since 2010 and added on a banquet center. He ultimately put the 112,000-squarefoot property up for sale two years ago with a $26 million asking price.
The hotel was open for business all last summer, Jordan said, although it has since closed.
Bedrock’s future plans for the hotel were not immediately clear Friday. The firm didn’t respond to a Free Press message for comment, although one of its executives told Crain’s Detroit that the hotel purchase “further emphasizes our investment in the redevelopment of Detroit’s East Riverfront.”
Bedrock last year purchased the former 420,000-square-foot UAW-GM Center for Human Resources that neighbors the hotel, as well as a nearby and sprawling 500,000square-foot complex known as Stroh River Place that once housed headquarters for the Stroh Brewing Co.
The hotel building was constructed in 1902 as part of a complex that served until 1981 as offices and laboratories for pharmaceutical maker Parke-Davis Co. After Parke-Davis left, the complex became part of Stroh River Place, and in the late 1980s the building was turned into a hotel known as River Place Inn.
The Stroh family sold that hotel in 1993, and five years later, the property was bought by Omni Hotels. The Omni hotel closed in 2010, and shortly thereafter, Roberts arrived to buy it.
Jordan, the broker on the sale, said the hotel received interest from prospective buyers across the country and Canada.
“It does make sense that the buyer is local,” he said. “Local people tend to know how to execute a little bit better, just because they’ve been in (the market) and they know the environment and know what they’re dealing with.”
Detroit hotels were slow to recover from the effects of the COVID-19 pandemic on business, conventions and leisure travel, but finally saw their occupancy levels rebound last summer.
Several new hotel projects are underway in Detroit, including a future 227-room Godfrey Hotel in Corktown, a 118-room extended-stay ROOST Apartment Hotel and 158-room Cambria Hotel, both in downtown, and a 225room ultra-luxury Edition Hotel in Gilbert’s Hudson’s site skyscraper that also is under construction in downtown.
While there has yet to be an official announcement for the Edition Hotel, a ground lease and 25-year management agreement between Bedrock and an Edition Hotel corporate entity were signed in May, according to copies of the documents.