- The Dearborn Planning Commission approved the plan for the property that calls for 258 apartments, 216 hotel rooms and two restaurants.
- Construction is expected to begin soon, with an ambitious goal of completing the project within a year.
The former Dearborn Hyatt is now set to be redeveloped as half hotel rooms, half apartments.
The Dearborn Planning Commission has approved a plan that calls for converting the 18-story hotel building at 600 Town Center Drive — empty since December 2018 — into 258 apartments and 216 hotel rooms. It also envisions two restaurants on the second floor and a lounge on the 16th, which was once the old “Rotunda ballroom” that featured a revolving floor.
The plan, approved by an 8-1 vote Monday night, was put forth by an investor group that is said to have bought the abandoned 773-room hotel property last fall via an online auction. The full identity of the investor group wasn’t immediately clear Tuesday, although the property’s owner of record is “Willowbrook LLC.”
The crescent-shaped hotel was built in the mid-1970s and was once the second-largest hotel in Michigan. It last operated as the Edward Hotel & Convention Center, having lost its Hyatt Regency “flag” in 2012 because of deteriorating quality.
The architect for the newly approved redevelopment plan, Ghassan Abdelnour of Farmington Hills-based GAV & Associates, on Tuesday told the Free Press that the new ownership group hopes to begin the rehab work soon and finish it as quickly as possible.
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“The owner wants to start fast and keep things moving,” Abdelnour said. “If they can open in one year, they’ll be happy.”
Abdelnour said the group has considerable experience owning hotels and apartment properties across the U.S. and its lead investor is a “Mr. Shah.” (He said he didn’t know the investor’s first name.)
The group has yet to determine which brand of hotel will operate the property, but they have talked with Marriott, Hilton and Hyatt Regency, he said.
The housing would be all market-rate apartments, according to Abdelnour, who was unaware of any requests for incentives or tax breaks for financing the project.
The group decided to try a mix of uses for the building, he said, because it’s just too big to operate again entirely as a hotel.
Plan documents show the 216 hotel rooms would be spread across floors three, four and five.
More:10 insane facts about the former Dearborn Hyatt
The apartments would go on floors six through 13, and of the 258 apartments, there would be 154 one-bedroom units, 90 two-bedrooms and 14 studio units. Floor 17 of the building would be storage and floor 18 would be mechanicals, the plan shows.
The investor group isn’t the first to propose putting apartments in the massive building.
The previous owner, a limited liability company linked to New York-based Rhodium Capital Advisors, announced a similar redevelopment plan shortly after buying the property for $18.25 million in October 2021 from the U.S. Marshals. However, that project never materialized, and the owner ultimately defaulted on the property’s mortgage.
Last fall’s online auction appeared to actually be a sale of the property’s nonperforming note with a sheriff’s deed. The winning bid was $5.9 million.
The last owner of the hotel when it was still open was Edward Gong, a Chinese national living in Canada, who bought it for $20 million in 2016.
Later, Gong was arrested by Canadian authorities and accused of masterminding a fraud and money-laundering scheme — allegations that he denied. The hotel then was shut down just before Christmas 2018 by city of Dearborn officials for alleged code violations and maintenance issues.
All criminal charges against Gong eventually were withdrawn and he was never convicted of any offense, according to Canadian news reports.
The U.S. Marshals handled the subsequent sale of the property to Rhodium. The Free Press has had pending Freedom of Information Act requests since 2022 regarding the destination of proceeds from that $18.25 million sale.
Contact JC Reindl: 313-378-5460 or [email protected]. Follow him on X @JCReindl
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