DETROIT – If you’ve driven down West Grand Boulevard, you’ve seen it. Honestly, you can’t miss it.
It’s Lee Plaza, a 16-story abandoned hotel that has stood empty since it closed in 1997, casting a dark and deteriorating shadow over Northwestern High School.
However, instead of demolishing it, Tuesday (May 13) marked the official start of the renovation.
“For 30 years, everybody coming in and out, 96 saw this building in the skyline with the roof that you can see is not there, and the easy thing was to knock it down and hope they forget,” Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan said during the event on Tuesday. “But we said, but what would happen if you renovated, you made that a part of the permanent skyline.”
Lee Plaza first opened as a luxury hotel in 1928 and was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1981.
It has undergone a number of changes, ranging from a hotel to an apartment building in the 1950s to a senior living home, all the while falling into further disrepair before it was closed 28 years ago.
David Dirita runs the Roxbury Group, which, along with ethos development partners, bought the property 6 years ago and has been leading the restoration.
Dirita sees the building as similar to the Michigan Central train station and the Westin Book Cadillac Detroit.
Delays plagued the project, but it has now officially begun. While the walls are currently covered by graffiti, the vision is that Lee Plaza will become the latest Detroit comeback story.
“Today, we’re starting the restoration of Detroit’s last vacant high rise, and that’s an incredible thing to say,” said Dirita while standing inside the building prior to the event. “I grew up in the 1960s and 70s. I was here when the lights went out in the ’80s and ’90s.”
Duggan said the plans for Lee Plaza include 117 affordable senior housing units, for as little as $450 per month, as part of nearly 200 livable units in the building.
The plan is for Lee Plaza to reopen to the public by the fall of 2026.