Les restaurants réinvestissent la ville

Detroit continue d’attirer des capitaux. Le retour d’industries majeures mais aussi l’implantation de jeunes pousses incitent les sociétés évoluant dans les services à investir massivement à Detroit. C’est au tour de la chaîne de restaurant Woodpile BBQ Shack de se positionner au cœur de Detroit.

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Woodpile BBQ Shack to open in Baltimore Station project in New Center

Work on Detroit redevelopment on Woodward to start next month

 By Annalise Frank 

Woodpile BBQ Shack in Clawson will open its second Texas-style barbecue joint in a $7.5 million redevelopment in Detroit's New Center neighborhood, real estate developer The Platform LLC announced Sunday. 

The Platform, based in Detroit, will start construction next month on Baltimore Station, which will house the 2,000-square-foot Woodpile location at 6402 Woodward Ave. south of Grand Boulevard. 

Depending on build-out, Woodpile could open in January or February 2018, said Scott Moloney, a co-owner of the barbecue restaurant. 

Woodpile BBQ Shack opened its original fast-casual restaurant in Clawson in December 2015. Most of its barbecue classics are offered up within five minutes, in a concept settled somewhere between fast food and formal dining.

 Four partners own Woodpile: Moloney, who also owns Ferndale-based Treat Dreams; Zac Idzikowski; his father, Tim Idzikowski; and Brandon Hannish. Moloney is also a partner in the new Atomic Chicken to open in New Center. 

"Any time you can bring a destination restaurant like this to your neighborhood is proof that things have turned around and that The Platform's efforts are already making a real difference," Dietrich Knoer, co-principal of The Platform along with Peter Cummings, said in a news release. 

Colliers commercial leasing agents Ben Hubert and Benji Rosenzweig represented The Platform in the deal. 

Woodpile hasn't officially chosen who will work on its space. Baltimore Station is working with general contractor Jenkins Construction Inc. and architect Archive Design Studio, both based in Detroit. 

Baltimore Station progress 

Renovation on Baltimore Station as a whole is expected to finish around the end of the year, said Dang Duong, one of the University of Michigan graduates who originally conceived the Baltimore Station idea as a project for a UM Ross School of Business class taught by Ann Arbor developer Peter Allen. 

Duong and the other two former students, Clarke Lewis and Myles Hamby, are part owners in Baltimore Station along with Allen and his son Doug Allen under the company BE Partners LLC. The three graduates also work as development managers for The Platform, which is a co-owner as well as the developer. 

Baltimore Station is the named redevelopment of two long-vacant buildings in New Center at 6402 and 6408 Woodward Ave., with 8,000 total square feet of ground floor retail space and 23 apartments on the second and third floors. 

After The Platform signed on, the project was expected to cost $40 million, but it was scaled down to $7.5 million due to a lack of parking space for the planned residential units, Duong said. 

Names of other potential retail tenants and the cost of the Woodpile lease were not released. 

The development is a few blocks from The Platform's Fisher and Albert Kahn buildings. The developer is also in the process of constructing a 231-unit mixed-use site called Third and Grand, next to the Fisher Building. Other projects in TechTown and Milwaukee Junction are also underway.

Another Texas-style barbecue brand in metro Detroit, Lockhart's BBQ, plans to open fast-casual 10-30 dining spots called Lockhart's BBQ Shacks in the next year to 14 months. Lockhart's runs two sit-down restaurants, the original in Royal Oak and a second in Lake Orion.

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