Excerpts from Howes’ column:
Where there used to be dingy old buildings and blight, there are new dorms. Where few places to eat, drink and buy books could be found, there are now Einstein’s Bagels, a Jimmy John’s sandwich shop, the obligatory Starbucks and a Barnes & Noble bookstore that caters to both students and the public. Others are coming.
And if President Irvin D. Reid gets his way, a prominent new addition to the growing collection of new businesses on the edge of Michigan’s largest urban university will be a 200-room upscale hotel and conference center at the southwest corner of Woodward and Warren.
“The idea is to bring more people into Midtown,” Reid told me Tuesday. “Every facility we build on this campus has a retail element. That’s the strategy.”
Reid is meeting with as many as four would-be hotel development companies warming to his vision of a hotel and conference center fed by the university community and visitors to Detroit’s two large medical complexes nearby — Detroit Medical Center and Henry Ford Hospital.
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