Remember that building that had that brouhaha about the giant, 125-foot rainbow mural on the side of it by Katie Craig? Well, it’s seeing new life. And the mural is staying.
The nine-story 75,000 square foot building on East Grand Boulevard near New Center (technically, it’s in the Milwaukee Junction neighborhood) will become a food hall and co-working space called Chroma. It’s being developed by The Platform.
The project should be ready later this year and will cost $16 million.
Let’s talk about the food hall first.
The food hall will be two stories and span 14,000 square feet. It’ll be run by the Florida-based Grandview Public Market. There will be 14 slots, and the idea is that most will be local. That’s pretty sizable compared to some of the other food hall offerings now around town.
The indoor/outdoor mix is a nice touch, if it’s executed like the rendering shows.
If you’re looking to find a space in there, you can email hello@grandviewpublic.com.
On to the co-working.
That’s going to be run by Pittsburgh-based Beauty Shoppe. It’ll be on the 7th and 8th floors and span 15,000 feet. The press materials say they’re “hospitality focused,” so I’m going to take that as a high-touch level of service.
Here’s something interesting from a business point of view.
Chroma is apparently one of the first projects in Detroit to take advantage of new Opportunity Zone rules that took effect last year. This lets investors reduce or even avoid capital gains taxes by investing instead in certain areas. This opens the door to new funding sources for completing projects in cities like Detroit.
As far as being in the fun zone, at first blush, you might think Chroma is near anything. But this is not the case.
I feel like this food hall and that bar will make a good two-stop duo with Kiesling, right down the street. And a third stop? The Detroit Dart Club. All around the block. You could have a whole night out and park or Uber/Lyft once.
