Developer plans to build new hotel in downtown Grosse Pointe

Not many places in downtown Grosse Point can claim views of Lake St. Clair, but developer John Palffy says his proposed hotel will have them.

Palffy wants to build the second of the emerging City Flats Hotel chain in Grosse Pointe's Central Business District across Notre Dame Street from the new Trader Joe's. The original City Flats, a boutique hotel, is in Kalamazoo and has enjoyed significant success. Palffy thinks the same will be true for the 5-story hotel in downtown Grosse Pointe.

He points out that there isn’t a hotel in the affluent suburb and the closest options are big hotels in downtown Detroit or lower end motels in the suburbs farther north. That leaves a unique opening for a small hotel of about 50-60 rooms, like the one Palffy wants to build.

"For many, many years Grosse Pointers have needed a hotel," Palffy says.

The hotel is proposed to be built on part of the surface parking lot behind the Starbucks on Kercheval Avenue. It will have a nationally recognized spa on the ground floor (Palffy declined to name it yet), hotel rooms on the second, third and fourth floors and a restaurant overlooking Lake St. Clair on the fifth floor.

A 5-story parking deck is planned to be built next to the hotel to service it and the rest of downtown. The luxury condo development proposed by Morningside is also slated to be built nearby.

Palffy and his partners are still hammering out the details of the development and expect to have more concrete plans (and renderings) later this year. He hopes to break ground by late this winter or early spring and start hosting guests by Easter of 2010.

Source: John Palffy, developer of the City Flats Hotel in Grosse Pointe
Writer: Jon Zemke

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Developer plans to build new hotel in downtown Grosse Pointe

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