This summer will be last call for the small businesses inside downtown Detroit’s Millender Center.
Bedrock, which owns portions of the large 1980s apartments, hotel and retail complex, has been telling commercial tenants in there to vacate by the end of August, according to multiple owners and managers of the affected businesses.
Owners also said they heard skywalks connected to the center could be removed: one that crosses Jefferson Avenue and connects to the Renaissance Center, the other that crosses Randolph Street and connects to the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center.
Bedrock did not respond to a Free Press inquiry for this story on Tuesday, May 26.
Dan Gilbert’s real estate and development firm acquired the Millender Center’s retail space two years ago from General Motors, after having previously acquired the Millender Center’s Courtyard by Marriott hotel from GM in 2019. Shortly before the 2024 retail space acquisition, Bedrock and GM began working together on a future plan for redeveloping the Renaissance Center.
The IHOP/Applebee’s restaurant in the Millender Center will remain open, employees there said, as will the center’s 338-unit apartment tower — The Millie on Brush — that was previously called Renaissance City Club Apartments and isn’t owned by Bedrock or GM.
The Millender Center, 333 E. Jefferson Ave., opened in 1985 and was developed by what was then Forest City Dillon Inc. It is named for the late Detroit attorney Robert Millender Sr. In 2010, Forest City sold the complex’s hotel, commercial spaces and what was then its 1,850-space parking garage to a GM affiliate.
The Millender Center also has a People Mover station and was once home to dozen or so small businesses that were scattered throughout its first and second floors.
But foot traffic has dwindled in recent years and only five or six businesses still remain, including a party store, a jewelry store, Birmingham Deli and The Christian Science Reading Room.
The building’s escalators haven’t functioned for more than a year, and this week only one of the three public elevators was operating.
One longtime Millender Center tenant who hopes to relocate later this summer is Ashley’s Flowers, located on the ground-floor lobby next to the bank of broken escalators.
Owner Ashley Alexander said her flower shop has been in the center for 37 years and is now on a month-to-month lease. About three weeks ago, she said, Bedrock notified her and other tenants that they need to leave by the end of August.
Alexander said she has started looking for a new location for her flower shop, but has yet to find one. About 75% of her customers find her through the Internet, she said, so the post-pandemic drop in foot traffic throughout the Millender Center was not devastating for her. (GM moved its global headquarters from the Renaissance Center to Bedrock’s new Hudson’s site development earlier this year.)
“This has become an isolated corner, especially after COVID,” she said. “This has all become real isolated.”
Alexander said that neither GM nor Bedrock did much in terms of upgrades to the building.
“They didn’t do anything for us,” she said, “but then, they didn’t do anything to us.”
Kosta Vrahnos owns Costa D’Oro Jewelry on the second floor, near the skywalk to the RenCen. He said his business has been in the Millender Center for 32 years and he is also looking for a new location for when he has to leave.
“I have a lot of customers, clientele down here who have been good to me,” he said. “I love Detroit and that’s why I’ve stuck around. I’ve just got to see what my next chapter is going to be.”
Contact JC Reindl: 313-378-5460 or jcreindl@freepress.com. Follow him on X @jcreindl
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Millender Center’s businesses say they have deadline to leave
Reporting by JC Reindl, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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