Lakewood's Car Dealerships Are Turning Into Luxury Apartments. But Will It Work?

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Until the first decade of this century, Detroit Avenue in Lakewood had a half-dozen car dealerships along it. Today, they’re all gone after having closed or moved to exurban highway interchanges.

One by one, they’re all being repurposed, primarily by new housing developments but with a few commercial uses sprinkled in. The goal is to keep those relatively large sites productive in a dense first-ring suburb where household sizes have shrunk since the 1970s.

But that only works if the new developments replacing those car dealerships fill up with tenants. The latest dealership to be traded in for a new use is the former Steve Barry Buick site. So how is this latest development, Westline, 16000 Detroit Ave., doing?

The first residents moved in April 25 and, as of June 8, the four-story, two-building Westline was 34 percent leased with the property 19 percent occupied. And it should noted that not all units, notably in the south building, are available for occupancy yet.

It’s generally considered in real estate circles that a successful lease-up of a new property hits 90 percent after a year or two, depending on the market. After that, a property is considered stabilized. So there’s still a lot of time left for its success to be determined.

“We’re pleased with how it’s going at this early stage,” said Bobby Krueger, president of The Krueger Group, a real estate development firm that joined forces with NewBrook Partners to deliver the Westline. Both companies are based in Rocky River.

The result is a $30.5 million, 124-unit, market-rate apartment complex with a 66-unit building on the north side of Detroit and a 58-unit building on the south side. The north-side building also has a 2,000-square-foot ground-floor commercial space available for lease.

“Westline — there was a lot of thought that went into it,” Krueger said of the development’s name. “West Lakewood, the shoreline of Lake Erie — so that is where we came up with Westline.”

More development is coming to the old Steve Barry Buick site. Next month, Krueger said construction will start on a new Huntington Bank Branch at the southwest corner of Detroit and Orchard Grove avenues.

The half-acre site was sold last year to Huntington by the development partnership, organized as Lakewood Detroit LLC, for $1.65 million, county records show. That was part of the 2.7-acre swath of five parcels the partnership bought in 2023 for $2.6 million, or $481,000 per half-acre.

That southwest corner of Detroit and Orchard Grove is where Barry Buick’s Service and Collision Center stood. To the east, on the south side of Detroit, was the dealership’s used-car lot. The dealership closed in 2018 after 62 years in business.

In addition to the dealership, several other structures were demolished for Westline — the former Bobby O’s Place, a bar built in 1915 at 16013 Detroit. Plus, two houses on Rosewood Avenue were razed for the development and its 146 parking spaces, divided roughly equally among the two buildings.

Included in the parking-space count are 15 “tuck-under” spots which are essentially garage spaces on the buildings’ ground floors. Those, plus the private entrances for select first-floor units, give sections of Westline the intentional appearance of townhouses.

Those first-floor units have 12-foot-high ceilings — an simple structural extension of the high ceilings offered in the buildings’ lobbies and amenity spaces, Krueger explained.

Most of Westline’s amenity spaces — leasing office, fitness center, bike parking, resident lounge — are located in the north building. The developers worked with the city to get a signaled crosswalk across Detroit added between the two buildings.

Both buildings have comfortable lobbies and mail rooms plus premium residential units with upgraded finishes and access to the tuck-under parking spaces. In the north building, they’re called The Maisonette Collection; in the south building they’re the The Avenue Collection.

Those premium units come with a premium price — about $3 per square foot. But for the other apartments, most are available for about $2.70 to $2.80 per square foot including the corner and top-floor units, some of which offer views of Lake Erie.

The buildings are secured by Schlage access systems. All units have key fob entry, in-suite laundry washers and driers, hot water heaters and LG-brand appliances.

Sizes of the one-bedroom units can vary widely, from 585 to 884 square feet. They have one bathroom each. The two-bedroom apartments range from 941 to 1,117 square feet with two bathrooms in each.

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