Shinola Polishes Brand with 'Living Room of Detroit'

About eight years ago, Texas venture capitalist Tom Kartsotis sought to help a bedraggled Detroit shed its image as a rotting Midwest city by putting a luxury wristwatch factory there.

Shinola Detroit opened in Motor City’s downtown in 2012 and has become a major luxury brand. It quickly expanded beyond watches into leather goods, bicycles, turntables and other electronics.

Kartsotis has done it by building a brand that blends the past with the present, using a nostalgic name of a popular shoe polish in the early 20th Century and a “built in Detroit” attitude infused with grit of a city suffering from the loss of auto manufacturing.

Now, he’s burnishing the Shinola brand with a 129-room hotel at the corner of Woodward and Grand Avenues in the heart of downtown Detroit. It occupies two historic buildings on a block that includes new buildings that look old. The exterior carries the Shinola name, and the interior décor includes the company’s products. Guests can buy many of the products found in the rooms at a small Shinola retail shop on the block, online or at the company's flagship store a few minutes away in midtown.

The hotel is about five miles from the factory, which occupies a floor in building that once housed the General Motors Research Laboratory. It's across the street from Cadillac Place, GM's former long-time headquarters.

Shinola is not the first time Kartsotis has built a successful brand. He founded wristwatch and fashion accessories company Fossil in 1984 and built it into a $2 billion company before leaving in 2010. But he didn’t do a Fossil hotel.

The Shinola hotel serves as the centerpiece of a block developer Bedrock Detroit refurbished in partnership with Shinola. It didn’t happen overnight. Brett Yuhasz, senior project manager with Bedrock Detroit, said conversations began four to five years ago to bring “world-class lodging to Detroit.” The project started small and then grew. “It was a very dynamic project,” Yuhasz said.

No one would disclose the cost. But it clearly was a lot. “They’re invested long term in the site, the hotel and brand,” Brian Rebain, principal in Detroit architectural firm KraemerDesignGroup and architect of record for the project.

For Detroit, the project is yet another piece of revitalization of the city’s core that had emptied out in the wake of auto manufacturing disappearing. There was no money to tear down buildings, Rebain said.

But historic districts began forming over time to ensure as many buildings were saved as possible. Rebain said historic tax credits provided a strong financial incentive to keep them in addition to people's interest in preservation. “You can’t escape history,” he said.

Shinola and Bedrock took advantage of those credits to make the hotel happen. In all, the entire redevelopment includes five buildings, two old and three new. The new includes additional retail space on the block.

Rebain said the design and construction required a lot of detailed coordination so guests crossing from one building to the next inside “feel like experiences.” The connections between buildings were completely customized.

There were a lot of design requirements since the block sits in an historic district. With the new, Rebain said the exteriors had to make the buildings look like they belonged there. “We had to balance the new and old,” he said. “We probably had three to four versions of black brick to get exactly the black brick we wanted.”

Another challenge involved moving a steam pipe and vent. A steam power plant once stood on the block behind the old buildings. The plant had been long gone but the pipe still existed and pumped out steam.

Rebain said the vent was rerouted so the steam now rises up through a chimney in one of the buildings. “I actually find it kind of iconic,” he said.

One of the historic buildings, the main one at the corner, had been a department store with a jewelry store on the ground floor. The other had been occupied by Singer, the sewing machine company. Rebain said the building in between was replaced with one that drew design inspiration from what the previous building had looked like in the 1920s.

A conservatory extends on the back side of the hotel on top of retail space containing a beer hall named The Brakeman. It didn’t start out that way, Rebain said. The city deemed the terrace to big. So a big part of the area became a large useful area under glass and the rest of the terrace will be heavily landscaped. “It can be set up for all sorts of uses,” he said.

Inside the hotel, Rebain said the interior designed by New York firm Gachot Studios is meant to make guests feel like it’s an extension of their own home. The lobby has been dubbed “the living room of Detroit”.

But the interior is supposed also give the feel of being in a place where touring musicians would hang out, playing on the Detroit’s rich and varied musical culture. An eclectic mix of art fills the walls in the public spaces. “Hotels are home for musicians,” Rebain said, and the furnishings are comfortable places to lounge.

Detroit isn’t only known for Motown, but also jazz, punk, garage rock, techno and pop (Iggy Pop, Madonna, Bob Seger, Alice Cooper, Kid Rock, The White Stripes). Record players are in 30 to 40 of the rooms. And guests have a selection of vinyl records that fit the aura of the hotel and Detroit.

Those record players are for sale. They sell for $2,500 and the accompanying bookshelf Bluetooth speakers can set you back another $1,500. The analog desk clock in the rooms – may run from $295 to $450.

Other rooms have Bluetooth speakers that guests can use their mobile devices. In the public spaces, music has been specifically programmed with Detroit’s heritage in mind.

A portion of the hotel opened for the North American International Auto Show in January, one of the most prominent shows in the world. Now all rooms are open. Bedrock’s Yuhasz said the retail space is nearly filled with tenants, mostly locally-owned businesses.

Rebain said the project on a whole was quite unique with the challenges in redevelopment. “We’ll probably never do it again.”

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