By JC Reindl
Detroit Free Press
DETROIT (AP) - One year after reopening, the Detroit Club is slowly rebuilding its membership up from zero and has opened much of its clubhouse to the general public, including new cocktail and cigar bars, the dining room, a spa and upscale hotel suites.
The Detroit Club now has about 100 dues-paying members and has added about 10 members each month since March 2018, when the first of its new memberships were approved, according to club Membership Director Lena Angott.
The occupancy rate for the club's 10 hotel suites - available to members and nonmembers for roughly $250 to $450 a night - is said to average about 80 percent occupancy and the new cigar-smoking bar is proving especially popular on weekends.
In a break from old club tradition, nonmembers are now allowed to use many of the building's updated amenities. Only the second and third-floor meeting and banquet rooms are reserved for members and members' guests, although more of the clubhouse could be cordoned off in the future if it starts to get crowded.
"This is our first full year that the whole property will be fully open, and I think it's going to be a really exciting year," Matthew Peterson, club director of operations, said to the Detroit Free Press. "I know our owners are very happy with where we're at."
The Detroit Club's membership was once composed of the city's business and political elite. The club was started in 1882 in rented space and opened in the Cass and Fort Street clubhouse in 1892.
Numerous visiting dignitaries were entertained in the clubhouse, including Presidents Franklin Roosevelt, Harry Truman and Gerald Ford.
The club's membership peaked at about 1,000 members in the 1950s.
But following years of membership decline and financial struggles, including the desperate 1979 sale of an original Frederic Remington painting for $500,000 that years later went for $5.6 million, the club closed in 2014.
The four-story building's then-new owners, Emre and Lynn Uralli, after failing to sell the clubhouse at auction, went on to spend millions of dollars renovating it and reopened the club last year with additional amenities, including the lower-level spa and gym and the hotel suites.
The upgrades continued into last fall with an enlarged dining room and new bar in the club's library, near the framed replica of the sold-off Remington.
A few of the old members have even joined the reborn club, Angott said.
"There are a few of them realizing this was not a bad thing. They see the building, they see how alive it's becoming," she said. "Especially in private clubs, there are always those people that are hesitant to change and just want to keep it the way it was forever, which you can't do if you want to survive."
The Detroit Club's three cocktail bars and many of its new amenities are open to nonmembers, including the hotel suites, a cigar bar and the main dining room, which is open for lunch and dinner with brunch hours beginning on Sunday.
Peterson said they are pleased so far with the membership growth and number of club visitors.
But he acknowledged that the club continues to face challenges on those fronts because the clubhouse had been private for so many years.
"People still come in almost daily and say, 'I never knew this was here,'" he said.
Some of the new members had been on the waiting list for membership at the DAC, which is also downtown and is no longer affiliated with the Detroit Club, Angott said.
The members generally like the Detroit Club's business-casual dress code, which, unlike that at the stricter DAC, permits both sexes to wear denim and does not mandate that men wear blazers or sports jackets in the dining room.
"A lot of our members spoke about being downtown and going to sporting events or just entertaining and wanting to show off the (DAC), and not allowing denim turned a lot of people away," Peterson said.
A DAC manager did not return a message seeking comment.
A Detroit Club membership provides discounts on clubhouse amenities and is also less expensive than a full membership at the DAC, which features extensive athletic facilities.
A membership to the Detroit Club for those 35 years and older is $275 per month, plus a $3,500 initiation fee. There are various discounted rates for younger members, such as $125 per month with a $700 fee for those under 26.
Detroit Club membership is generally open to anyone, but there is an application and review process.
There is a nine-person membership approval board composed of five club members, two club directors and the two owners. The board members conduct votes and do not approve every application, Angott said.
"We want a member to add value and diversity to the membership," she said. An ideal member "is someone who adds to the city and wants to be a part of it."
Michael Leydet, 53, joined the Detroit Club in September after learning about the club's reopening from one of his neighbors in St. Clair Shores. An engineering manager, Leydet said he visits the club once or twice a week and regularly uses the clubhouse spa and gym.
"It's a nice smaller club and you can get to know people pretty quickly," said Leydet, who also enjoys the old yet newly renovated building. "They have done a great job of providing modern amenities while also preserving a lot of the historic elements."
Leydet said he also likes the club's dress code for not being overly strict.
"You want to look nice when you go there, but you don't want to have to go out of your way sometimes" to dress up, he said.
A Detroit Club membership comes with free valet parking at any time, including use of a little-known underground garage that is beneath the property's surface lot. This perk is becoming more valuable as downtown parking rates continue to climb and exceed $200 per month in some garages.
The Detroit Club also has reciprocal membership agreements through International Associate Clubs, which allows members to visit various city clubs throughout the country and world.
The clubhouse is still connected to the old 1925 Detroit Free Press building by a walkway, now filled by the club's new cigar bar. The doorway between the two buildings is covered up.
Dan Gilbert's Bedrock real estate firm is presently redeveloping the Free Press building to be a residential tower with ground-floor retail space. The project is expected to finish next year.
"As soon as that gets done, I want to see if we can reopen the door," Angott said.
Published: Thu, Feb 28, 2019
