The long-awaited but long-delayed renewal of Royal Oak’s landmark shopping center on Woodward Avenue at 13 Mile has blown well past its time line — again.

The $33-million center won't be done by the end of this year as planned because construction is far from done on the complete replacement of the former Northwood Shopping Center.

A new completion date for at least most of the center is pegged at roughly a year from now, said a spokesman for Beaumont Health System, owner of the property, which sits adjacent to the Beaumont Hospital campus in Royal Oak. The construction site had experienced delays in the planning and demolition stages going back years.

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The 16-acre plan still calls for a hotel, stores and restaurants, although no opening dates for individual businesses are available, according to Robert Ortlieb, senior media relations coordinator for Beaumont. Construction workers are making steady progress at the site amid a building boom in metro Detroit that is slowing work on many projects, Ortlieb said.

Judging by announcements of the new center’s planned tenants, the first businesses expected to open are a Wahlburgers restaurant (with actor Mark Wahlberg as an investor); a Grabbagreen franchise serving fast food that’s healthful (co-founded “by two moms” in Phoenix according to its website), and a branch of Detroit-based New Order Coffee. Another key feature that could open soon, judging by prominent postings on fencing surrounding the construction site? A Beaumont Health urgent-care clinic.

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The delays have a longtime Northwood shopper more than eager to resume visiting the location once it reopens as Woodward Corners by Beaumont. Royal Oak City Commissioner Patricia Paruch said she expects to be thrilled by the new complex of shops and restaurants.

Paruch said she began shopping at Northwood soon after she and her husband moved nearby with their first daughter, then 2, in 1975. As a young mother, Paruch recalled shopping at a JCPenney store, a Cunningham drugstore and other retail names from metro Detroit’s past. The JCPenney later became a branch of Dunham’s sporting goods, then a Staples office supply, Paruch said.

The old Northwood Shopping Center, bulldozed into oblivion along with more than two dozen surrounding row houses also owned by Beaumont, dated to the 1950s. A large Kroger had been the anchor tenant for decades. Would a similar supermarket return? Paruch said perhaps not. Beaumont officials, in planning sessions, hinted that the new center will likely have a scaled-down grocer, “like a Trader Joe’s,” she said.

The new center's plans call for a five-story hotel that's to have 100 to 120 rooms, and that is unchanged so far as Royal Oak officials know, Paruch said. But Woodward Corners by Beaumont was planned to be built in phases, "and we heard that the hotel was going to be the last phase," Paruch said.

Whatever opens there, residents living nearby may be drawn by the center’s anticipated visual appeal, from lavish architecture to walking paths studded with landscaping.

In Royal Oak, the focus often is on the downtown, while the importance of Woodward Avenue is understated, Mayor Mike Fournier said.

"I just think we have a lot of exciting changes on Woodward too," Fournier said. Royal Oak has the most frontage on Woodward Avenue of any city other than Detroit, and the choices for dining and shopping along M-1 are constantly expanding, he said.

"Woodward Corners is playing a big role in that — well, it will after it opens, of course," Fournier said with a chuckle.

Contact: blaitner@freepress.com