Dan Gilbert's Bedrock LLC plans to tear down a 30,000-square-foot community center along Washington Boulevard to make room for a new parking deck, according to the agenda for a Detroit Historic District Commission meeting Wednesday.

The community center, which was part of Gilbert's 2015 deal to purchase the Book Tower and Book Building immediately north of it, is expected to be replaced with a more than 500-space parking structure with 12 floors of parking and two floors of retail, according to Gabrielle Poshadlo, the senior communications manager for Bedrock who stressed that the deck size is preliminary.

There is no timeframe for the deck's construction at this point, she said.

Gilbert bought the Book Tower, Book Building and community center in a portfolio deal with Milan, Italy-based Akno Enterprises in August 2015 for just more than $25 million, according to city records. The tower is an Italian Renaissance-style skyscraper looming over downtown with an aged copper roof and ornate details designed by architect Louis Kamper.

A redevelopment of the Book Tower, which opened in 1926, and Book Building, which opened in 1917, is expected to cost hundreds of millions of dollars.

Detroit-based Kraemer Design Group, Cleveland-based MCM Co. Inc., Ann Arbor-based Walker Restoration Consultants and Ram Construction Services Inc. have all done work on the project so far.

Facade work is expected to continue through next year, Poshadlo said.

The community center opened in 1929, Poshadlo said. While it is a contributing building in the Washington Boulevard Historic District, it is not considered a character-defining feature of the Book Tower and Book Building redevelopment, according to Brian Rebain, principal for the Kraemer Design Group architecture firm, which is working on the project. The demolition proposal is the subject of a public hearing during the HDC meeting scheduled for Wednesday, September 13 at 5:30 p.m. in the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center.

It was constructed on the site of what at the time had been planned to be a second Book tower on the block, but was never built.

The district was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1982, according to the Detroit Historical Society.