Is 'Coming Soon' sign at blighted Detroit hospital real or just a tease?

Could a blighted and hollowed-out Detroit hospital be the city's next hot redevelopment?

The answer depends on how seriously one considers a new sign outside the old Southwest Detroit Hospital, a 1970s stainless-steel-clad structure that has been vacant for more than a decade and was once covered in graffiti.

The sign features a rendering that depicts the building, 2401 20th St., as fully renovated and teeming with new businesses and restaurants, including a second Niki's Pizza shop. It reads: "Mixed-use development — coming soon 2020"

The property is at the edge of the fast-revitalizing Corktown neighborhood and not far from the empty Michigan Central Station, which could be the centerpiece of a possible new Detroit campus for Ford Motor.

The Free Press attempted to reach owners of the abandoned hospital for details about the sign and any future project. Property records show that well-known Detroit landlord Dennis Kefallinos has been paying the hospital site's taxes for the past two years.

Detroit businessman Harley Brown, who said he is a member of the hospital's ownership group, described the sign as more of a future vision for the site than a definite plan.

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"There probably will be a project by 2020 ... we'll probably do condos in there," Brown said in a brief phone interview this week.

However, he said it is too early to publicly discuss any more details about the redevelopment.

"There's a developer coming in and they don't want any stories on it yet," he said.

Brown did say that Kefallinos is also in the property's ownership group. Kefallinos owns numerous commercial and residential buildings across the city, including the Russell Industrial Center.

An article last summer in Crain's Detroit identified the old hospital as one of 30 properties that Kefallinos was actively seeking to sell or lease.

A woman at the front counter for Kefallinos' firm, Boydell Development, declined to answer questions this week about the hospital and the "coming soon" sign.

"We don't have a comment right now because they're still in the works," said the woman, who wouldn't give her name.

The sign depicts a new Niki's Pizza as one of several future tenants in the redeveloped hospital building. Kefallinos' firm is the parent company of Niki's Pizza in Greektown. A representative for the firm also declined to comment on whether the pizza shop plans to go into the redevelopment.

Southwest Detroit Hospital opened in 1974 as a merger of four small neighborhood hospitals that had been mostly oriented toward the city's black residents.

The five-story hospital, notable for its silver, space-age exterior with porthole side windows, fell into bankruptcy in 1991 and was ordered closed that December.

In 1996, Brown bought the empty hospital for $1.5 million. Despite various announced plans over the years to sell or reuse the building, it never reopened as a hospital, although it did house some health care-related businesses, including the Ultimed HMO of Michigan that Brown operated.

The hospital has been completely vacant since 2007. Brown previously told the Free Press that it fell prey to vandals around 2009 once he ran out of money for security.

Trespasser photos of the hospital's rubbish-strewn interior have appeared on the Internet, including claims that stacks of patient records were left behind and were free for the taking.

More recently, city officials in 2015 required Brown to clean up the interior debris, pump out its flooded basement and cover the building's extensive graffiti — including a giant "Purge Suey" tag that was visible to motorists on I-75, I-96 and Michigan Avenue.

Today, the hospital is behind a chain-link fence and its second floor appears completely hollowed out. There was one workman at the site on Friday morning, chipping away with tools at the building's exterior.

Contact JC Reindl: 313-222-6631 or jcreindl@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @JCReindl.