Matt Helms

Detroit Free Press

Restaurant facility will be restored by owners of Clarkston Union and Vinsetta Garage.

Developers will build 150 new multifamily housing units on adjacent land.

The old Brewster Wheeler rec center will be reborn as a restaurant that preserves pieces of the center's history as $37 million in new residential and retail rises nearby, officials and developers said this afternoon.

The rec center where legendary boxer Joe Louis trained will feature a restaurant with a rooftop beer garden, a basement bar, event space and offices for groups including the Detroit City Chess Club, Alternatives for Girls, and the Slow Roll, the weekly Detroit bike ride group.

The center will be redeveloped, with an expected investment of up to $15 million, by a group of investors that includes KC Crain of Crain Communications, and Curt Catallo, the owner of restaurants including the Clarkston Union and Vinsetta Garage in Berkley.

Meanwhile, developers John Rhea and the Schostak Brothers & Co. will build 150 units of residential multiuse housing along with retail and community space just to the south of the center adjacent to I-75 just north of downtown. Detroit-based Jenkins Construction will be the contractor on both jobs, Mayor Mike Duggan said at a news conference outside the historic center.

"A building that's been vacant for 10 years that everybody had given up on is now going to be reborn for another generation of Detroiters," Duggan said.

The rec center near the Brewster Douglass public housing complex — that was home to some Motown stars — had been vacant for nearly a decade, closed by the city amid depopulation of the Brush Park neighborhood, lack of use and city budget cuts. It was slated for demolition until the Duggan administration said it could be saved if the right developers came forward and were willing to preserve some of the cultural heritage the facility represented to African-American Detroiters.

The restaurant facility will do just that, with the main restaurant on the old basketball court and materials including remnants of the boxing ring preserved, Catallo said, noting that his restaurants have gone up in a renovated church in downtown Clarkston and a former auto repair garage on Woodward in Berkley. The Brewster Wheeler rec center was renamed in 1969 in honor of Leon Wheeler, the city's first recreation department worker who later ran the center.

"Nowhere in our travels have we encountered a building that is so worthy of restoration," Catallo said "The bones of this building have soul. The bones of this building were built to service the community. ... What it stood for for the city is immeasurable."

The multistory housing and retail complex will be built on land that used to house the Brewster Douglass projects. Duggan said the cost of that project is estimated at $37 million.

Both the restaurant and the residential-retail projects will be privately financed, Duggan said. Developers agreed to reserve 20% of the housing for low-income people.

For both projects, at least 30% of the cost of construction will be awarded to Detroit contractors, with 51% of jobs reserved for Detroit residents. The restaurant facility also will be required to initially hire 40% of its workers from Detroit, rising to 70% within four years.

The restaurant building will provide office space to Slow Roll and space for the chess club, and it will offer culinary training to young people through Alternatives for Girls, the city said.

Details including the market-based sale price of the city-owned land will be released within 60 days as the city finalizes terms of the deal, Duggan said. It will then go before the City Council for its approval.

Councilwoman Mary Sheffield, who represents the city's 5th District, which includes the Brush Park neighborhood, credited citizen activists including Donyetta Hill with raising the issue of preserving the facility, which also hosted Harlem Globetrotters games.

Duggan said the project will mark the first redevelopment in a wave that will move west toward Woodward through Brush Park, which is adjacent to the city's booming Midtown area.

Duggan said he expects construction to begin by the end of the year on the restaurant, with an opening in 2016. He said construction on the residential and retail project will begin in 2016 and open the following year.

Contact Matt Helms: 313-222-1450 or mhelms@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter: @matthelms.