Olympia announces $25M renovation of Women’s City Club building downtown

Olympia Development of Michigan, owned by the Ilitch family, has announced that it will redevelop the historic Women’s City Club Building at 2110 Park Avenue downtown for $25 million.

Spaces, a global coworking company and subsidiary of Switzerland-based IWG plc, will lease approximately 47,000 square feet of the six-story building. It has offices in over 250 cities worldwide. The building will also have 10,000 square feet of ground floor retail.

Olympia declined to release any information about when the building might open or rates for coworking memberships. Principal architect on the redevelopment is Kraemer Design Group.

Opened in 1924, the Women’s City Club was designed by William B. Stratton, husband of Pewabic Pottery co-founder Mary Chase Perry Stratton. It has a number of Arts and Crafts details inside and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1979.

The Ilitches, much maligned for their lack of development in the so-called District Detroit, bought Women’s City Club building in 2017 for $5.85 million.

Though the family still owns numerous vacant buildings and surface parking lots in the area, activity has picked up somewhat of late. Olympia broke ground on a $70 million office and sports medicine building, began work on the long-vacant Eddystone Hotel, and welcomed the Cuban burger restaurant Frita Batidos into its Columbia Street promenade.

Olympia has released the development rights for the United Artists Building to Bagley Development, which is planning a $56 million redevelopment but also to demolish the historic theatre designed by C. Howard Crane.