DETROIT - While we're at it, how about renovating the Pick-Fort-Shelby Hotel, too?

As witnessed by the Book-Cadillac, financing deals for old and decrepit hotel properties are chancey. But in February, a Chicago real estate and development firm announced that it intends to redevelop the empty hotel at Lafayette and First streets.

If the announced $76 million renovation takes place, the 22-story Fort Shelby Hotel and Conference Center will include: a 204-room hotel, apartments, and about 30,000 square feet of convention space.

According to developer RSC and Associates, there will be 62 one-to-three bedroom apartments on floors 11-21 and one 2,272 square foot penthouse on the 22nd floor with a private terrace. The hotel portion of the project, to be managed by Doubletree Guest Suites, includes approximately 243,200 gross square feet with 204 guestrooms, plus 2,347 square feet of new space for back-of-house uses.

Rich Curto, principal of RSC & Associates LLC, a real estate investment and development firm in Chicago, told the Detroit News, "we plan to be a strong competitor in downtown Detroit."

Michigan Building and Construction Trades Council CEO Patrick Devlin said like the Book-Cadillac renovation, a union-only project labor agreement is the works for this project, too.

Named for a fort built on the site, the first 10-story portion of the Fort-Shelby Hotel opened in 1917 with 450 rooms. It was a success, and architect Albert Kahn designed the 22-story wing that was added in 1927, with another 450 rooms.

Not as opulent as the Book-Cadillac or the Detroit Statler, the Fort-Shelby had a
spacious lobby, formal main dining room, a coffee shop, and lobby shops. Additional meeting space was put into place when the tower was built.

"It was the wish of the Fort Shelby Hotel Co.," says the Forgotten Detroit website, "to provide affordable first-class accommodations to the traveling public. With this intent in mind, the location made perfect sense." The hotel was near the Detroit River steamer docks, on a trolley line to the Michigan Central Depot, and near theatres and the city's financial district.

The hotel rode the bust and boom cycles of the Great Depression and the post-World War II years. In 1951, ownership was transferred to Pick Hotels. In the 1960s and 70s, the hotel's interior was remodeled, but its relatively isolated location on the southwestern edge of downtown was no longer a draw for out-of-towners. The Pick-Fort-Shelby closed in 1973. An ill-fated attempt to re-make it into a youth-party hotel failed quickly a year later.

This is the Pick-Fort-Shelby hotel. The 22-story tower in the foreground was built 10 years after the original 10-story hotel was erected in 1917.