New Corktown restaurant planned for 130-year-old rebuilt barn

Downtown and Midtown Detroit are awash in expensive new buildings, and more are on the way. Dan Gilbert has started construction on an 800-foot tower — costing nearly $1 billion — on the old J.L. Hudson site.

The project Scott Lowell and Carolyn Howard are working on, by comparison, seems quaint and low-tech. Yet they’ve got something most other developers don’t have: a building that is unique, authentic and funky.

Lowell and Howard plan to reassemble a 130-year-old barn on their property at 14th and Dalzelle in Corktown, one block east of Michigan Central Station, and turn it into a restaurant and event space.

A barn?

A barn.

But not just any barn, but a barn with deep emotional connections — it’s from a dairy farm in Alto, outside Grand Rapids, where Howard’s father grew up and she played as a child.

“My grandmother would be tickled pink about this project,” Howard said. 

 

Lowell and Howard own the land and the barn, but the project still faces questions about zoning and, possibly, style. While the barn’s quirky, rural, old-school mojo could redefine farm-to-table cuisine in Detroit and make it a popular destination, it’s not known what the new player on the block, Ford Motor Co., feels about an antique barn next to its closely watched train station project, on which it is expected to spend millions. 

 

A spokeswoman for Ford Land did not respond to requests for comment.

Lowell and Howard are married. They grew up in Detroit and own the landmark Traffic Jam & Snug restaurant and several Midtown residential buildings. One of their properties is the 113-year-old Forest Arms apartments, at Second and Forest. After it was largely destroyed by a 2008 fire, Lowell and Howard purchased the building and spent $11 million on renovation. Its 70 units are full today.

“The Forest Arms gave us the confidence to do the barn,” Lowell said.

The barn was disassembled and trucked to Detroit in 2014, the year they purchased the property, which for decades was the site of St. Vincent Catholic School, which was demolished years ago. The timber remains in storage. 

 

That neighborhood was a different place in 2014. Detroit was in bankruptcy court, and the three-story depot and 18-story office building, owned by billionaire businessman Manual (Matty) Moroun, were decomposing in plain sight, global symbols of Detroit’s decline, though at the time the Morouns were embarking on a slow-motion face-lift. 

Then, in June, Ford Motor surprised the city when it was announced the company had bought the station and office tower for an undisclosed price and will use them as Ford’s self-driving car hub, with retail and restaurants in the depot. 

While Corktown has been one of Detroit’s hottest neighborhoods for more than a decade, the Ford announcement was an unexpected jolt of good fortune, especially for property owners near the station, who bought when the fate of the surrounding streets was less certain. 

Records show Lowell and Howard paid $250,000 for a 1⅓-acre parcel, or 58,000 square feet. As soon as Ford’s plans became known, surrounding land gained value. One day recently, the couple was at the site when a woman parked her car and approached them, asking if they were the owners. Then she asked if they were interested in selling. Lowell shook his head. They’ve had other inquiries, too.

Lowell and Howard recognize their luck, but stress that they did not purchase the land to flip it, but to realize a dream.

“We bought that property quite a few years ago with one purpose in mind, because it was the most ideal spot in the entire city to build this barn,” Howard said. “We are not speculators. We are multi-decade supporters.”

The two-story barn, white with a green roof, is the size of two big houses: 7,500 square feet. It housed hay and cows when it stood in Kent County. In the barn’s next life, an elevator would go where the silo stood.

Lowell and Howard said such particulars as the type of restaurant and the barn’s design elements remain to be decided, though they know the event space will be suitable for weddings. They are contemplating taking on an operating partner, and they have budgeted $3 million for the project. Groundbreaking is still weeks away. 

Howard has a working name for the barn: Kith and Kin Kelly. Those are the old English words for friends and family and the maiden name of Howard’s grandmother, Lenore Howard.  

At a time when noticeable amounts of money and people from out of town are involved in Detroit, Lowell and Howard stand out as local products. Lowell, 51, grew up in northeast Detroit and graduated from Orchard Lake St. Mary’s High School. Howard, 52, was raised in northwest Detroit and attended Renaissance High School. Both have degrees from Wayne State University. They were married at Most Holy Trinity Church in Corktown 25 years ago and purchased the Traffic Jam & Snug in 1999 from Richard Vincent and Ben Edwards, who opened the restaurant in 1965.

Before breaking ground they will need to confront one important issue — zoning. Their parcel is spread across two districts — one is classified general business, where restaurants are allowed, and one is residential, “where you can’t have a restaurant,” said Tiffany Crawford, a city spokeswoman.

“We’ll work it out,” Lowell said.

Another question is how the city — and Ford — will react to the idea of an old dairy barn, however charming, next to the train station’s Beaux-arts majesty. While vastly different in size, when their respective restorations are complete, the station, which opened in 1913, and the barn, raised in 1888, will be striking examples of something Detroit has not done well — building conservation.  

Valerie Hague, of Preservation Detroit, the nonprofit group dedicated to protecting the city’s distinctive structures and neighborhoods, said moving a barn from rural western Michigan to Detroit “is not a best practice of historic preservation.”

She added: “Stylistically, the structures will in all likelihood not complement one another. However, they will be two examples in close context to one another that can show how adaptive reuse and material preservation can work and even be pretty cool. If you consider this a goal of historic preservation, both structures will have succeeded.”

Lowell, who has dealt with city hall bureaucracy for years, said, “I imagine this process will be another box of kittens.”

Having grown up in Detroit, Lowell and Howard say they appreciate the opportunity to do something distinctive in their hometown and even possibly “magical,” as Lowell put it. 

“Our vision is to make something inspiring,” he said.