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Construction is underway to convert a building that could be the next lynchpin in redeveloping a long-blighted eastside Detroit corridor.

A group of developers and city officials held a groundbreaking ceremony on a sunny late October afternoon to convert the long vacant Arthur Murray dance studio to an apartment and commercial space.

The 1950s building has “deep cultural significance” for the neighborhood and is run by a “pioneering” woman entrepreneur, the city says. And it was one of a myriad of businesses in the once-thriving commercial corridor of East English Village, a neighborhood still otherwise vibrant with vintage 1920s middle class homes.

The city has plowed $8.8 million into streetscaping along the 0.6-mile East Warren Avenue strip including landscaping, new lighting and protected bike lanes. It’s one of 10 so-called Strategic Neighborhood Fund (SNF) areas, which the city has deemed stable enough to concentrate on renewing.  

The almost $15 million project will carefully restore the building with a third floor added, the two top floors holding 32 apartments, all at or below Area Median Income (AMI) rates.

Called “The Arthury Murray,” the half block long conversion is being headed by Emery Matthews, CEO of Real Estate Interests LLC, a local African American-owned firm.  

“I want to thank the people of Detroit,” Matthews told a crowd on the sidewalk beside the gutted building. “Stuff like this doesn’t happen by accident, and if it weren’t for the people in this community I wouldn’t be here.”

He listed several local public and private investors underwriting the project.

District 4 city councilwoman Latisha Johnson praised the group, adding “development in the city of Detroit is very difficult, it takes the right people to pull the right resources together and do the development that we have been asking in the community for years.”

This is the second major project along East Warren – a major street that bisects the entire city – the first being the $8.2 million “The Ribbon” apartments, almost diagonally across the street and which opened last year. Other projects underway include the East Warren Farmers Market, Terri’s Cakes Detroit and The Deco, a mixed-use apartment building named as homage to its art deco features.

Julie Schneider, director of Detroit’s housing and revitalization department, said she was “thrilled” to celebrate another “commercial corridor being brought back with much need activity through housing supply and commercial activity, bringing additional people to this neighborhood to take advantage of the many amenities and enjoy the quality of life that is here.”

Schneider said the 10 city-wide SNFs are public-private partnerships “to reinvest in our commercial corridors and bring vibrancy back.”

She said East Warren has become “the new hot spot.”

Lead developer Matthews, in an interview, said it was “extraordinarily difficult” getting the project underway, mainly because “the market is not developed yet so when you’re trying to do something relatively new it’s always challenging.”

It’s even more so given the economics of creating affordable housing, he said.

“As a result, there’s a lot of gap filling that you need to do.”

Erich Watry, project manager for Michigan contactor Rockford Construction, termed the overhaul “a fun one.”

He said the building is “more of a structural challenge than anything.”

The interior has now been “restabilized,” he said, with a reinforced foundation and structural elements, and then there will be the adding of a third floor and new roof.

“It’s just navigating through existing conditions once demo and abatement are done to figure out and verify we have all the proper steel elements.” 

Local resident and activist Jacinda Cason she’s been “amazed” by the artery’s rebirth.

“We are having sit down multicultural restaurants that I can’t wait to indulge in,” she said. “And just to be able to come outside with my daughter and walk up and down the corridor and be able to eat food and then be able to go to the (a new nearby) bookstore is something that I was looking for and appeals to me.”