Downtown Birmingham's former Panera Bread restaurant is being turned into a CB2 store, a sister brand of high-end home goods retailer Crate & Barrel, as the building gets an overhaul.
The first floor of the Maplewood building at the northeast corner of North Old Woodward Avenue and Maple Road is being converted into the nearly 7,500-square-foot CB2 location opening late this year as part of a $17.5 million redevelopment, building owner and developer Ron Boji said Monday.
The Tiger Shoe Shine and Boyd Birmingham property to the immediate east of the Maplewood building are expected to be torn down to make way for a new three-story building connected to the Maplewood, Boji said. The new building is to have first-floor retail, second floor office and a third-story penthouse.
In addition, the former Linda Dresner building on West Maple that for 28 years housed the eponymous boutique until last year is getting a nearly 8,000-square-foot Serena & Lily Inc. home furnishings store as part of a $3.2 million redevelopment expected to open by the end of July.
"CB2 is obsessed with all things design and Birmingham has become a central location for designers and the design-minded in Michigan," CB2 President Ryan Turf said in a statement. "We see our brick and mortars as an additional touchpoint for those customers, bridging an extended footprint and select assortment with more integrated services for everyone who wants unique and enduring design."
Saroki Architecture and Boji Group are the architecture firm and general contractor on the projects, Boji said.
"Each of these companies have a solid brand and customer base in the area and will have a significant economic impact in the region," he said.
Boji paid $7.85 million for the 15,700-square-foot building, at 100-116 N. Old Woodward Ave., according to CoStar Group Inc., a Washington, D.C.-based real estate information service. Boji paid $3 million for the Linda Dresner building, which is being rebranded as MapleBates.
Bloomfield Hills-based CC Consulting worked on the CB2 lease while Southfield-based Signature Associates Inc. worked on the Serena & Lily lease.
News about the new home furnishings stores comes after a revived vision for a new RH — formerly Restoration Hardware — flagship location downtown was unveiled in March. That project, which is anticipated to cost $50 million, is planned for the area immediately south of the new Daxton Hotel.
In 2019, a development team called Woodward Bates Partners LLC — consisting of local commercial real estate royalty Victor Saroki, Boji, John Rakolta Jr. and Paul Robertson — planned a 55,000-square-foot RH store, plus 30 rental residential units, 25,000 square feet of office space and a total of about another 10,000 square feet of retail space across multiple buildings. In addition, there would be 1,159 parking spaces and a 530-foot extension of Bates Street to the northeast.
In August 2019, Birmingham voters rejected a $57.4 million bond proposal that would have paved the way for the effort.
Although that project's roots can be traced to the mid-1990s and the adoption of the Downtown Birmingham 2016 Master Plan, the project began moving forward in earnest in May 2016, when the city issued a request for qualifications for developers to develop the approximately 4-acre property west of Old Woodward Avenue and north of Willits Street at the north end of the central business district.
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