Email us at :
custserv@thepmhousing.com
Credit: Kirk Pinho/Crain’s Detroit Business
The under-construction RH flagship store in downtown Birmingham on Tuesday, July 1.
Birmingham’s luxury retail scene is going to get a lot bigger in the coming months.
There is no formal opening date set for the flagship RH (formally Restoration Hardware) store yet, although it’s anticipated to be early this fall, according to a source familiar with the matter.
Think, perhaps, early to mid-October or so, although construction dates are always fickle, especially when, for example, the project is waiting on windows from Greece and the luxury home goods retailer has dramatically pivoted on its initial design since construction started.
Weather, materials and labor delays, among plenty of others, can also impact grand openings, particularly this far out.
The window frames also came from Greece, and thousands of bricks from Italy have been used as part of the project, representatives from Detroit-based general contractor Sachse Construction told a Crain’s reporter on Tuesday on site. Each brick had to be soaked in water for 10 minutes as part of the construction process.
RH, based in Corte Madera, Calif., would not say when its official grand opening is, although a spokesperson pointed to a Q1 financial statement saying the store, officially known as RH Detroit, The Gallery at Birmingham, is slated to open in the second half of this year.
Credit: Saroki Architecture
A rendering of the 54,000-square-foot RH store project under construction in downtown Birmingham.
The new RH building is next door to a new mixed-use building anchored by JP Morgan Chase & Co., which is building out a $17 million new office as part of Birmingham-based developer Ron Boji’s $80 million, 135,000-square-foot, four-story building at 370 Brown St.; also under construction.
Whenever RH’s precise grand opening happens this year, it’ll be a red-letter day for the retailer, whose efforts to build a new marquee store in what is perhaps Southeast Michigan’s swankiest downtown have survived setback after setback dating back to at least 2019.
Nearly six years ago, Birmingham voters scotched a $57.4 million bond proposal to pay for a parking deck on a different downtown site, effectively killing what at the time was a $140 million mixed-use development that RH would have anchored at Old Woodward and Bates.
Other components of that plan included 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 have been 1,159 parking spaces and a 530-foot extension of Bates Street to the northeast.
With that proposal dead, RH turned its attention to the current downtown site across from the Daxton Hotel at Old Woodward and Brown. The property had been home to Capital Tile, Lutz Financial Services, Roche Bobois, Frank’s Shoe Service and Coldwell Banker Weir Manuel.
There, RH sought to build its 54,000-square-foot store, which is slated to have a restaurant on top, plus underground parking.
The revived plan became public in March 2021. Several months later, RH had its site plan approval. It also needed rezoning and lot splits during the municipal approval process.
But with those secured, the buildings on the property then started coming down, leading to excavation and foundation pouring.
Construction halted for about a year amid a major redesign and then resumed in the fall 2023.
Owning a home is a keystone of wealth… both financial affluence and emotional security.