Southwest Detroit Business Association’s (SDBA’s) redevelopment of
Oddfellows Hall is proceeding at a rapid clip with 75 percent of the
project completed, according to Larry Ladomer of L. W. Ladomer &
Company, the project’s developer. “It’s been very fast-paced in spite
of the fact we’ve run into some obstacles. We ran into structural
problems — the structural steel had to be lowered — and soil conditions
required us to put in larger [concrete] pads than were originally
designed for the columns.”
The 15,000 square-foot building, located on Vernor at Springwells, was
constructed for the Detroit branch of the Oddfellows, a fraternal group
of do-gooders that migrated to the U.S from their native England in
1819. The project was awarded a Cool Cities designation from the State
of Michigan in 2004 to be utilized as a cultural and community center,
which, as Ladomer notes, “was very fitting. This building was built in
1917 to help people, [and] SDBA is going to do same thing.”
The building is three stories tall although the front half of the
structure has only two floors because the Great Room, a 3,200
square-foot open space, has such high ceilings. Notable features of the
space include a ring of lights comprised of 31 brass flower petals that
had been covered up by a dropped ceiling and a narrow plank maple floor
laid in an unusual log cabin design. The first floor will be leased out
for retail, and the rear two upper stories will be made available to
local nonprofits.
The Oddfellows Hall features a state-of-the art geothermal heating and
cooling system that utilizes 45 wells drilled to a depth of 250 feet to
circulate heat away from the building in the summer and towards the
building in the winter. Ladomer notes that the system “is extremely
environmentally clean—there is no gas in the building, it’s a totally
electric building, but our heating and cooling costs will be 50 percent
or less than it would be with a conventional system.”
Although the initial cost of installing a geothermal system can
initially be up to three times as expensive as a conventional one,
Ladomer says that rising energy costs mean that payback occurs in only
six years. “You have to ask yourself, am I going to build for now, or
build for the future?” The project is expected to be complete by the
end of May; its architect is Lis Knibbe of Quinn Evans Architects.
Larry Ladomer, LW Ladomer & Company, owner’s representative for Southwest Detroit Business Association
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