The Sherbrooke Apartments is coming full circle this year. The apartment building in Midtown started out as plush, luxury units nearly a century ago before being chopped up into smaller, cheaper units. It was vacant for a few years before a local developer began transforming the apartment building back into high-end units.
"It was originally an elegant building," says Lis Knibbe, a principal at
Quinn Evans Architects and the developer of the Sherbrooke Apartments. "We want to bring back a little bit of that elegance."
The Sherbrooke Apartments opened in 1913 as six units at the corner of Second Avenue and West Hancock Street. They were designed for upper-middle-class tenants living only blocks away from the present Wayne State University. "Given the size and the quality of these units, they were definitely upper-middle-class units," Knibbe says. "All of these units had maid's rooms."
Knibbe and her team are turning the apartment building into six 1-bedroom and eight 2-bedroom units with the potential of combining some of the 1- and 2-bedroom units into a large 3-bedroom apartment. Rents will range between $850 and $1,500 per month.
The $3 million project will restore the original woodwork in the building, along with a number of smaller original details. It will add a geothermal heating system and provide a balcony or private outdoor space for each unit that is above ground. Work is expected to wrap up by the end of this year.
Source: Lis Knibbe, developer of the Sherbrooke Apartments
Writer: Jon Zemke
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