The AC Hotel Detroit at the Bonstelle started taking guests in early January 2025, the first AC Hotel in southeast Michigan. It is a 154-room, 10-story new build on Woodward Avenue in Brush Park, just south of Mack and at Eliot. The building immediately to the south, the Bonstelle Theatre, has been there since 1903.
That's the part that matters. The Bonstelle was designed by Albert Kahn as Temple Beth El, the synagogue Kahn himself attended. The congregation moved further north on Woodward in 1925.
Theater architect C. Howard Crane redesigned the interior that year for actress and producer Jessie Bonstelle, who renamed the place after herself and ran it as a playhouse. After the Depression it became a movie house.
Wayne State University bought the building in 1956 and used it for student productions through 2018, when the school decided to decommission the theater after expanding the Hilberry. Roxbury Group, the Detroit-based developer, signed a long-term master lease with WSU on the Bonstelle and folded it into a $49 million hotel project that had originally been planned to open in 2021. The pandemic stretched the timeline by several years.
The hotel and the theater are connected by a glass-enclosed lobby bar called The Conservatory. The room serves gin cocktails and Spanish small plates, a nod to AC Hotels' Madrid roots. The exterior of the Bonstelle is being restored to Kahn's 1903 design.
The interior is being restored to Crane's 1925 design. The theater itself, with about 1,300 seats, will host live performances and private events when its $7 to $10 million renovation finishes. A rooftop bar at the hotel was scheduled to open later in 2025.
Stantec, with a Berkley office, designed the hotel. Patrick Thompson Design did the interiors. Sachse Construction was the general contractor.
Azul Hospitality, which already runs Roxbury's Element Detroit at the Metropolitan and the Hotel David Whitney, manages the property. Financing came from Flagstar Bank, Bank of Ann Arbor, Invest Detroit, and Stonehill, a Peachtree Group company. The Bonstelle has been on the National Register of Historic Places since 1982.
The hotel sits inside a broader South of Mack vision being developed across multiple parcels by Birmingham-based Professional Property Management. Woodward Ave. at Eliot St. (3424 Woodward, adjacent), Detroit
