It's not the tallest building in downtown Royal Oak, but the new home of Bianchi's Salon & Spa is the newest addition to the urban wall street on Main Street.
Workers are putting the finishing touches on the single-story building at 710 N. Main, across the street from Main North Lofts and a short distance north of the Main Art theater. An opening could happen as soon as June.
"It's being drywalled," says Jim Schneider, president of Royal Oak-based Schneider+Smith Architects, who designed the structure.
The building is built up to the lot line like a traditional downtown storefront, extending the street wall from downtown to a little further north. These types of details are essential to helping make downtown more pedestrian-friendly, by putting more eyes on the street and more feet on the ground.
The 4,200-square-foot structure will be used primarily for commercial space. About 3,000 square feet of the space will be occupied by the salon. The rest is up for lease. The building is a normal storefront, but it does have a mezzanine that overlooks the salon portion, giving the structure 17-foot ceilings in some areas.
"That's a very cool space," Schneider says. "I'm sure someone will lease it."
The exterior is mainly brick, and modern in appearance, Schneider says. This allows it to fit in easily with the surrounding architecture on Main Street and the rest of downtown. Schneider+Smith Architects, which also designed the renovations of the Luke and Tribune buildings in downtown Royal Oak, is responsible for a bit of that work.
Source: Jim Schneider, president of Schneider+Smith Architects
Writer: Jon Zemke
Enjoy this story?
Sign up for free solutions-based reporting in your inbox each week.