News: Long-vacant Royal Oak site may get L.A. Fitness

The long-vacant site just north of I-696 between Main Street and Woodward Avenue in Royal Oak may be the site of an L.A. Fitness operation next year. 

Site-plan approval for the project has been granted by the Royal Oak Planning Commission, said Doug Hedges, a city planner for Royal Oak.  Construction would start in the spring.

The plan calls for a two-story, 45,000 square foot facility on the site.

Other development plans have come and gone for that site, which was home to an auto dealership until the 1980s, when the state cleared the property during construction of I-696.  The state gave the land to the city, and its fate involved ideas from an aquarium to a convention center.  The most recent was for a office, retail and hotel building called Gateway Office Center, to be developed by Livonia-based Schostak Brothers & Company Inc.

Schostak will act as developer for the L.A. Fitness project and be landlord under the terms of a long term lease, said co-president Robert Schostak.

-Daniel Duggan, Crain's Detroit Business