Club is anticipated in downtown Detroit

Source: Detroit Free Press
Fifth Avenue Detroit, a downtown version of popular pool-and-dance clubs operating in Royal Oak and Novi, is expected to be built later this year at Comerica Park.

Trendy with the twentysomething crowd and urban professionals, the existing Fifth Avenue locations mix top-of-the-line pool tables with live music, dancing and mingling. Fifth Avenue Billiards in Royal Oak and Fifth Avenue Ballroom in Novi have been rated among the best clubs in metro Detroit.

Steve Facione, group vice president of Olympia Entertainment, declined to confirm the plans Tuesday but didn't deny the report. "You're warm, you're pretty warm," he told the Free Press, adding that announcements about new businesses around the ballpark will be made as early as this week.

Tom Brady, general manager of the Fifth Avenue Ballroom in Novi, said the new site would be built in one of the unoccupied spaces in the ballpark, including an outdoor second-story deck.

Mike and Marian Ilitch, founders of the Little Caesars pizza chain, own the Detroit Tigers baseball team and the Detroit Red Wings hockey team, as well as Olympia Entertainment.

A Fifth Avenue club could plug one of the prominent gaps in the development of the theater and entertaiment district. The emerging entertainment district has two anchors -- the Fox Theatre on the west side of Woodward and Comerica Park a block to the east -- but the lively mix of restaurants, clubs, shops and sports bars envisioned for the area has been slow to develop.

The original Fifth Avenue Billiards opened in downtown Royal Oak in 1990; it was followed by the Novi location in 1999. The clubs immediately became top-rated spots.

"If there were a Better Homes and Gardens-like magazine devoted to bars, pubs and saloons, Fifth Avenue Ballroom would be on the cover," Free Press writer Christopher Walton wrote in 1999.

Luisa Ortiz, day manager of Fifth Avenue Billiards , said plans call for the new club to open by late this year.
Source: Detroit Free Press