Ann Arbor's Seva to open new vegetarian restaurant in Detroit's Sugar Hill Arts District
The new Seva in Detroit will open to a broad open-air courtyard, sculpture garden and pedestrian greenways that project officials envision as the centerpiece of a $50 million creative district in Midtown.
A pedestrian-friendly arts district under development in
Detroit’s Midtown neighborhood will be home to a new Seva Restaurant as the longtime
vegetarian eatery plans its first expansion beyond the Ann Arbor city limits.
The new Seva Detroit will occupy space in the rear of a 16,000-square-foot former collision shop with an existing art gallery up front and a planned performance space in between.
Instead of street frontage, the eatery will open to a broad open-air courtyard, sculpture garden and pedestrian greenways — currently a back alley — that project officials envision as the centerpiece of a thriving, $50 million creative district.
Seva owners Jeff and Maren Jackson say they’re awaiting the
approval of a liquor license and hope to open the doors to the $300,000 project
by September or October.
Jeff Jackson, owner of Seva, in downtown Ann Arbor, is planning on opening another Seva in Detroit soon.
Lon Horwedel | AnnArbor.com
“I believe this area of Detroit is ready to boom,” Jeff
Jackson said. “Even with the downturn in the economy in the last couple of
years, things are still moving forward.”
If all goes according to plan, the Jacksons will open up
shop in the Sugar
Hill Arts District, an ambitious project to re-imagine the two-block
neighborhood known as a jazz hotspot between the 1920s and 1960s.
Developers envision as key pieces the Museum of Contemporary Art Detroit, a
mixed-use apartment building being
redeveloped as an energy-efficient live-work space for artists and the G.R. N’Namdi Art Complex, where Seva will be
housed.
Helping to tie it all together is the Midtown Loop, a pedestrian greenway under construction that will connect Sugar Hill with nearby
landmarks such as Wayne State University and the Detroit Institute of Arts.
Backers envision the loop linking with a network of greenways that will connect Eastern Market and the Detroit Riverfront.
“I think that’s going to tie into the best parts of downtown,” said Maren Jackson, who pointed out that the planned M-1 Rail project will run along adjacent Woodward Avenue.
The new Seva will be slightly smaller than the current
location, with seating for 120 as opposed to 150 at its Liberty Street site in Ann Arbor. The bar and dining areas will be more separate, each with its own
entrance. The menu is likely to remain mostly the same where its vegetarian staples are concerned.
“We are contemplating adding fish to the menu there,” Jeff
Jackson said. “We haven’t made that decision yet, but I am pushing it.”
The restaurant is also likely to have a different design
aesthetic.
“For one thing, we’re in an art gallery,” he said. “We’re
still working on that, but it’ll be very modern and up to date. There won’t be
any cedar or stained glass… we’ll be way different than we are in Ann Arbor.”
The Jacksons, who took over ownership of Seva in 1997, plan to invest $300,000 in the new venture. The bulk of the
financing comes from Invest Detroit,
a $125 million fund created by the former Detroit Renaissance (now Business
Leaders for Michigan), while the Jacksons are chipping in the rest from their
own savings.
Supporting the Sugar Hill project are a mixture of federal and private funding, $2.5 million from the New Economy Initiative and millions in historic tax credits, said Sue Mosey, president of the University Cultural Center Association.
Plans also call for the construction of a new 44-unit apartment building with a parking deck and ground-floor commercial space, and a mixed-use apartment building renovated with geothermal wells should start leasing to residents and retail tenants in the coming months, she said.
"We have a lot of small companies and entrepreneurs — artsts — that are looking to go in there," said Mosey, who also owns property nearby that she plans to develop similarly. "These are creative-type businesses."
The district won nearly $17 million from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development, said George N’Namdi, who’s spending about $4.5 million to renovate his art gallery.
N’Namdi said he courted Seva as a tenant because he ate there as a graduate student at the University of Michigan and as an undergraduate at Ohio State University, where the eatery originally opened in 1971 before moving to Ann Arbor two years later.
“When you tell people here in Detroit about this, they get
excited,” N’Namdi said. “They remember it from their days back in school. A lot
of them eat there even now.”
N’Namdi, who moved his gallery from suburban Birmingham as a
way to support the city, sees further opportunities to re-establish links
between Detroit and Ann Arbor. A performance space he plans top open between
the gallery and Seva will likely be modeled after the Kerrytown Concert House,
he says.
While business back in Ann Arbor has been relatively flat in recent
years, Jeff Jackson said the first four months of 2010 were Seva's busiest ever. He feels that now is the right time to expand, partly because the restaurant has a good system in place, and partly because vegetarian food, once considered weird, has become steadily
easier to market.
The Jacksons say they’ve watched the surrounding Midtown neighborhood steadily progress over the four years since N’Namdi originally approached them about the project. The Sugar Hill Arts District will take three to five years to be fully built out, Mosey said.
“This type of development has worked in other cities like Pittsburgh and Cleveland,” Jeff Jackson said. “This is a move for Detroit. I’m ringing the bell for Detroit here, and I believe they’re on the right track.”
• Contact Sven Gustafson by email,
or follow him at twitter.com/sveng.
Comments
Macabre Sunset
Mon, Jul 19, 2010 : 6:57 p.m.
It should be a purely financial decision then. I don't see why these particular "ethics" are relevant. It is up to each individual to make his or her own choices. Assuming that your choices are somehow more noble than other choices is what makes you annoying and holier than thou. If Seva loses customers by adding fish, I would assume the fish will disappear. If a Kosher restaurant lost customers by adding ham to the menu, I assume the ham would disappear. However, as a business owner myself, I might find it worth while to lose a little bit of business to rid myself of the most annoying customers. The problem being that it's often difficult to make those measurements.
abc
Mon, Jul 19, 2010 : 5:12 p.m.
@ a2vegan, you wrote vegetarians and vegans typically share fairly similar values, values that pescetarians and other omnivores often do not share. What values are typically shared by vegetarians and vegans and how do those values come into play when you are dining with friends or family? There are so many food choices based on culture, ethics, health, preference, religion, concern about agri-business etc. I have never noticed a consistent value pattern that revolves around what someone does, or does not, eat. (BTW AA did have a vegan restaurant but it went out of business fairly quickly.) @ Suki, do you realize that you are observing that some restaurants lack a wide enough range of choices (for you as a vegetarian), and arguing that Seva should not offer a wider range choices for someone who might choose to eat differently than you? @ someypsigirl, an egg is not a vegetable either, but Seva has them on the menu. The owner of Seva is in the business of making food and I would guess the people who work there do not all have to be vegan, or even vegetarian. If this is not about the religion of food then there is no slippery slope; because there is no right or wrong. But what I am reading above does not seem to be free from veg(etari)an zealotry. Complain for sure if they stop making your favorite meals but why complain because they wish to expand their menu? If they can do both well, good for them. Seva should simply drop the vegetarian restaurant moniker and serve what they want.
Some Guy in 734
Mon, Jul 19, 2010 : 1:09 p.m.
Macabre... if a hypothetical kosher restaurant started offering ham and cheese, then that's not just an expansion of the menu, that's going directly against what their customers expect. I know, nobody would be forcing their customers to eat treyf just because it's available, and this restaurant may have good reasons for doing so, but it would be completely understandable if they lost business because of it.
SomeYpsiGirl
Mon, Jul 19, 2010 : 12:39 p.m.
Happy to see new development in Detroit, but not happy about fish possibly being added to Seva's menu. Major veggie fail. I really hope they don't call it a *vegetarian* restaurant if they add fish. Fish is not a vegetable.
Suki
Mon, Jul 19, 2010 : 10:52 a.m.
I'm with a2vegan. I go to several non-vegetarian restaurants and the menus are often quite limited for vegetarians. You can't always trust that food doesn't have meat or fish "hidden" in it, or that the servers really know what is or isn't vegetarian. So it's a real treat for me to go to Seva, where I can peruse the whole menu without worrying about what's in the food. I don't whine or preach to my non-veggie friends and family, and they in turn are happy to go to Seva because there is such a variety of food. I really would hate to see it start down the slippery slope with adding fish.
a2vegan
Sun, Jul 18, 2010 : 10:35 p.m.
First off, vegetarianism and veganism are not just taste preferences. Would you tell a devout Jew who rejected a pork chop that he was being annoying about his preferences? I think not. My secular system of ethics shouldn't be viewed as inferior to a more commonly accepted religious system. Secondly, I'm aware that as a vegan I can't order just anything at Seva. However, vegetarians and vegans typically share fairly similar values, values that pescetarians and other omnivores often do not share. While I would obviously love for an entirely vegan restaurant to open in the Ann Arbor area, a vegetarian restaurant is more in line with my value system than one that serves meat and is better than nothing.
Jay Thomas
Sun, Jul 18, 2010 : 3:03 p.m.
That location is a real eyesore and I'm sure people from the VA will be pleased to see something (anything) there. Love Seva's greek salad BTW.
Speechless
Sun, Jul 18, 2010 : 12:50 p.m.
And if god didn't intend for animals to eat people, why did she make us all out of meat?
seldon
Sun, Jul 18, 2010 : 8:29 a.m.
@a2vegan: I don't see the need for whining. They didn't say they'd eliminate any of the existing vegetarian dishes to do it, so you'll still have just as many choices as you did before. And you can be sure that they'll put the fish dishes in a separate clearly marked section so you don't accidentally order one because you didn't read the menu carefully. Besides, you're a vegan. It's not like you could randomly order anything you want off the Seva menu as it is. A lot of the dishes have dairy products in them.
David Briegel
Sun, Jul 18, 2010 : 8:22 a.m.
Seva is a wonderful place and I'm certain the new place will be great with fresh seafood!
Brad
Sun, Jul 18, 2010 : 7:16 a.m.
And if god didn't intend for people to eat animals, why did she make them all out of meat?
SonnyDog09
Sun, Jul 18, 2010 : 6:35 a.m.
This is good news. I'll have to go there for lunch once they open. I work about three blocks from there, and it is nice that some development is being done. Ann Arborites who think that their city is in bad shape should take a trip to Detroit to see a city that is really in trouble. They might gain some perspective.
Macabre Sunset
Sun, Jul 18, 2010 : 3:50 a.m.
I assume that if this decision costs them business, they will remove the offending fish. They also carry selections which include eggs and/or cheese. Some vegans would undoubtedly be disappointed to find that's the case. The important thing about Seva is that it's a place where vegetarians and vegans can go with confidence that there's both selection and expertise in preparing those meals. I find it odd that anyone would complain about what else is on the menu. I really don't like pork, but would never expect a restaurant not to carry pork dishes. Some vegetarians are really, really annoying about their preferences.
a2vegan
Sat, Jul 17, 2010 : 10:23 p.m.
So non-vegetarians can't eat one meal without meat? Will they atrophy or something? It's not like going one meal without meat is a hardship, especially not at a great restaurant like Seva. This of it this way: barring allergies, a non-vegetarian can choose anything off the menu of any restaurant he or she walks into while at many places there are only two or three vegetarian options, with even less variety for vegans. Going to a restaurant where you can walk in and order anything off the menu without having to worry about whether or not it has meat is a relief for many vegetarians. Adding fish to the menu would negatively impact that dynamic. I've taken a number of die-hard omnivores with me to Seva and none of them have ever gone hungry, not even my meat and potatoes style grandparents. I see no good reason to change what already works.
Jonathan
Sat, Jul 17, 2010 : 3:04 p.m.
I think its great that they are considering offering seafood. Now my non vegetarian friends have a choice too! My girlfriend who frequents Seva is thrilled. Hopefully this will follow to the Ann Arbor location too!
a2vegan
Sat, Jul 17, 2010 : 2:04 p.m.
While it's great that Seva is expanding I'm disappointed that they're considering adding fish to the menu. (For those that need clarification, fish are animals and as such are not suitable for vegetarians. Anyone claiming to be a vegetarian who consumes fish is actually a pescetarian.)
Jeff Gaynor
Sat, Jul 17, 2010 : 9:26 a.m.
As a native Detroiter who frequents Seva frequently, I'm delighted with this news.