The long-vacant Chili's on Hall Road in Sterling Heights is one step closer to new life, but without one of the features that originally held it up. The developer behind the project, 12800 Hall Rd., LLC, has submitted a backup plan for the site that drops a hookah lounge in favor of a restaurant paired with a cigar bar, and the city's Planning Commission signed off on it Wednesday.
The approval came after months of back-and-forth over the original concept, which paired an upscale steak and sushi restaurant with separate cigar bar and hookah lounge rooms, according to Macomb Daily. City officials had objected to the hookah component, since Sterling Heights currently allows cigar bars through a special land use but does not permit hookah bars under its existing rules. With that roadblock still unresolved, the developer is now seeking approval for just the cigar bar portion through that same special land-use process.
Attorney Phil Ruggeri, who represents the project, told the Planning Commission the restaurant itself does not really change whether or not hookah is part of it, and that his clients needed a plan they could actually move forward on. Ruggeri said Sterling Heights is expected to take up an ordinance that could allow hookah sometime in December or January, though the current backup plan does not depend on that timeline.
A Second Attempt After a September Postponement
This is not the first time the project has hit a procedural wall. The Sterling Heights City Council voted unanimously on Sept. 1 to postpone a decision on the original proposal from 12800 Hall Rd., LLC, giving the developer time to regroup. At that point, the plan on the table called for transforming the former Chili's into a restaurant serving steak, chicken, seafood and sushi, with the hookah and cigar components as add-ons.
The site itself, sitting on Hall Road east of the M-53 freeway, has sat empty for at least three years, the same Macomb Daily report from that September postponement noted. That stretch of vacancy has left a visible gap in a commercial corridor the developer has been trying to reactivate since acquiring the property.
Money Already Sunk Into the Property
Ruggeri has said the developer invested $2 million just to buy the property, on top of $150,000 already spent on landscaping and repairs to what had been a crumbling parking lot. Those investment figures, however, sit awkwardly alongside differing estimates of the restaurant project's overall scope: Macomb Daily's earlier coverage pegged the eatery itself at roughly $1.5 million, focused on what was described as top-of-the-line steak, chicken and seafood alongside a sushi menu, while C&G News reported a far larger estimated investment of $15 million tied to the same address. The two figures have not been reconciled in available reporting, and it is unclear whether they refer to different phases or scopes of the project.
C&G News's earlier coverage of the proposal also detailed a rockier path through the city's approval process, reporting that planning commissioners initially voted 3-2 against recommending the project before unanimously agreeing to postpone the matter to a later meeting. That outlet's reporting described a plan to reuse the existing 5,400-square-foot building with facade, parking lot and landscaping upgrades.
Developers With Local Track Record
The team behind the project is not new to the Macomb County restaurant scene. Ruggeri has said the owners previously opened restaurants in Toronto and were behind the reinvention of two area spots: Ford's Garage on Hall Road in Utica and Kabana Bar & Grill, which occupies the former Fuddrucker's property on Van Dyke in Sterling Heights.
With the Planning Commission's approval of the backup plan now in hand, the matter heads to the Sterling Heights City Council, which is expected to vote on the site's new business model in the coming weeks. Whether the city eventually adopts a hookah ordinance remains an open question, and for now the cigar bar and restaurant combination represents the version of the project actually moving through the approval pipeline.
