Inside The Edward Hotel in Dearborn, MI: Once Michigan's Second-Largest Hotel. What's next?

The Edward Hotel sits at 600 Town Center Drive in Dearborn, Michigan. It's a curved glass tower next to Fairlane Town Center.

It opened in January 1976 as the Hyatt Regency Dearborn. There were 800 rooms and a restaurant on the roof that turned while you ate. Hyatt left in 2012, and four more names followed in four years.

The city closed the building at noon on December 14, 2018 over fire-safety and maintenance violations. Guests had to leave that day. It never took another one.

Crews are inside now. The latest version puts apartments above a Hilton hotel, with the old rotunda coming back as a rotating bar. Completion is targeted for 2027.

The Hyatt Regency Dearborn opened first

Ground broke at 600 Town Center Drive in October 1973 on a $28 million contract. Del E. Webb built it.

Charles Luckman and Associates designed a broad crescent: a curved wall of reflective glass, stepped at both ends, with a cylinder on the roof over the middle.

The cylinder held the rotunda, a dining and entertainment floor that turned slowly while you sat in it.

There was a helipad too. Ballrooms, meeting halls, shops, and restaurants filled the levels below.

The hotel opened in January 1976 with 800 rooms, two months before Fairlane Town Center opened next door.

It was Michigan's largest hotel when it opened.

Two driverless cars to the shopping mall

Ford connected the hotel to the mall with an automated train of its own design, ACT, short for Automatically Controlled Transportation.

One station hung off the hotel. The other sat inside Fairlane Town Center.

Two electric, computer-controlled cars ran an elevated guideway, passing each other on a bypass built between the buildings.

Each carried 24 passengers at up to 20 miles an hour, and the line was designed for 1,800 people an hour at peak.

Riders started using it in 1976. Ford never extended it past those two stops, and service ended in the late 1980s.

The guideway came down later, and people still called it the hotel connected to the mall.

Ford sold, and the owners kept changing

At 25 years old the building needed money, and a $22.6 million renovation finished in January 2000.

In September 2003, Ford Motor Land Development sold an 85 percent stake to CNL Hospitality Properties and kept a minority interest.

Hyatt stayed on as manager. The hotel then had 772 rooms and 52,000 square feet of meeting space.

Ashford Hospitality Trust bought 51 hotels from CNL in April 2007 for $2.4 billion, with the Dearborn property valued at $40 million inside the deal.

Two years later it was in court. Possession passed to a receiver on December 3, 2009, with $29.1 million still owed.

Royal Realties bought the hotel in April 2011 for $15.5 million.

Four names in four years

In May 2012, after 36 years, Hyatt moved to end its management contract.

A replacement came fast. Carlson Rezidor signed on in September to run the property as a Radisson.

In October, weeks before Hyatt walked, that agreement was canceled.

The hotel reopened November 1 under a name nobody in Dearborn knew, Adoba Hotel Dearborn/Detroit. More than 300 people worked there at the handover.

By October 2014 the property owed more than $850,000 in Wayne County taxes and the operator was leaving, until Lodging Host Hotel Corp. took over and kept the doors open.

The sign changed to Regency Dearborn, then to Royal Dearborn by 2015, when all 773 rooms went on the market.

The $20 million sale that renamed the hotel

Xiao Hua "Edward" Gong bought the hotel in 2016 for $20 million and put his name on it, first as Edward Village Michigan, then as the Edward Hotel and Convention Center.

His team talked about a restoration worth tens of millions and made repairs inside and out, while the city pushed the operators on maintenance compliance.

The annual fire inspection on December 4, 2018 found multiple code violations, and building inspectors found more.

On December 12, the operators were told the hotel was unfit for occupancy and had until noon Friday to fix it.

Friday noon passed. Dearborn closed the building on December 14, 2018.

Guests walked out, employees lost their workplace, and the building had no valid certificate of occupancy and no hotel license.

Copper thieves and a $9.9 million bid

The owners spent a year working toward a reopening.

Inspectors walked the building on February 11, 2020 and found the fire-safety systems still out of code.

Power was cut that summer. People got inside and stripped out copper electrical equipment, and the property still owed $1.1 million in back taxes.

Gong's company pleaded guilty in Ontario in 2021 to using forged documents and running a pyramid scheme.

The building went into forfeiture and onto the market through the U.S. Marshals Service.

A New York buyer closed in October 2021 for $18.3 million, planning 375 apartments. Nothing was built.

The owner defaulted on the mortgage, a sheriff's sale followed in June 2024 at $9.9 million, and in October Willowbrook LLC won the property at online auction for $5.9 million.

258 apartments and 216 rooms in one tower

Dearborn's Planning Commission approved a new plan on February 10, 2025 by an 8-1 vote, and it gives nearly every level of the 18-story tower a different job.

Hotel rooms take floors three, four, and five. Apartments fill the old guest-room floors above: 154 one-bedrooms, 90 two-bedrooms, and 14 studios.

The revolving rotunda comes back as a lounge on the 16th.

In December 2025 the City Council tied a tax break to conditions that included keeping a full-service hotel and getting council approval before reducing the 82,000 square feet of convention space.

Rehabilitation runs $45 million on top of $7 million in acquisition costs, with water damage to undo.

Construction is under way, GAV Associates is leading the design, and completion is targeted for 2027.

The hotel comes back at 216 rooms instead of 773, and 135 people would work there. The hotel is now planned under a Hilton flag.