Author Archives: skimen

It’s a bold statement. We didn’t make it. We probably never would say it, but are so grateful someone else thinks so.

For 15 years Greg Oates has been writing for and about the travel industry. He’s held a number of editorial positions and is currently the executive editor of a magazine specifically targeting the events industry. Greg knows hotels. He also has a personal project called 200 Rooms where he highlights what he thinks are the most interesting small hotels in the world. What a great job!

So you can understand our excitement when a blog posting, urging people to support our Kickstarter campaign, came out with the title 5 Reasons Why Detroit Collision Works is the Most Important Hotel in America. It stopped us dead in our tracks.

His article covers everything from our innovative design and commitment to sustainability to our perspective on Creative Tourism and why it’s the next thing coming down the travel trend pipeline. But most importantly he understands the role that a hotel can make in community place-making, which seems to get lost on a lot of people that are just starting to expect cool bars, decent food, and some art in a hotel. It’s time to expect more.

Greg knows we are way ahead of the curve on this one and has explained it more elegantly than we ever could. Go check it out.

So here it is. Our first ever Kickstarter campaign. People have been telling us to do it for months for the hotel. But it’s too soon for the hotel. Kickstarter is best for immediate, quick projects. And now we’ve got it. If you are on this site you probably already know that Eastern Market has given us land to do a temporary installation of our FIrst Containers to demonstrate and test future offerings for the larger Collision Works boutique hotel and community space being constructed just a few blocks away. It’s a story box!

We want YOU TO BE A PART OF THIS. Go check out the Kickstarter Video 

If you are looking for media info, press release, images, or more about the project go to FIRSTCONTAINER.COM or our Media Page – Thanks!!

While we work on bigger issues of financing Collision Works we are plotting our first demonstration unit pop-up in collaboration with Eastern Market! We will be setting up two units, hopefully by mid spring, to show a mini version of what can happen in the space. Read the rest

We want  to thank everyone for their support through 2012. It’s been an incredible year for Collision Works. Looking back we’ve had a name change, successful community workshops, built an impressive board of advisors, created a sustainable business plan, and now we are so proud to let you know that on Sunday, December 30th, The Detroit Free Press wrote a year-end feature on Collision Works and Shel Kimen. Read the rest

Guess what this is a picture of?

The future home of Collision Works on Division in Eastern Market with 220 feet of frontage on the Dequindre Cut! Jogging and biking from our front door all the way to the river! We are on a little hill, so you will be able to see downtown from the second floor! Yesterday we picked up our OFFER TO PURCHASE LETTER. We are buying land from the City of Detroit. There are still a series of due diligence steps we need to go through, but here we go everyone.  Read the rest

We are so excited to announce our newest intern Jasmine Jackson. She’s a graduate of Detroit High School of Performing Arts, with a major in Radio and Television. Currently she’s a student at Wayne State University with a major in Communications. She’s already done lots of work in Public Relations as well as Social Marketing and Media internships. She loves music, reading and traveling and is working towards having her own production company. We think that is awesome and are thrilled to be working with her for the next three months. Jasmine is going to take over some of our social media responsibilities, community engagement, as well as help out with the general running of the business.

We asked her what her greatest hope was for Detroit and she said this:
My greatest hope for Detroit is to become a bigger staple nationally and globally for music, and the arts, as well as adding/keeping creative programs in schools.

We are excited to share with you some early work from KOOP, the architects. We’ve uploaded four schematic drawings to our facebook page and we are pretty excited to see it actually taking shape. They can look a bit daunting in all black and white, stark modern. Fret not. These are just to help map out the actual structure of the building and lack finishes, colors, furniture, and all the arty what-not. Read the rest

Remember when you were a kid and you knew that one day (along with being a firefighter, a pediatrician and a princess) you were going to grow up to be a Superhero?

This is the kind of internship that will impress the folks over at the Justice League.

You get to work with *two* great startup companies that are trying to make a difference.

The first company is Collision Works – detroitcollisionworks.com. Collision Works is an innovative boutique hotel, co-working space, mentoring program, and event venue growing in the Eastern Market district of Detroit – all built around storytelling. Our mission is to provide space for travelers and Detroit’s many diverse communities to gather, collaborate, and forge new futures through the telling of our stories. We offer a good night’s sleep, willing companions, and new worlds to explore and create together.

The second company is Good Sweat – www.goodsweat.com. Good Sweat provides a simple crowd funding platform focused on charity sports activities like running, riding, swimming or just being active for a cause. Good Sweat lets you easily create personal sports fundraising events—you can even use your everyday workout to raise money for charity. Once you create your event, you can solicit support and participation from Facebook friends and Twitter followers. The money is directly donated to the nonprofit organization of your choosing.

Your overall responsibility is to build online social engagement for both companies, with secondary responsibilities around partner development. Specific tasks include the following:

• Build engagement strategy and foster community on primary and affiliated sites
• Create and manage the Twitter accounts for Collision Works and Good Sweat
• Research groups and organizations for potential partnerships
• Create, manage and maintain customer relationship management databases for each company
• Assist in drafting Collision Works newsletters
• Develop and coordinate live and online Good Sweat member events.
• Design and develop collateral materials
• Meet with charity event participant groups
• Assist with developing dashboard to communicate recruitment progress for Good Sweat
• Provide weekly recruitment reports using dashboard
• Intern may do other administrative and promotional tasks as needed

You need to be proactive with excellent organization and communication (written and otherwise) skills and a good sense of humor. The internship will involve 25 hours of work per week split between GS and CW at $10/hour for 12 weeks. We are primarily interested in Wayne State University, University of Michigan and University of Michigan-Dearborn students.

If you think this opportunity could be right for you, please send your resume and a link to your LinkedIn and Twitter profiles (if you have them) to Shel Kimen () by Friday, October 5. The start date for this position is Monday, October 15 and is located in Detroit.

Unfortunately, we don’t have any cool spandex costumes or identity-shielding masks, but you may get a t-shirt.

Image found on Deviant Art. By Ask SuperMan. Nice work.

Shel will be speaking on the Rogue/HAA panel Friday, September 21st, 6pm at the Mies Storefront in Lafayette Park as part of the Detroit Design Festival. There will also be work in the exhibition from Collision Works and KOOP AM. Come see us!

There is so much happening this week in Detroit – so much good stuff! World’s longest hopscotch! Anecdoted City at Salt & Cedar! Eastern Market After Dark! Take advantage of some of the great programming DC3 and partners put together.

Here is some additional info on the Rogue Panel:

The expansion of digital information and compression of time have affected all design practices. Our society desires instantaneous results, often impairing the design process and product. As Architecture lags behind design fields that can more easily streamline their methods, will The Architect’s role be increasingly minimized? How can Architecture infiltrate current informationally-driven social conditions? Are we on the precipice of an archiCULTURAL SHIFT? The archiCULTURAL SHIFT exhibition and panel discussion seek to address these issues.

Craig Borum
Founding Prinicipal, PLY Architecture

Stephen Zacks
Producer + Artistic Director, Flint Public Art Project

Scott Griffin
Nonopoly

Hayley Bierkle
Kaleidico

David Carleton
Partner + Executive Producer, Mindfield

Fernando Prieto
President, Doodle Home

Shel Kimen
Collision Works

More information is on the Detroit Design Festival website.

Many of you know us as The Detroit Hotel Project. It’s served us well, but it’s time to get to the real business now. Thanks for looking at our new website.

Our mission is to provide space for travelers and Detroit’s many diverse communities to gather, collaborate, and forge new futures through the telling of our stories. We offer a good night sleep, willing companions, and new worlds to explore and create together. Collision Works is our official name moving forward. Collisions can be scary; we don’t always know what’s going to happen. Collisions can be inspiring; sharing and learning shows us new paths. Collision also Works. It brings us together and that’s the first and most important part of building any community. Read the rest