Category Archives: The Business

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.

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.

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.

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

Start-ups are meant to evolve. Nine months ago we set out to make a new kind of meaningful hotel here in Detroit. We did all our research, found potential sites, formed partnerships, all the while challenging ourselves to rethink hotels entirely. In the end we’ve realized that what we are building isn’t just a new kind of hotel; it’s a Community Accelerator. Take a look at our new About Page to learn about what we think is a powerful strategic shift in the project. We hope you agree.

Instead of renting an office, this summer Brian Moore and I will be camped out in a variety of other organizations offices to learn about the different ways in which people work. It’s a way to see new parts of the city, meet new people, and study co-working at the same time. Our first stop is the University of Detroit Mercy Detroit Collaborative Design Center. We are so lucky. Not only is a bright open space with big windows and trees, but they also have important amenities like post-it notes, pens, and caffeine! We will be here for four weeks and update the blog and facebook page with how it’s going. For our next stop beginning mid July we are looking for a church or community center with WiFi. Do you have a recommendation for us?

In just a few weeks we have a superstar coming on board to help us grow the Detroit Hotel Project.  We are thrilled to be working with him. Throughout this process we have come across so many talented and inspiring and beautiful humans with smarts and solid intuition to boot. If you ever need a charge to remind you why you do what you do invite a bunch of people under 30 into the process. The perspectives are thoughtful, refreshing, and intelligent. If you are open it can change you in profound ways. We are so grateful to have met all these people. Read the rest

Last week The Detroit Hotel Project was officially incorporated in the fine state of Michigan. It was an exciting day. We opted to form an S Corporation instead of the hybrid limited profit corporate class of L3C for a few reasons. We love what the L3C represents — a company responsible to its community that functions kind of like an efficient non-profit. But we have also heard that there are ambiguities that make expansion difficult, even if one’s mission and values are in the right place. We are instead waiting for Michigan to approve the B Corporation, which is currently in state legislation. Read the rest