Inn Aims to Cash in on Brush Park Renewal, Asks $2.5 Million

If you've been keeping up with the rehab of Ransom Gillis house (as, ahem, we very eagerly have), perhaps you've become buy-curious about Brush Park. Luckily, the Inn at 97 Winder is for sale (again) at its owners' favorite asking price, a whopping $2.5 million. This price makes the listing the most expensive piece of residential property on the market in Detroit. As we first reported in 2011, the Victorian mansion built in 1876 is a total jaw-dropper: 11 bedrooms, 11.5 bathrooms and 11.000 square feet.

The place has everything you could dream of in a humungous 19th century mansion: French mansard roof, bay windows and lovingly restored floors in mahogany and maple. Owners Ghassan Yazbeck and Marilyn Nash-Yazbeck found the house on a bus tour in 1986. Since its construction by John Harvey, a pharmacist, the mansion has had many different incarnations—in the 1930s, it was a rooming house, and when the Yazbecks bought it, it was SRO housing in terrible disrepair. The couple spent $1 million restoring it before divorcing, and the house has wandered on and off the market for years.

If Nicole Curtis can't locate photos of Ransom Gillis' original interior, she might want to check out the inn. While the place still has a functioning website, post divorce, the Yazbecks have focused on their primary careers—he's a designer, she's a pharmacist—so renting a room isn't usually possible. While a stay at the inn probably isn't in the cards, photos show an opulent house, lavishly furnished and awash in expensive finishes and antiques. And like Ransom Gillis, 97 Winder has sweeping views of Ford Field and Comerica Park, more fireplaces than you can count on both hands, and a turret (accessible through one bedroom via a spiral staircase).

While Marilyn Nash-Yazbeck elects to focus on managing her own pharmacy business, a new owner might take advantage of all the work the Yazbecks put into making 97 Winder a functioning inn and start renting out rooms. Given that you can buy the 15-bedroom Fisher Mansion for $1.5 million, the Yazbecks' current ask seems like more a dream than a good starting point for negotiations. New investment in Brush Park may draw interest to the inn, but $2.5 million seems likely to make this home more of a beautiful fantasy than a real-world investment for potential buyers.

·Fisher Mansion Sale Falls Through, Relists for $1.549M [Curbed Detroit]
·$2.5 million price tag on Detroit mansion an eye-opener [Detroit News via Yahoo]
·Nicole Curtis' Ransom Gillis Tour Highlights Renewal [Curbed Detroit]