Detroit — The online auction for one of downtown’s most photographed ruins — the former Michigan Theatre turned parking garage — that was set to start Tuesday morning has been canceled.
Auction.com no longer lists the potential sale of the Michigan Building, 220 Bagley. The auction was originally slated for July 15 to 17. Bidding was to have started at $1 million.
A representative from auction.com confirmed Tuesday the building will not be up for bid this week and no later date is currently set. No other information was available.
The once grandiose Michigan Theatre, opened in 1926, is now the parking garage connected to the 13-story Michigan Building.
The owner of the Michigan Building is listed as Bagley Acquisition Corp., according to the commercial real estate database CoStar.
The theater closed decades ago but the faded structure still remains in the parking garage and has been featured many times in books, magazines, films and television shows. That includes the films “8 Mile,” “Alex Cross,” “Transformers: Age of Extinction” and multiple episodes of the television show “Detroit 1-8-7.” The garage’s most recent film appearance may have been in “Only Lovers Left Alive.”
The Michigan Building was one of two historic downtown buildings up for auction on the site this month. The other building is the Detroit Club at Cass and Fort. The auction takes place July 28-30. The building is on the National Register of Historic Places. Bidding starts at $950,000.
In its prime, the club was visited by the likes of Franklin D. Roosevelt, Harry Truman, Empress Zita of Austria and the Duke of Windsor, as well as John Rockfeller, Lee Iacocca and Henry Ford II.
The 35,000 square-foot Detroit Club was bought by Emre Uralli, a Florida-based developer, in December.
