Royal Oak tears down its Center Street garage and the Fresard clock tower, and asks developers what should come next

ROYAL OAK, Mich. — Two familiar structures in downtown Royal Oak are coming down this fall, and the city is asking developers what should take the place of one of them.

Demolition of the 1972 Center Street parking garage at Center and Third streets began in late September and should be finished by November, WXYZ reported. Isaac Kremer, executive director of the Downtown Development Authority, told the station the garage had safety problems and would cost more to repair than to tear down.

The city is collecting ideas for the 1.44-acre site through a request for information due in December. It is not a binding bid, and a public process would follow before anything is built. Ideas floated so far include housing, a new parking deck, shops and a boutique hotel, and the city's master plan calls for extending Third Street through the property. Kremer called the site a "catalyst" that could shape downtown for the next 50 years.

A few blocks away, crews began taking down the former Fresard clock tower at Woodward Avenue and W. Harrison in mid-October, the Oakland County Times reported. Salenbien Trucking & Excavating of Dundee won the job with a low bid of $74,426, under an $85,000 federal Community Development Block Grant budget.

The 44-foot tower went up in 1999 under an agreement with a private partnership and stood partly in the public right-of-way. The City Commission unanimously voted in 2018 to have it removed, but nothing happened until the neighboring property went to the city through tax foreclosure in 2022. A public safety complaint this year about a loose metal frame and precast panels pushed the commission to choose demolition over repair, according to the Times. The city plans to plant grass on the site and has no other use planned.

Taxpayers can watch both sites closely. The garage land is one of the largest city-controlled parcels downtown, and how it is sold or leased will shape parking, traffic and the tax base for years.

Sources:
WXYZ, “Royal Oak weighs future of former Center Street garage site as demolition continues,” Oct. 12, 2026, https://www.wxyz.com/news/royal-oak-weighs-future-of-former-center-street-garage-site-as-demolition-continues
Oakland County Journal, “Royal Oak's Fresard clock tower comes down; Center Street garage site open for ideas,” Oct. 14, 2026, https://oaklandcountyjournal.com/articles/royal-oak-fresard-clock-tower-center-street-garage
Oakland County Times, “Former Fresard Clock Tower Coming Down Eight Years After Royal Oak Commission's Initial Decision,” Oct. 13, 2026, https://oaklandcounty115.com/2026/10/13/former-fresard-clock-tower-coming-down-eight-years-after-royal-oak-commissions-initial-decision/
City of Royal Oak, “Center Street RFI,” https://www.romi.gov/1946/Center-Street-RFI
Photo: Lrgjr72, “Downtown Royal Oak, Michigan.jpg,” June 19, 2020, Wikimedia Commons, CC BY-SA 4.0, cropped and color-adjusted, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Downtown_Royal_Oak,_Michigan.jpg

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Tags: Royal Oak · Downtown Royal Oak · Development · Parking · Woodward Avenue