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The restoration of an old jazz club in Detroit (video)

Jerry Balenger talks to a group from Grand Rapids about the restoration of Cliff Bell's jazz club in Detroit.
Lindsey Smith
/
Michigan Radio
Jerry Balenger talks to a group from Grand Rapids about the restoration of Cliff Bell's jazz club in Detroit.

Cliff Bell’s is one of the oldest Jazz clubs in the city - a little history from Cliff Bell's website:

Through the 30's 40's and 50's Cliff Bell's and the Town Pump Tavern anchored two ends of what was Detroit's busiest night crawl with clubs, pubs and Burlesques dotting Park Avenue. During the 70's and 80's the Club operated under a series of other names. Many remember The Winery, La Cave, or AJ's on the Park. In 1985 the famous club closed and remained empty until in late 2005.

Like a lot of places in Detroit, it was left empty for a long time. The plaster cracked, the ceiling leaked, but that all changed in 2005 when Paul Howard and Scott Lowell began the renovation of the shuttered club.

In this video, the owner of the building that houses Cliff Bell's talks about the restoration of the club.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=D30H9-sqUiA

This video was shot by Lindsey Smith, and produced by Juan Freitez.

Mark Brush was the station's Digital Media Director. He succumbed to a year-long battle with glioblastoma, an aggressive brain cancer, in March 2018. He was 49 years old.
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