The Seven opens April 17 at 915 E. Drayton St. in Ferndale. That’s the fact. Here’s the context that makes it worth paying attention to.
The address puts the building in a pocket between Woodward Avenue and I-75, a corridor that’s been building a genuine commercial corridor of mixed-use development for years. Developers Tom Violante Jr. and Patrick VanLehn spent roughly $2 million acquiring the property. Then they spent “several multiples of that amount” making it into something. Do the arithmetic and you land north of $8 million total for a 21,000-square-foot space in Oakland County. That’s a serious commitment in a market where plenty of concepts fold before they fully open.
Violante Jr. ran Holiday Market, the gourmet grocery institution in Royal Oak that built its reputation over decades. VanLehn co-founded Sushi Kabar. Neither of them is guessing about the event venue industry. They know what customers expect when the price point is high and the occasion matters.
Eighteen months of construction. That’s how long it took 345 General Contracting, working from designs by Krieger Klatt Architects in Royal Oak and Studio H2G in Birmingham, to get the space where it needed to be. Local contractors handled significant portions of the interior work, which isn’t just a PR line in Ferndale. Residents there watch where the contracts go.
The food program centers on a 300-square-foot show kitchen built directly into the event floor. It’s not hidden. It performs. Chef Matt Barnes, who put in time at Vertical Detroit and the London Chop House, leads the culinary operation, with a 3,000-square-foot main kitchen supporting the production behind the scenes. The London Chop House carries real weight in Detroit dining history, and Barnes didn’t come up through hotel banquet operations. That’s a deliberate choice.
Deliberate.
Seven Bar and Lounge anchors the main level at 2,500 square feet, positioned next to the main ballroom. Upstairs, the Point Bar and Lounge runs 2,500 square feet on a mezzanine that looks down over the main stage. There’s also a 2,500-square-foot outdoor patio, a Founders Lounge, Club Room, and Salon Suites for private groups that don’t need the full floor. Seated capacity is 250. Standing receptions push the number to 375.
The AV buildout is what separates this from a nice banquet hall. Ninety multi-zoned speakers run throughout the building, and a 20-by-10-foot LED video wall handles custom visual production. For corporate clients comparing this against downtown Detroit venues, that’s not a consolation option. It’s competitive on specs. As DBusiness Magazine noted when covering the project, the build positions The Seven squarely in a market that’s been hungry for high-production event space outside the downtown core.
There’s also drive-in access for vehicles or oversized equipment. In the abstract that sounds like an odd amenity. In metro Detroit, where auto brands regularly need to stage vehicle reveals in environments that feel designed rather than industrial, it’s not a niche feature. It’s a business strategy.
Violante Jr. told reporters that the renovation costs reached “several multiples of that amount” beyond the acquisition price, a figure that’s striking when you consider the property had been sitting as unremarkable commercial space before they touched it. $40 million sounds enormous in isolation. $8 million for a 21,000-square-foot transformation in one of Oakland County’s highest-traffic corridors reads differently when you’re standing inside it.
Ferndale doesn’t get a lot of this scale. The city’s identity has always been built on independent businesses, walkable density, and residents who push back when development feels imported rather than local. The Seven is trying to thread that needle by spending on local contractors, hiring chefs with Detroit-specific credibility, and planting the operation at 915 E. Drayton St. rather than chasing a downtown address.
April 17 is the opening date. The math on whether this works takes longer than one night.
