Ferndale just got a serious event venue. The Seven opens April 17 at 915 E. Drayton St., tucked between Woodward Avenue and I-75, and it’s the kind of build-out that makes you stop and do the math on what it actually cost to pull off.

The short answer: a lot. Developers Tom Violante Jr. and Patrick VanLehn paid roughly $2 million for the property, then spent “several multiples of that amount” on the renovation. Call it north of $8 million when you work through the arithmetic. For a 21,000-square-foot space that sat as just another commercial building in one of Oakland County’s busiest corridors, that’s a real bet on metro Detroit’s appetite for upscale events.

Violante Jr. isn’t new to the food and hospitality business. He ran Holiday Market, the gourmet grocery operation in Royal Oak that built a loyal following over decades. VanLehn co-founded Sushi Kabar. So this isn’t two guys with money and a concept. They know the industry.

What They Built

Two floors. Eighteen months of construction. 345 General Contracting handled the build, working alongside Krieger Klatt Architects out of Royal Oak and Studio H2G in Birmingham for the design. The interiors pulled in several local contractors from the immediate area, which matters in Ferndale, where residents notice when outside money makes an effort to stay local.

The centerpiece of the food program is a 300-square-foot show kitchen built directly into the event floor. It’s not a kitchen you glimpse through a door. It’s the show. Chef Matt Barnes, who logged time at Vertical Detroit and the London Chop House, leads the culinary program. A 3,000-square-foot main kitchen backs him up.

Barnes is the right hire for what they’re trying to do. The London Chop House carries serious weight in Detroit dining history, and Vertical Detroit pushed fine dining in a city that critics used to write off. He’s not coming from a hotel banquet operation. That’s intentional.

The Space Itself

Seven Bar and Lounge anchors the main floor at 2,500 square feet, right next to the main ballroom. Upstairs, the Point Bar and Lounge sits at the same square footage, overlooking the main stage from a mezzanine perch. There’s also a 2,500-square-foot outdoor patio, Club Room and Salon Suites for smaller private groups, and a Founders Lounge.

The AV setup is genuinely impressive. Ninety multi-zoned speakers push audio throughout the building, and a 20-by-10-foot LED video wall handles custom visuals. For corporate events, product launches, and private parties that need production value, that’s competitive with Detroit’s downtown venues. Not just close. Competitive.

Capacity sits at 250 for seated events and 375 for strolling receptions. The space can also accommodate drive-in access for vehicles or large equipment. That’s a detail that sounds odd until you picture an auto brand wanting to debut a new model in a designed space rather than a parking structure. In metro Detroit, that’s not a niche use case.

Why Ferndale, Why Now

Ferndale has been doing the slow, unglamorous work of building a genuine commercial corridor along Nine Mile for years. But the Drayton Street location is more industrial in character, closer to the freeway interchange, which is exactly what you want for a venue pulling guests from across the region. Easy in, easy out. Parking that doesn’t require a three-block walk.

The venue is expected to create 40 full and part-time jobs, which matters in a city of about 20,000 people where every hospitality position counts.

The event venue industry has been consolidating around spaces that can do multiple things: corporate, social, culinary, production. The old model of a blank room with folding chairs and a drop ceiling isn’t competitive anymore, especially against what Detroit proper has built along the riverfront and in Midtown.

As DBusiness Magazine first reported, Violante and VanLehn describe The Seven as a deliberate departure from traditional large-scale event spaces. That framing could sound like marketing. The build-out suggests they mean it.

Watch for how the food program lands. That’s what separates a well-designed event box from something worth booking twice. Barnes has the resume. The show kitchen concept puts the food front and center rather than treating it as a logistics problem. If the cooking holds up at scale, The Seven could pull corporate clients who currently default to downtown Detroit properties by habit.

Opening night is April 17. Worth making the drive up Woodward to see what $8-plus million looks like when it’s finished.