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A vacant theater in Midtown is for sale after its current owner sat on it for six years, giving the Free Press an opportunity to write about its sketchy backstory, which includes several murders.
The owner of the Fine Arts Theatre — Birmingham pharmacist and Detroit real estate speculator Hany Boutros — bought the building for $1.3 million in 2016. As speculators do, today he's only sort of motivated to sell and lists the place for purchase or lease with no price tag.
"We’re kind of testing the market with it," (the listing agent said).
But stories about speculation are tired. Detroit history, however, stays wired.
The theater, opened in 1914, looks very cool in the Freep pics; it was designed by the same guy who did the Fox.
Though stripped and devoid of seats, what's left of the large chandelier hanging in the middle signals past glitz.
That glitz came with a criminal element:
Two previous owners were murdered, including one inside the theater's rear bathroom, and their cases were never solved.
Another past owner, George "G.G." Rider Jr., who is linked to the limited liability company that sold the theater to Boutros, is serving a life prison sentence for his role in a 2017 murder-for-hire slaying of a 34-year-old woman.
Starting in 1977, the Fine Arts Theatre was owned on and off by Joe Foster, known on the street as "DoDo."
Foster had significant real estate holdings in the city's Cass Corridor and Brush Park areas, as well as near the future Comerica Park. He was known as a paternal figure of sorts, despite his alleged drug trade involvement.
He was gunned down in October 1997 at age 56 when outside one of his Brush Park apartment buildings. Two months later, his girlfriend and business associate Bernice Johnson, whose name was on some of his properties, also was murdered.
Rider, the more recent ex-owner serving time for murder, put the theater in the care of his girlfriend when he did bits in prison.
In 2007, that woman, Valerie Atikian, was shot to death when she reportedly went to meet someone there who claimed they might want to rent it. Her body was found in the theater's bathroom. The case was never solved.
