Drive north on Franklin Road past Square Lake and you would not know anything is coming. The frontage is still wooded, still quiet, still the kind of stretch where a car slows down because a family of deer might step out. But since January, that patch of forest has been the subject of a string of packed public meetings, a fraud allegation, and at least two different sets of building specs depending on which document you read. If you live in the Bloomfield Hills area and have only caught fragments of this story from a neighbor or a Facebook group, here is the actual record, in order, including what remains unresolved.
The project is called Bloomfield Hollow, and it comes from Zack Sklar, the chef and restaurateur behind Beau's Grillery and Mex in Bloomfield Hills, Social in Birmingham, and Como's in Ferndale. Sklar also runs Cutting Edge Cuisine, a catering company marking its twentieth anniversary this year with a client list that includes Michigan Central Station and luxury brands like Lamborghini and Bentley. His pitch, first reported by the Detroit News in January, was for a 30,000-square-foot event venue on 30 acres of forest off Franklin Road, designed with New York-based Joel Dixon, whose studio has worked on Auberge Resorts Collection and Four Seasons properties. The plan called for a sunken amphitheater, a glass-enclosed greenhouse, and a quarter-mile scenic drive through the trees to reach the entrance, all built around a stated goal of disturbing as little of the old-growth canopy as possible.
Worth pausing on the address itself, because it explains why this story belongs in a Bloomfield Hills conversation at all. The parcel sits in Bloomfield Township, not the city of Bloomfield Hills, but the two share zip codes, school boundaries, and a Woodward Avenue identity that most residents do not separate in daily life. A mailing address that says Bloomfield Hills does not guarantee you are inside the city limits. This project is a township matter, decided by the township planning commission, but it sits close enough to the city that anyone driving Franklin Road on a normal week will feel the outcome either way.
The numbers have not stayed still
The project's own specifications have shifted more than once, as the table below shows.
| Detail | As first reported, January 2026 | As of the June 2026 hearing |
|---|---|---|
| Guest capacity | Up to 1,000 for strolling events, 650 seated | Revised down to about 600 |
| Building and site size | 30,000 square feet on 30 to 31 acres | A separate township filing that same season cited 15,815 square feet on an 18-acre parcel |
| Vote status | Passed an early design review stage | No new hearing date set |
That middle row is not a typo on my part. Downtown Publications, covering a February 16 planning commission meeting, described a 15,815-square-foot hall on 18 acres, while the Detroit News, DBusiness, and Hour Detroit all reported a 30,000-square-foot venue on roughly 30 acres around the same period. Whether that reflects two different drafts of the same proposal or inconsistent reporting on a moving target, neighbors say they have not had a stable set of facts to react to.
Two meetings, no final project decision
The project reached its first real test on February 2, when the planning commission gave it an initial design review. Two weeks later, on February 16, the commission was asked to approve a zoning text amendment that would have allowed the venue to exist under current rules. It did not pass. Commissioners voted 5 to 0 to table both the amendment and the site plan review, sending Sklar back to the table with residents.
The February 16 meeting ran long, and it was not gentle. Neighbors who live within a few hundred feet of the property argued that the setback, even with added trees, was not enough distance from a venue built for hundreds of guests and alcohol service. Others pointed to the roughly 496 trees marked for removal in early filings, a number that became a rallying point because dozens were labeled landmark or protected. Planning Commission member Bruce Selik, who has served on the board for fifteen years, called it the most contentious meeting he had ever attended. Township Trustee Valerie Murphy told the room she did not think the community wanted to see this in anyone's backyards.
Sklar's own framing, offered in the initial press rollout, was that the region lacked a venue built for 600 to 700 people for a sit-down dinner outside of a hotel ballroom. That may be true as a market gap. It is a separate question from whether Franklin Road is the right place to close it, and that question remains unresolved.
Summer brought a new complication
By June, the fight had moved past noise and traffic into something more pointed. At a June 15 public hearing, resident Brett Northcutt accused the development team of submitting a falsified real estate document to the planning commission. He said nobody, not one person in the township, noticed it was completely fake and made-up for over a month. Sklar's attorney disputed the fraud characterization, describing it instead as a mistake that would be verified, though the specifics of what document was in question and how it was corrected were not fully aired at the meeting.
As WXYZ reported, Northcutt said months had passed since the commission tabled the development and that Sklar's response was a two-hour open house at which he refused residents' major requests.
His account helps explain the frustration behind the fraud claim: residents felt unheard despite months of process, and that frustration has become as much a part of this story as the venue itself.
The commission's action that night was narrow. According to ClickOnDetroit's coverage, the planning commission voted to allow a banquet space use within the relevant zoning district in principle, but stopped short of voting for or against Bloomfield Hollow specifically. Township officials said they needed more time to review the material in front of them. No new hearing date had been set as of that report.
What this actually means if you live nearby
As of the most recent public reporting on this project, from that mid-June hearing, no new vote date had been set and no resolution to the fraud dispute had been made public. No later township notice or news report about the project's status appears in the sources cited here. The available reporting describes a 5-to-0 vote to table the amendment and site plan, shifting project specifications, and a disputed allegation that a real estate document was falsified.
For anyone whose daily routine touches that stretch of Franklin Road, near Square Lake and not far from the Bloomfield Town Square shopping center, the practical takeaway is patience paired with attention. Township planning commission and board of trustees meetings are public, and agendas are posted through the township's own notice system before each session. If Bloomfield Hollow comes back for another vote, that is where it will surface first, not in a press release.
I follow local land use fights like this one for the same reason I follow school boundary changes and road projects: because they shape what it actually feels like to live somewhere, long before any of it shows up in a listing description. If you want to talk through what a development like this might mean for a specific block or a specific home, or if you are simply trying to make sense of what is happening in the neighborhoods I work in every day, reach out. You can find neighborhood-level updates and more on the Bloomfield Hills community page, and I am always glad to talk through what is actually happening on the ground, not just what a rendering promises.
Abby Kushner is a real estate professional serving Birmingham, Bloomfield Hills, Huntington Woods, and the surrounding Metro Detroit suburbs. If you have questions about this project, this neighborhood, or anything else shaping life in the area, you can reach out here.
