Buyer sought for Detroit’s Dutch Girl Donuts site
Posted By: The Detroit News on April 10, 2023. For more information, please click here to read the source article.
The Dutch Girl Donuts building in Detroit is up for sale, the longtime owners’ family announced Monday on its Facebook page.
“Highest and best offers will be considered,” the post said.
Emailed offers for the approximately 1,500-square-foot property at 19000 Woodward Avenue are due by Friday.
“This is our attempt to draw in anybody that’s serious, anybody that’s legitimate,” said JoHanna Timmer Parrow, whose parents owned the shop. “At a minimum, we’re looking to sell the building. And ideally if Dutch Girl Donuts could live on to be everything it can be, that would be amazing.”
The business closed in September 2021 after three-quarters of a century, weeks before owner Gene Timmer died following a cancer battle. His wife, Lauren, died in July. Gene Timmer’s parents founded Dutch Girl Donuts in 1947.
Long housed in a blue-and-white structure, the eatery earned renown for its popular assortments, including glazed crullers.
“Making that decision to close ― it was very hard,” Parrow said. “At that time we were hoping it was just going to be temporary, but it’s been very difficult to find consistent and reliable staff and team members. And every time we’ve discussed opening it up again, that’s one of the biggest challenges.”
Others have expressed interest in buying the building in the last year but never followed through, Parrow said.
She declined to disclose the sale price but noted the family has “seen offers all over the map. Right now we’re just going to entertain the highest, the best, the strongest offer. We’re going to be acting swiftly to make a decision because it is so emotional for our family. … It’s taken us a long time to get to this point because we are so attached to it.”
Parrow notes the property is on a well-traveled corridor and not far from Amazon’s planned fulfillment center on the old Michigan State Fairgrounds.
“There is so much potential,” she said. “It just needs the right person to pick it up and put the right energy into it and give it a rebirth.”
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