May 19--The prototype for the "most important hotel in America" is sitting on a patch of grass at Eastern Market, says a national hotel guru. But to the throngs who will visit today's annual Flower Day at Eastern Market, it will look like a creatively customized shipping container.

The shipping container is a mini version of a hotel lobby as envisioned by Shel Kimen, 42, a Michigan State University graduate and former New York advertising executive. She is trying to raise $4 million to erect a 36-unit boutique hotel built from shipping containers on city-owned land nearby.

The first container, www.firstcontainer.com, already is a tourist stop. On Friday, travelers from Washington state and Toronto stopped by. Sharon Vanderkaay, a Detroit-born, Toronto-based architect, had read about Kimen's plan and asked Show Me Detroit tour operator Kim Rusinow to include it in a tour of Detroit places where entrepreneurs are making things.

Kimen has the "maker's spirit," said Vanderkaay, pointing out that her father was a mechanical engineer who made motors, valves and furniture. "She's making something out of what she can find, and she pulls people together."

The hoped-for hotel is called Detroit Collision Works, http://detroitcollisionworks.com, to signify the clash of old and new and the diverse stories that the community is welcome to tell and make -- either in the future or now at the first container, which will remain at the market through October. Kimen also promotes her project as a "Make and Stay" hotel.

The first container has been customized with windows, doors and an outside platform. The walls inside are patterned with wood pieces. The concierge desk comes from an estate sale. One outside wall is painted with a mural proclaiming "Story Box" because Kimen will have professional storytellers on site today who will encourage visitors to tell stories of their own.

All last week, Kimen said, passersby have stopped to ask questions.

"I get a lot of wide eyes," she said. "It's people bringing their kids by, young people, artists, people who work here -- they're all talking to me and each other.

"We've got a lot of good collision-ing going on," she quipped. "It's doing what it's supposed to do."

The mayor of Memphis, Tenn., has written Kimen to explore building a shipping container hotel there.

Tour operator Rusinow said she is including Kimen's model in a tour for the convention of the International Society of Travel and Tourism Educators, to be held in November in Detroit. Kimen has already presold 35 rooms at $250 and $275 for a yet-to-be determined night in her dream hotel.

But she needs to raise $4 million to build it, including buying the land from the city. Kimen has been living off her savings since leaving her New York advertising gig last year for Detroit. The project raised $40,000 last month through an online Kickstarter campaign, with donations coming from as far as Australia. Less than 10% of all Kickstarter campaigns (more than 40,000 to date) have raised more than $20,000.

Kimen said it has cost more than $50,000 to get this far and set up the first container, shipped in from New Jersey. Subsequent materials and containers will be all Michigan-produced or procured, said Kimen, adding that she hopes to recycle shipping containers. She is looking for partners and developers who share her vision -- and her sense of architectural, arty and recycled construction.

Eastern Market president Dan Carmody said his staff approached Kimen.

"The shipping containers project is a great reuse of something that's already been manufactured," Carmody said.

Kimen has an initial green light to buy property from Detroit near the northeast part of Eastern Market. It abuts the yet-to-be completed second phase of the Dequindre Cut, the old railroad trail that been transformed into a walking and biking path. She envisions hotel patrons being able to walk out the lobby door and onto the Dequindre Cut.

The project has grabbed the imagination of designers, artists, urban entrepreneurs and innovators and travel industry executives. The Free Press wrote about Kimen's entrepreneurial journey in December.

Small-hotel buff and blogger Greg Oates, a travel industry veteran, blogged recently about "5 Reasons Why Detroit Collision Works is the Most Important Hotel in America" at www.200rooms.com/?s=detroit.

Oates, the executive editor of corporate events planning magazine PreVue, said corporate and convention travelers are tiring of meetings in branded hotels with large ballrooms.

Kimen's hotel, he said, can make a stay in Detroit an integral part of experiencing the city.

"The next generation of corporate America is looking for something different," Oates said in a phone interview Thursday.

Kimen's project "is really unprecedented in the U.S.," he said. "There's nothing like this in size. We see lots of modern hotels in China, Dubai and Australia, and we say, 'Why isn't someone in the U.S. doing this?' "

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