Jan. 15, 2004 - Although he lives and works in the Miami area, developer Don Peebles always listened closely when someone mentioned Detroit.

Peebles, among the leading African-American real estate executives in the United States, spent five years of his childhood in Motown. Memories of the city were important to him. So, when two acquaintances separately mentioned he ought to look at investment opportunities in southeastern Michigan, he spent part of a vacation touring available properties here.

The result is a planned $35-million renovation of Southfield's Ambassador Hotel, which Peebles announced in October he was buying.

The Ambassador opened in 1974 at 16400 J.L. Hudson Drive as a Westin Hotel. It is 14 stories and boasts 430 guestrooms, more than 17,000 square feet of meeting and banquet space, food and beverage facilities, shops and a fitness center, on nine acres.

By renovating the Ambassador, near Northland Mall, not far from the Detroit border, Peebles aims to capture a share of the Southfield business-meeting market now dominated by the Westin Hotel in the Town Center complex.

"I think we'll have the premier meeting hotel in that market, and there's clearly a demand for it," Peebles says. "The Westin has had that upscale business travelers market almost to themselves. I felt that we would be able to capture the top end."

As a bonus, he hopes that, by adding "a little bit of pizzazz or sex appeal," the Ambassador will capture some of the weekend dining and entertainment trade. He calls the property "a tremendous opportunity."

Peebles' reintroduction to Detroit came almost by accident. Attending a business conference in Dallas, Peebles met a General Motors Corp. executive who touted Detroit's comeback. Later, at a different conference back in Miami, a commercial broker did the same thing.

They found a receptive listener.

"I had such fond memories as a child of Detroit," he says. "I kind of paid attention."

He checked out various investment sites in the area before settling on the Ambassador.

"I think Southfield has the best of both worlds," he says. "It's near downtown, and yet it's also accessible to major corporate centers and to large parts of metropolitan Detroit."

Chuck Skelton, a hotel consultant with Ann Arbor-based Hospitality Advisers Inc. , says the Ambassador makes a good candidate for a makeover.

"The thing's built like the Rock of Gibraltar," Skelton said. "In terms of redevelopment of a property, that one certainly represents a good opportunity."

But he cautioned, "Certainly the group meeting business has been a difficult one for the last four years. There are some signs that that is starting to come back. So the timing of this thing could be great, if in fact it does come back."

If anyone can succeed with the project, it could be Peebles, 44, who has a track record of real estate success.

Raised in Washington, D.C., and Detroit in a single-parent household, R. Donahue Peebles, now president and CEO of Peebles Atlantic Development Corp., served as a U.S. House of Representatives page while in high school, sparking a lifelong interest in politics. He's served as a board member of the National Democratic Leadership Forum and a fund-raiser for candidates such as former President Bill Clinton and former New York Mayor David Dinkins.

College didn't interest him much; he left Rutgers University after one year to return home to Washington to start his own real estate firm. Starting as an appraiser of houses in the District of Columbia, within seven years he had negotiated his first development deal, a 100,000-square-foot office building in Washington. From 1984 to 1988, Peebles was chairman of the District of Columbia real estate tax appeal board.

In 1997, Peebles moved his corporate headquarters to Miami to pursue deals there.

Peebles lives in Miami with his wife, Katrina, and the couple's young son and daughter. In addition to his real estate work, he also chairs the Greater Miami Convention & Visitors Bureau.

Although Peebles has been honored by a wide variety of African-American publications and groups, he acknowledged last year that he's not comfortable being known as a black developer.

"One of the things that's taken me aback more than anything else is the tendency of this marketplace to classify people," he told the Miami Herald last summer. "I'm an African-American developer. My hotel is an African-American hotel. It was race that kind of defined me."

He added, "Is the community prepared to view me as just a business person?"

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