Those demographics and sales numbers are what interested Luke Crosland, head of The Crosland Group, and why he’s putting all his 20-year-old company’s effort into the lavish, five-story ilume development. Crosland is a burley, fastidious, dapper man with perfect hair and a taste for fine wines. He believes a project in a gay enclave like Cedar Springs wouldn’t work without local support. So when the Tom Thumb on Douglas was demolished in 2007, he bought that property and the adjacent Catalina Townhouses.
Crosland hired Travis Terry, a Colorado designer, to fine tune his working design for the project. The original clean lines, evocative of classic 1940s style, are now meshed with modern landscaping and outdoor amenities in the living spaces like outdoor kitchens, large cabanas, and several grill pits surrounding the pool in the courtyard and its hot tubs. And the materials—stucco, steel, arca stone, and Texas limestone—make it feel both contemporary and urban. All for a reasonable average of $1,300 a month.
On the ground floor, ilume will have 23,000 square feet of retail space. Above that sit 316 apartment units. The retail portion and the Cedar Springs-facing residential section—76 units—should be open by summer. Retail tenants signed to date include Dish, a “modern-day supper club” from the same man who conceived Hotel ZaZa’s Dragonfly; Red Mango, the latest competitor in the resurgent frozen yogurt trend; and the perfectly named Beyond the Box, an organic, high-end concept that feels like a hybrid of Eatzi’s and a 7-Eleven.
