Ann Arbor Honors Black Business Pioneer Adeline Thompson With New Housing Tower

The Adeline, a planned 330-unit apartment community at 350 S. Fifth Ave., broke ground Monday as a joint project of the Ann Arbor Housing Commission and Related Midwest. (Rendering by Related Midwest and SmithGroup)

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	Adeline married Robert (Long) Thompson, Jr. on December 25, 1943 in Ann Arbor, Michigan. They owned DeLong's Pit BBQ restaurant on Detroit Street from 1964 until 2001. (Family photos)
	Ann Arbor Honors Black Business Pioneer Adeline Thompson With New Housing Tower Jean Davis - Local/State Tell Us Detroit News Bureau ANN ARBOR - A new 20-story affordable housing development in downtown Ann Arbor will bear the name of Adeline Thompson, a late Black businesswoman whose restaurant became a gathering place and lifeline for generations of local residents. The Adeline, a planned 330-unit apartment community at 350 S. Fifth Ave., broke ground Monday as a joint project of the Ann Arbor Housing Commission and Related Midwest. The estimated $225 million development is intended to expand affordable housing in one of Michigan’s most expensive rental markets. The building honors Thompson and her husband, Robert Thompson, who opened DeLong’s Bar-B-Q Pit in 1964 in a converted gas station at 314 Detroit St., across from the Ann Arbor Farmers Market. The restaurant operated for 37 years and stood among Ann Arbor’s best-known historic Black-owned businesses. For Thompson, the restaurant was more than a business. Her granddaughter, Angela Davis, said DeLong’s became a center of hospitality, support and community connection at a time when Black Ann Arbor residents often faced barriers to equal opportunity and acceptance. “Growing up, I witnessed what authentic community leadership looked like through my grandparents,” Davis said during the groundbreaking ceremony. She described her grandmother’s example as one built on welcoming people, treating them with dignity and meeting them where they were. The restaurant attracted a broad mix of customers during its decades in business, including blues musician B.B. King and boxer Joe Frazier. Thompson died in 2017 at age 92. Her legacy, family members said, continues through the people she fed, employed and welcomed at DeLong’s. The decision to name the development The Adeline links Ann Arbor’s present-day housing crisis with a deeper history of Black entrepreneurship and neighborhood life in the city. Davis said the name is especially fitting because the project’s purpose reflects her grandmother’s values. The new development is expected to provide housing for people who might otherwise be priced out of downtown Ann Arbor, where the cost of living has increasingly displaced lower-income residents and workers. “She saw them and met them where they were at,” Davis said. “This here is significant to this community because now the barriers are dropped. We’re trying to bring people back here, and a lot of people are trying to find an affordable house to live in.” The Adeline is expected to become both a major addition to Ann Arbor’s skyline and a public tribute to a Black woman whose business helped create community at a time when such spaces were scarce.