The Lester Hotel was one of more than a dozen smaller hotels that populated the area around Grand Circus Park in the 1910s and 1920s that today consist of parking lots behind the Fox and Fillmore theaters.
Before the hotel, the site was home to two single-story, wood-framed dwellings, which according to Sanborn Fire Insurance maps, dated back to before 1884.
What was originally the Hotel Iroquois was first announced Nov. 28, 1915, in The Detroit News, which stated that “plans are in progress and contracts will soon be let for a modern fireproof hotel to be erected on the south side of Columbia Street near Clifford” street. The hotel was owned and operated by Sam Satovsky. The architect for the seven-story, 70- to 80-room hotel (numbers varied in reports) was Joseph P. Jogerst. Construction was to begin in December, and the hotel was expected to open sometime in the spring, though it would miss that mark.
Construction was ongoing as of Feb. 13, 1916. Sub-contractors for the building included the Levine Bros. for masonry; Lewis Hall Iron Works for steel; the Maul Co. for stonework; L. Bixby for carpentry; and Simonds Heating & Specialty Co. for heating, The hotel was built at a cost of $35,000, the equivalent of about $1.12 million in 2026, when adjusted for inflation.
The hotel opened in the fall of 1916. Exactly when the hotel opened is unknown, however the first mention of the hotel after it opened was on Oct. 25, 1916.
Just under a year later, in August 1917, the hotel was acquired for $25,000 - about $714,000 in 2026 - by W. L. Perkins, formerly of the Crawford House in Ontario, with the sale being conducted by Detroit Business Sellers. This means that Satovsky took a substantial loss on his initial investment.
The last mention that can be found of the building as the Hotel Iroquois was on July 21, 1927, in the Detroit Times. It appears that sometime between July and October 1927, the hotel was acquired by Polish immigrant Lester Fidyk, and he renamed the hotel after himself. The earliest mention of it under the name Lester Hotel was Oct. 5 of that year, also in the Detroit Times.
The crime boss
Sometime in the 1950s or 1960s, the hotel came under the ownership of Frank “Rah-Rah” Randazzo, the “reputed king of Detroit's Mafia prostitution racket,” who turned it, and the nearby Rex Hotel at 120 W. Montcalm St., into part of a flourishing prostitution ring, according to a report in the Sept. 25, 1975, edition of The Detroit News.
Exactly when he acquired the hotel is unknown, however he was identified as the owner of the hotel in October 1963 during a Senate committee on organized crime, where he was identified as a mafia section leader. He was also identified in that inquiry as the owner of three other hotels, including the Rex, the Seneca at 2750 Third St., and the Paris No. 3 at 60 Henry St., all of which were known to the Detroit Police as dens of prostitution in the 1960s.
The article published in The Detroit News on Sept. 25, 1975, stated that the Michigan National Bank was trying to seize everything Randazzo owned, from his cars to his house to three rundown hotels he owned, including the Lester, the Rex and the Piquette Hotel at 52 Piquette St. (the Seneca and Paris had been closed and demolished by this point). The bank was seeking to foreclose on the properties after he and other family members defaulted on loans totaling $257,000 (about $1.65 million in 2026), of which only $161,000 had been paid.
The article described the Lester Hotel as having “tiny, squalid rooms that rent for $5 a night, and a self-described ‘hustler’ in the lobby who calls himself ‘D.J.’ and promises to provide ‘anything you want – from broads to drugs’ for a fee.” That $5 a night is about $32 in 2026 valuation.
The same article went on to explain that bellhops working here were “paid” $25 a week for tax purposes, though all that money would have to go back to Randazzo, and the bellhops lived off of commissions from selling illegal whisky and procuring prostitutes for the guests, with the money being split 60-40 between the prostitutes and the bellhops. This was apparently at one time such a lucrative deal that, according to the Detroit Police Department, there was a waiting list for bellhops at the hotel.
The triple killing
Less than a year later, on July 11, 1976, Randazzo, according to newspaper reports, met up with Ernest Kanakis, a convicted gambler who allegedly owed him money, at an abandoned gas station on Warren Avenue at Chalmers Street around 10 p.m. that night. According to Kanakis, they were meeting because Randazzo had a safe that he wanted Kanakis to dispose of. Randazzo walked up to the gas station and got into Kanakis’ car, where he gave Kanakis instructions to get to his home at 4355 Kensington. Once there, Randazzo told him to pull into the driveway, about parallel with the side door, leading to the basement. After that, Randazzo told him to open the trunk, which Kanakis presumed was for putting the safe in. After that, the men walked into the house and into the basement. When Kanakis entered the basement, he was grabbed from behind by Randazzo who then shouted, “Kill him! Kill him!” That's when two more men, Nick Ditta and Joseph Siragusa, allegedly came running from the laundry room, one of them armed with an ice pick. A struggle ensued in which Kanakis was stabbed in the arm with an ice pick and ended when Kanakis pulled out a concealed 38.-caliber pistol and shot all three of his attackers.
After the shootings, Kanakis fled, driving to his mother’s house, where a friend took him to Martin Place East Hospital in suburban Madison Heights, Mich.
At the house, Ditta, managed to get upstairs and call 911 despite having been shot through the lung. Police were sent to the house, where they found Ditta slumped over by the phone, barely alive. Randazzo and Siragusa were both dead in the basement. Ditta was taken to St. John’s Hospital, where he died at 11:25 p.m. that night. In the basement, a loaded .32 caliber automatic and two ice picks were found, as well as rope and tape in the laundry room.
Several questions were brought up during the investigation and trial. The first and most prominent being why Randazzo took Kanakis to his home in the first place, as according to an unnamed detective “it doesn't make sense that three old-timers with all that street moxie would lure the guy to Randazzo’s home to snuff him.”
A second question was how Kanakis was able to get a concealed-carry permit. At first, the reason was disputed, however, during investigations, it came to light that the U.S. Organized Crime Strike Force aided him in getting a permit, which was issued July 20 1971. This was in return for Kanakis agreeing to testify against alleged mafia kingpins Anthony and Vito Gaicalone in a federal loansharking trial. The Detroit Police Department also helped to get him a permit asking the gun board to ignore a letter urging a denial of the permit. Though Jesse Coulter of the Detroit Police Organized Crime sector denied such involvement.
During the trial, a rumor came up that Kanakis was not alone when he left Randazzo’s house, as according to a neighbor, she saw two people in a car in Randazzo’s driveway when it drove off. This led to speculation from police sources that Kanakis may have been followed by a federal agent. though no information could be found to corroborate this in newspaper reports. Information did come out after the shooting that Kanakis called Bertie Wriston, a FBI special agent, after which he saw Kanakis at the hospital where his wife gave the agent an envelope with two phone numbers, one of which had been identified as an FBI agent’s number. The letter was addressed to a second FBI agent, “Norm L.” The letter read, “I am leaving the house at 10 p.m. to meet Frank Randazzo to help him take a safe from the house. I don’t know all the details. In case it’s a trap, you will know about it,” according to the Aug. 19, 1976, edition of The Detroit News. The agent went to a house on Chalmers Street and called police, telling them a man had been stabbed. The agent met with police at the Chalmers address and later at police headquarters.
Kanakis would maintain this same series of events throughout the trial and would eventually be found not guilty on three counts of second-degree murder on April 12, 1977.
After Randazzo’s death, the ownership of the hotel was transferred to his wife, Jeannie Randazzo.
From prostitution to parking
Information gets scarce at this point. By 1984, the hotel had been renamed to the Phoenix Hotel and was advertising rooms and apartments for rent. The ads said the rooms were quiet, clean and near the Fox Theatre for $5 a night and up, about $16 in 2026. The Phoenix also was accepting tenants on welfare.
At 12:15 p.m. Nov. 27, 1991, a demonstration made up of about 12 people was held outside the hotel to protest the eviction of 18 tenants, most of whom were General Assistance recipients, which helped them pay their $200 monthly rent, as the hotel was threatening to close. The landlord, Jeannie Randazzo, denied writing letters to the tenants to vacate the building and threatening to turn off utilities, according to a Nov. 27, 1991, article in the Detroit Free Press. This article appears to be the last mention of the hotel in the newspapers, suggesting that the building probably closed shortly thereafter.
Sometime between the winter of 1995 and 1997, the building and the rest of the block - including the Rex Hotel and the McKenzie Apartments - was torn down for an empty lot. The site today is Prime Parking lot No. 2, owned by the Ilitch Family.