The Backstory

Daxton Hotel had been a longtime dream of local entrepreneur Mark Mitchell, who has built a successful career in creating visions and making them reality. The founder of Visiting Physicians Association (which expanded into the holding company HarmonyCares) and the Mitchell Family Office, a management platform that has invested in more than 20 companies across a wide swath of industries, has entrepreneurial roots that go back to when he was a 15-year-old launching a landscaping business.

“I had some friends that were literally pushing lawn mowers, doing lawns around their subdivision, and I thought, ‘They can do it better than this,’” Mitchell recalls. “And then my dad taught me as long as you work hard and hire good people and work alongside them, they’d work really hard for you.” could have been locals meeting for happy hour. There was also a couple; the woman was from Dearborn and had been to Madam and the Geode Bar & Lounge many times. She wanted to bring her companion there — he was from Chicago and in Birmingham for the first time — because she likes it so much. The restaurant and bar see more locals than travelers, Griffin says.

When Mitchell told his dad he wanted to start his own venture, he told his son that for every hour Mitchell worked, he would match what he made. In addition to that seed funding, he gave him his 16th birthday present early, a used truck.

Mitchell ran the business after school and through his second year of college at the University of Detroit Mercy, where he majored in economics. He sold the business for a sum in the “hundreds of thousands,” quite the payday for a college sophomore.

Mitchell’s work in the medical management field has led him all over the globe, and his international travels inspired him to bring the type of hotel he’d stay at, such as The Peninsula in Beverly Hills, California, where the staff remembers your name, to Birmingham.

“The whole goal with Daxton Hotel was to make an architectural and design experience, so every time you walked into a room or turned a corner, you had an ‘Oh, wow’ experience,” Mitchell says.

Part of that “Oh, wow” experience comes from the hundreds of art pieces all over the hotel, from the custom light fixture in Madam that resembles a pearl necklace to the artwork in the guest rooms. (See the "Feast for the Eyes" sidebar for more.)

It was always a given that Daxton Hotel — which was five years in the making, from design to construction — would be in Birmingham, with Mitchell on a mission to make the metro Detroit suburb a destination on par with the top cities in the world.

“I wanted to bring something to the local community. I wanted something that the community could be really proud to stand beside and something that people would come to,” he says.

Daxton recently expanded its seat offerings in the bar area by adding more tables and chairs near the front windows, creating a more welcoming atmosphere with a unique metropolitan feel where people come and go as well as sit and enjoy cocktails. For us, it had the feel of being on vacation and discovering a fun, upscale bar where the action was.

Since its opening, Madam has evolved into a “place for people to come and gather,” Mitchell says.

“[The menu] was a little bit more eclectic when it started out,” Mitchell says. “Some of the items now are, let’s say a little bit more mainstreamed, which is nice for people because a lot of times there are great restaurants, but they’re destination [restaurants] where you would only go maybe once a year or twice a year. Originally, that’s kind of how we saw the restaurant. And then [Madam] was so welcomed by the community and everybody around [that] it ended up being a gathering place. So now we have people that frequent literally weekly.”

298 S. Old Woodward Ave., Birmingham; 248-2834200. B,D Daily. L Mon.-Fri. BR Sat.-Sun.

BY BLAKE MILLER PHOTOS BY GINA VALENTE