The Del-Mar has hosted a lot of evenings in its decades on the corner of Ashmun and Maple, but few quite like the one planned for Tuesday, October 27, 2026. Doors open at 5 p.m. for a free pre-premiere watch party celebrating Sault Ste. Marie's turn on Under the Radar Michigan, with the episode screening at 5:30 and complimentary appetizers on the tables. Drinks are available for purchase. There is no ticket, no cover, and no cap on who can walk in.
The episode itself is Season 15, Episode 12 of the Detroit PBS travel series, and it makes a strong case that the Soo has been hiding in plain sight. The show's own synopsis promises "haunted history walks, crepes with a cult following, a saloon that's stood for over a century, and outdoor adventures that will get your heart pumping" in "Michigan's oldest city" — a slightly spooky, seriously savory half hour. The local lineup named in the watch-party announcement reads like a downtown walking tour: Fudge Du Locke, Cultured Pop, Yooper Trading Co., the Del-Mar itself, and the Center for Freshwater Research and Education at Lake Superior State University.
That the party is being held at the Del-Mar is fitting, because the building has its own comeback story. It went up in 1950 as the Del Mar Hotel, an elegant address with an upscale restaurant on the main floor, a banquet room and cocktail lounge in the basement, and eighteen hotel rooms upstairs. An early advertisement summed up the pitch: "We're Famous for Tender Steaks, Fish and Chicken. Specializing in Home Made Pastries. Dancing nitely with Orchestra." Russ and Helen Wygant owned and operated it, drawing guests and musical acts from around the country, until they sold in 1977. What followed was a long drift — a succession of owners and business models, the hotel rooms closed, the restaurant reborn as a bar called Zim's under the Zimmerman brothers, and finally dark doors when COVID-19 arrived. One of the brothers died, the building sold again, and by late 2024 it sat vacant on a prominent downtown corner.
That November, Lynde and Brent Blair bought it. The couple had met decades earlier working their first restaurant jobs together — at a restaurant owned by Lynde's aunt and uncle — and had spent their lives in and around food service, though Lynde also put in about twenty years in daycare while they raised a family. "We were attracted to the building for its rich history, solid foundation and convenient location," Lynde Blair said. "It was always our dream to open a restaurant, but we know how much time and commitment it takes to run a successful business. We also wanted to raise our family, so it was put on hold. Now that our kids are older and Brent was approaching retirement, we found this building and decided the time was right." They restored the old name and set about restoring the old glory, with help from the Michigan Economic Development Corporation's Revitalization and Placemaking program and a Small Business Support Hub grant. The plan put a restaurant and event space on the lower level and six apartments upstairs — housing in a downtown that needs it, and a reactivated corner in a building that had been written off.
So the watch party doubles as a housewarming of sorts, for a restaurant that reopened by reclaiming its own history. The other names on the episode's call sheet carry similar weight. Fudge Du Locke is a seasonal Upper Peninsula institution, and the Center for Freshwater Research and Education is Lake Superior State's public-facing window on the Great Lakes — an appropriate thing to spotlight in a city whose entire identity is bound up with the river, the locks, and the water moving through them.
Under the Radar Michigan is itself a product of hard luck turned good. Longtime friends Jim Edelman and Tom Daldin both found themselves out of work amid advertising cutbacks, and the show grew out of that detour. Daldin hosts; Edelman is the producer behind the camera. It has been on the air since 2010 and has run to roughly two hundred episodes, produced by Detroit Public TV and carried on PBS stations across Michigan and into neighboring states and Canada. The premise has never changed: skip the obvious postcard shots and find the places Michiganders actually love. That the series is now in its fifteenth season and still finding towns it hasn't properly covered says something about how much is packed into the state — and something about how long Sault Ste. Marie waited for its close-up.
The episode premieres to the general audience after this screening, which makes the Del-Mar gathering a genuine first look rather than a rerun party. The appeal is simple: a free couple of hours, some appetizers, a cash bar, and the strange pleasure of watching your own town — your fudge shop, your crepe counter, your trading post, your research center, your hundred-year-old saloon — flicker past on a screen while the people who run those places sit a few tables away. Doors at 5, show at 5:30, done by 6:30. No reservation required.