The Renaissance Center, GM’s downtown Detroit headquarters with its distinctive outline of towers forming a familiar part of the “Motor City” skyline, continues to be nearly deserted compared to its pre-COVID hustle and bustle, as newly available, objectively collected statistics on the complex’s daily and yearly foot traffic confirms.
According to Crain’s Detroit Business, statistics from Placer.ai show just how much the Renaissance Center is only a shadow of its former self – though the decline actually started before the pandemic.
Traffic and occupancy at the location faltered somewhat in 2019, before COVID was even on the horizon. The number of daily workers at the Renaissance Center shrank by almost a fifth between 2018 and 2019, declining from 9,543 to 7,713 on average. With visitors figured in, the daily traffic shrank by a little more than 11 percent in the same period.
The number of workers at the Renaissance Center fell off a cliff with the advent of COVID, bottoming out at just 937 in 2021, a tenth of 2018 figures. Numbers have rebounded somewhat, but the daily average is just 1,539 workers on-site for the first nine months of 2024.
The recovery of downtown Detroit in general has actually hampered a return to previous levels of activity at the Center. Brokerage director Peter McGrath observes that “as downtown perked up, it created a more competitive environment that the Renaissance Center really just couldn’t match,” adding it is common knowledge “that GM has wanted to pull up stakes for quite some time.”
The General plans to move its HQ to the 10th floor and 11th floor of a new office building, Hudson’s Detroit. Part of the ground floor may also be leased to provide showrooms for GM vehicles. The move will take place in 2025 and fully vacate the automaker’s presence from its current headquarters.
The Renaissance Center may be demolished except for one or two towers, or might even be completely leveled, given its energy-inefficient design. The exact fate of the structure remains unknown at this point.
Comments
With all this work from home now, which is now the new normal (not in its entirety but certainly more than before COVID), at this point the building is simply a money pit for GM. Its due for a full on replacement of its aging HVAC system and these type of replacements are usually best done with full gut renovations which are costly (millions of dollars for a building of this size)!. Its an excessive cost that GM doesn’t need right now when they could be using that money to invest in their products. I’m not from Detroit so I apologize for sounding insensitive in regards to what is an icon for the city, but I am a New Yorker and understand what these iconic buildings mean for a local (I am bitter at billionaires row stealing the skyline from the Empire State and Chrysler buildings), but I’d rather a financially stable GM on par with the times than an iconic building sitting empty sticking around.
Does GM own the buildings or only lease space in the current towers? I thought GM only leases the space they use.
The Renaissance center they own it. Which is the problem here. The renovation I speak of above would have to come out of their own pockets. And its not worth it with the much lower occupancy. The space they are locating to at Hudson’s Detroit will be leased. It’s not only GM doing this. Many companies are downsizing their work spaces one way or another. GM doesn’t need this massive facility especially when its in need of a major renovation. Best they sell it.
Go look at what led to the Red Lobster filing bankruptcy! GM spin over a billion dollars renovating the building in the last 20 years getting it far far ahead of where it was in terms of efficiency before. Jim could easily have moved Cadillac back into the headquarters instead of moving it into the old bank across the street from the Warren Tech Center. They could even easily integrate in advanced design studio, and what would have been even the best would have been to have put Cadillac’s celestic commissioning facility within the complex. The only reason it’s underutilized is from management who thinks that wearing the same leather jacket for the last 15 years is appropriate and visionary!
A Private Equity firm gutting the company is what Red Lobster suffered from. That said, GM is doing the same thing where bean counters get short term gains by selling off real estate and either leasing new or leasing back the same property, which eventually ends up costing more as lease rates go up over time. I loved working at the RenCen and seeing all the cars, like a perpetual car show. Unfortunately, I hated getting there, parking a half mile away, then trying to get home, it was about 4 hours out of my day. The RenCen is definitely a dinosaur that needs to go extinct to make room for something much more energy efficient.
DIA, DETROIT ZOO, THE CONVENTION CENTER, and now the REN CEN will all be on the tri-county property tax. Here comes this special MILLAGE.
it is an awful building. Bad design makes it awkward to work in. It will cost less to knock it down than demo and rebuild when the basic nonsensical layout still exists.