Crain’s Detroit Business reports that two of the five towers comprising GM’s Renaissance Center will be demolished, and the other three will be repurposed in different ways. The towers being razed are the 300 and 400 towers, which are on the Detroit riverfront, freeing up land for public space along the water. The plan has been confirmed by Bedrock, the real estate firm that agreed to buy GM’s share of the Renaissance Center.
The 100 tower will be converted into residential space with 300-400 units. The 200 tower will get a thorough overhaul, but will remain commercial office space. Finally, the tallest tower, the Detroit Marriott at the Renaissance Center, will remain a hotel but reduced to about 850 rooms in the lower levels. The upper levels will be converted to high-end residential space.
“We really wanted to open up the RenCen complex to the riverfront and provide a pathway to downtown, connected to downtown,” Bedrock CEO Kofi Bonner said in an interview. “It’s 5.5 million square feet, and it’s 5.5 million square feet of two use types (office and mall-like retail) that aren’t as … prominent in the marketplace as they were when these buildings were built.”
A GM spokesperson said the company would “work in partnership with tenants to find the best solution within the city” for relocating if the skyscrapers were torn down.
“How do you right-size the real estate, to get the real estate to a point where it has a mix of uses, but also is stronger as an economic entity,” Bonner said, pointing to two of its signature developments in recent years, the Book Tower and Book Building redevelopment and the Hudson’s Detroit development as examples of use mixture.
GM Vice President of Infrastructure and Corporate Citizenship David Massaron made a commitment to not let the Renaissance Center be demolished entirely, sit underutilized, or sold to a buyer who would let it deteriorate.
“Our absolute commitment is we’re not going to do that. This is not going to end up like the train station did, like AMC headquarters did,” Massaron said. “We’re going to make sure that we do right by the city. … We needed to set it up, as part of our civic duty, for success going forward.”
“[Bedrock owner] Dan Gilbert’s vision gives us a path forward to preserve and reuse three of the towers and, at the same time, creates a beautiful expansion of public space on the Detroit riverfront,” Mayor Mike Duggan said in a statement. “We will need a public-private partnership to get this done and avoid the decades of inaction that accompanied so many other Detroit landmarks, like Hudson’s, Michigan Central Station, AMC Headquarters, and the Packard Plant.”
GM will move its corporate headquarters from the Renaissance Center to Hudson’s Detroit on Woodward Avenue in 2025, the company’s fourth relocation since 1911.
Comments
That’s dumb.
FYI its ‘razed’ NOT ‘raised’.
They can move places, but can’t move to fix lifter issues.
Rick – or 10 speed transmissions.
Don’t forget the 8 speeds.
What lifter issues? You mean the les than 3% (probably closer to 1%) of issues that mostly have been attributed to lack of maintenance? Or the few months where there was an issue with a supplier part which they caught and corrected?
The 8 speed have no issues, early on there was a problem with the incorrect fluid, that was long sorted out and has been great ever since. Some let the problem go to long and a small percentage had to have the torque converter replaced and an even smaller part ignored it even longer causing complete transmission replacement. Either way, so you see a theme here? Lack of maintenance and letting problems going on too long.
Nice job though, an article that has nothing to do with a problem that doesn’t exist and you want to troll; Ford or Toyota fan are we?
Mary, it’s obvious when you post from fake accounts.
What do you mean few months, more like few years. My 2015 Yukon had lifter failure and I’ve had 2 friends with new 2024 Escalades that both grenaded due to failed lifters at only 5000 miles. Don’t forget the LSPI issues due to poorly engineered oil. Hmm seems to be a pattern here, LSPI, 8 speed transmission both due to poorly designed lubricants. My 8 speed was dealer maintained and still required both a torque converter replacement and transmission rebuild. They need to focus more on product and less on their office.
I get it. You are right. And maybe the author used the wrong spelling of the word. But keep in mind, we live in a world where auto-correct thinks it’s smarter than the author, or rather in a world where programmer’s of auto-correct think they are smarter, wherein reality it’s the programmers that cannot spell and/or don’t know the meanings of the words they are “correcting”. In my world, auto-correct is the bane of my existence. Send out invites for “Thanksgiving at Grandma’s is …” and I look stupid because the invites go out as “Thanksgiving at graduation is…”. Send out a customer email describing a sequence of events “which in turn means…” and I look stupid because the email goes out as “which intern means…”. There is nothing more annoying than having auto-correct fubar well crafted and proof-read sentences upon clicking “Send”, because at that point, there is nothing that can be done about it. Nor is there any way to know it happened until someone laughs or call you out on it.
This is a trend. My local daily newspaper has abandoned its building for a much smaller rented place. The old headquarters is being turned into apartments, which our city needs.
There are still local daily newspapers? No wonder the space downsizing.
I wish horrible cases of herpes on all involved! Sad but true!
Then you buy the place and do something successful with it.
There are times when emotions need to be put aside and reality-based business decisions made, and this is one of those times.
There’s no reason to bulldoze any aspect of the building! There are many uses for it. Unfortunately Bedrock is in the business of using taxpayer funds to pay for vanity projects and Mary Barra’s vanity has resulted in her needing to be in the newest ivory tower in town! It makes zero sense for Bedrock to build a new building with a million square feet only to bulldoze a million square feet of an existing structure. For crying out loud the new Hudson building looks garish and looks like stacked connex trailers! Gilbert’s using tax abatements to build a new building and then we’ll get tax abatement along with grants from the state to redevelop an existing structure into a less useful and profitable long-term space. gm has obviously privately shopped the building, but publicly no. The building is the only iconic structure in the state of Michigan outside the Mackinac Bridge. gm very well could have used the structure to centralize an advanced design studio, computational engineering, or even a call center. Instead they want a write off!
The problem is Dan Gilbert over built in downtown Detroit and now there’s a glut of office space.
That is HIS problem, not gm’s.
With the new Hyundai-GM collaboration, you’ll soon not need a GM headquarters. Hyundai will soon thereafter acquire GM and another American car manufacturer will join AMC, Chrysler, Studebaker and others as they fade into oblivion.
I just sneezed.
A bunch of people laughed when I said bulldoze them a couple of years ago when this first came up.
I still remember visiting this place in October 1989. I went up to the rotating restaurant at the top. GM had the new 1990 car exibition on the ground floor.
Yeah sweet places in their day, but unfortunately the era of the landmark corporate HQ with the rotating restaurant is long since past. And Covid answered the question on any that still remained.
Somewhere down the road, when people get tired of playing with themselves working remotely at home, this decision will be regretted.