Is this the start of a new trend for Tier I Suppliers?

[rondinjp]

I know Chrysler announced they were going to move some personnel into the dime building [[although, I'm not sure they ever did), but this would be pretty exciting if all the suppliers around metro Detroit had at least executive offices/sales offices downtown.

http://www.dbusiness.com/daily-news/...ntown-Detroit/

[Mind field]

Hopefully it is the start of a new trend, but it's probably too early to tell. It's good to see non Gilbert affiliated companies invest in downtown, for the sake of diversity and to have a broader more widespread revival of downtown Detroit, not just a Gilbert centric revival. I remember when Visteon was going to move to One Kennedy Square, but for one reason or another never made the move. We really need to diversify Detroit's economy, so Lear opening a satellite office is great news! As the big 3 and their suppliers don't make up a huge chunk of the downtown market.

[Jason]

That's good news for Detroit. I wonder what their longterm plan is. They just expanded their HQ in Southfield a few years ago. It's not bad and I think it won some local architecture awards. So they're committed to Southfield. I don't know what "administrative" functions are. I'm guessing that the people who have to interact with GM will be located there? It's the same kind of thing with Chrysler [[who did indeed open offices in the Dime Building [[now "Chrysler House")). I guess Chrysler would have similar types of people in their office and Lear would be close to them? Does anybody know?

Aside from quality of life stuff that's one of the main benefits of locating in a downtown. You're in close proximity to and physically mixing with people in your industry.

From the language in the article and from recent developments in general it sounds like there is a purposeful effort to get big local companies to open satellite offices downtown, so hopefully this *is* part of a trend.

[ndavies]

Visteon never moved in since they were downsizing and selling off departments when they made that announcement. That accelerated during the carpocalypse. They built their tech center on Ecorse road near the airport. They now rent out a large part of it to GE, since Visteon no longer has enough employees to fill it.

Visteon is much smaller than when it was first spun off from Ford.