Hudson's site and New Downtown Developments Summary

[Lowell]

Today's Free Press has an excellent recap of downtown developments, the Hudson site in particular, in pandemic Detroit and in Chicago for comparison by JC Reindl. While this might belong in the Hudson site thread, and I'll likely move it there later, it is a summary that belongs outside of it also as it deals with the broader subject of the relevance of office space post-pandemic. Some snips...

The day-to-day population of downtown workers is about 20% of what it was before the pandemic...

However, famous hotelier Ian Schrager, cofounder of the legendary New York nightclub Studio 54, mentioned Detroit and referred to Gilbert and the Hudson project in several interviews this year about his ultra-luxury EDITION Hotels, which is a joint venture with Marriott. EDITION representative did not respond to a message seeking comment about whether the brand has any Detroit plans.

Huntington Tower coming along
Back in downtown Detroit, construction of the 20-story Huntington Tower office building, 2047 Woodward, began in September 2019 and is now about 60% finished.

...convention business has collapsed and the reported average occupancy rate at downtown hotels was 36% in September, down from about 70% for the full year before COVID-19.

The entire $900 million-plus, 1.1 millionsquare- foot Hudson site project was originally given a summer 2022 completion estimate...The last announced date, according to Crain's Detroit, was late 2023 for the 11-story midrise building to contain nearly 400,000 square feet of office space in addition to exhibition space, and 2024 for the taller tower with 250 upscale apartments.

The vacancy rate for available office space in the CBDwas 14.6% in the third quarter, according to Newmark.

During the pandemic, Bedrock completed a 300,000-square-foot addition to the back of the One Campus Martius building, formerly known as the Compuware Building

Meanwhile, another pre-pandemic Bedrock project, the Monroe Blocks off Campus Martius, appears to be on indefinite hold.

The development is expected to “create or support” 1,007 new, full-time office jobs in Detroit and 626 new full-time retail, restaurant and event space jobs. And the majority of those jobs are anticipated to be net new jobs to Detroit, not simply relocated jobs from elsewhere in the metro area