Developer explores putting large office project next to Troy's tallest building

[Airforceguy]

I'm happy to see more of the surface parking lots in Troy get developed. However, I really wish more mixed-use developments were proposed in Troy.


Developer explores putting large office project next to Troy's tallest building

Kojaian Management Corp., run by C. Michael Kojaian, has submitted plans to construct a seven-story office building with almost 258,000 square feet and four-story parking deck with more than 1,000 spaces on what is now surface parking for the 25-story PNC Center west of I-75 and just south of West Big Beaver Road. A 5,000-square-foot retail building would also be built on the site, which is 20 acres, according to Troy Planning Commission documents from last month.


PNC Center — the city's tallest building — was developed as the Top of Troy. Built in the 1970s by Kojaian, it sits in a federally designated Opportunity Zone, which gives investors in Qualified Opportunity Funds appealing breaks on their capital gains taxes.


Tony Antone, executive vice president for Kojaian, said the company is working to get the site approved for the possible build-to-suit headquarters-style building before going to market seeking a user.


"We're not building this spec," Antone said, industry shorthand for speculative building, which is when a developer constructs a building without any tenants identified.

https://www.crainsdetroit.com/real-e...ext-pnc-center

[southen]

So much character.

[Danny]

That developer should look the long abandoned K-Mart WHQ for a building site.

[401don]

Not sure how they expect to find a tenant willing to pay the rent they will need to recoup the cost of a new build vanilla box in Troy when there's so much empty space in Metro Detroit.

[canuck]

So much character.

Yes, picturesque; distinctive also come to mind. Slap on another multi-story parking structure, and it begets the epithet "exhilarant".

[Satiricalivory]

Yay suburban office space, exactly what we need!

[K-slice]

I worked in a building in that area back in 2015, just terrible... How has WFH not killed all of these desolate office parks yet?

[Gistok]

WFH is decreasing year by year, at least fulltime WFH.

From a recent Linkedin article...

"The work-from-home era for millions of employees may have ended. A new report from the United States Department of Labor found that 72.5% of establishments were working remotely "rarely or never" in 2022, a 12.4% increase from 2021. This comes amid recent news that major companies such as Disney, Meta, and Starbucks are expecting employees to come into the office more frequently. Flexible work isn't completely ending, however, as staffing firm ManpowerGroup reports that 13% of current job postings are for remote positions."

[K-slice]

WFH is decreasing year by year, at least fulltime WFH.

From a recent Linkedin article...

"The work-from-home era for millions of employees may have ended. A new report from the United States Department of Labor found that 72.5% of establishments were working remotely "rarely or never" in 2022, a 12.4% increase from 2021. This comes amid recent news that major companies such as Disney, Meta, and Starbucks are expecting employees to come into the office more frequently. Flexible work isn't completely ending, however, as staffing firm ManpowerGroup reports that 13% of current job postings are for remote positions."

Let me amend my statement:
How has WFH AND the availability of vibrant urban office space not killed all of these desolate office parks yet?

[JBMcB]

Not sure how they expect to find a tenant willing to pay the rent they will need to recoup the cost of a new build vanilla box in Troy when there's so much empty space in Metro Detroit.

Just because there is empty office space doesn't mean there is office space that meet a company's needs. When my company moved it's office around five years ago, they hired another company to find a suitable space. We didn't need anything special, just a few large conference rooms, space for about 50 office workers, and a handful of offices. There were only four available buildings that met our requirements. There were much smaller spaces available, and there were much larger spaces available, and there were some spaces that would have worked but needed a *lot* of rebuilding to get them back into shape as they were old, or used as medical office space, etc...

There are a lot of new automotive suppliers popping up looking for homes, as well as older companies growing or shrinking looking for a good HQ. A brand new building that could be built-to-order would be ideal for one of these companies.