Rock Ventures announced Monday that it has bought the 26-floor One Woodward building in downtown Detroit.
One Woodward Ave.DETROIT, MI - Rock Ventures announced Monday that it has bought the 26-floor One Woodward building in downtown Detroit.
Rumors had been swirling for months of a purchase by the company, which is chaired by Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert.
The purchase adds 333,000 square feet of Class A commercial space - which Realtors say is increasingly hard to come by in the city's aging stock of buildings - to Rock Ventures' growing portfolio of downtown Detroit real estate.
With the One Woodward building, the company says it is accommodating growing demand for space in an emerging technology corridor downtown. Some of the buildings owned by Gilbert in the near vicinity include The First National Building at 660 Woodward Ave., the Chase Tower at 611 Woodward Ave. and the Chrysler House at 719 Griswold St. His companies also own four buildings in the 1500 block of Woodward Ave., as well as the M@dison Building at 1555 Broadway St.
Rock Ventures has bought 10 buildings totaling 2.5 million square feet of commercial space since 2011, in addition to two parking garages with 3,500 parking spaces.
More room is apparently needed. Last month the company broke ground on a 535,000-square-foot, Z-shaped parking and retail development that will zigzag from the corner of Broadway and East Grand River to the corner of Gratiot and Library. The development, expected to be complete in December 2013, will include 1,300 parking spaces and 33,000 square feet of retail space.
The One Woodward building is already 60 percent occupied, and will hit 90 percent next month as Quicken Loans and affiliated companies lease another eight floors of the building.
A purchase price for One Woodward was not immediately disclosed. The sale was brokered by Friedman Integrated Real Estate and Gilbert’s Bedrock Real Estate Services. Bedrock will oversee renovations to the space, as well managing the property and its leasing, the company said in the release.
“The One Woodward building is located in the heart of Detroit’s technology core, and provides us more space to further accommodate our growing family of companies and the increasing number of businesses that want to leverage the opportunities made in Detroit,” Gilbert said in a release. “We continue to bet big on Detroit, and this purchase reinforces our commitment to the exciting entrepreneurial action on Woodward Avenue."
One Woodward was built in 1962 by Minorou Yamasaki, who also designed the former World Trade Center towers in New York.