By 2026, 30,000 employees will work on two green and high-tech campuses.
The creativity behind Ford Motor Company moving 1,800 employees into a former Lord & Taylor store makes more than mall owners take notice.
By turning an anchor tenant space at Fairlane Mall into offices, the automaker is making a statement over how repurposing space can bring new life to buildings that once may have seemed to have a single purpose.
But that move - completed in 2016 - is only a part of how Ford is transforming the workspaces of 30,000 employees in Dearborn. By 2026, all of those employees will be working on two green and high-tech campuses that now house 60-year-old facilities.
The move to Fairlane is a glimpse of how important the automaker's facilities will be to its future as a mobility provider.
"I look at this whole program as having an opportunity to influence how Ford Motor Company will operate in the future," said Roger Gaudette, director of Ford's Dearborn campus transformation through Ford Land Development Co. "We are changing work space. Hopefully we are changing culture."
The effort is massive, and centered on both the World Headquarters campus near US-12 and the M-39 highway and on the product development and engineering campus to the south.
The work involves "densifying the research and engineering campus," Gaudette said. "At the same time we're building new buildings, replacing some of the infrastructure and tearing down some of the buildings no longer serviceable."
One of the first moves was to set up so-called "turnaround space," where the company could build offices to house groups of employees in between their original offices and the final versions.
And that's how the 1,800 employees from multiple sites around Dearborn - including research & development and purchasing departments - ending up working in one of Metro Detroit's largest malls.
The Dearborn office market is 5.9 million square feet, with a 23 percent vacancy rate at the end of 2016, according to Signature Associates. But only 383,000 square feet was available in Class A buildings, and Ford Land needed to find a larger space fairly quickly.
"We had to take a look at potential space out there, but couldn't find it in a single space," Gaudette said. The search could have taken the company to Southfield or Livonia.
"We were sitting in a meeting one day, looking out at the mall," Gaudette said. "A question came up: What about the mall?"
The Ford Land team soon realized, Gaudette said, "it could be a perfect fit."
This Google map shows the Ford Motor Company properties in and near Dearborn. After approaching the mall's newer owners, Starwood Capital Partners, Ford ended up with a 10-year lease for the closed Lord & Taylor. One of five anchors, it had been vacant for several years, even as the University of Michigan-Dearbord and Ford continued other building projects nearby.
When Ford Land took over the former two-story store, it still looked like a department store. It had dropped ceilings over product areas, with what Gaudette described as typical mall-store lighting.
"We went ahead and modified it into a modern workspace," Gaudette said.
Ford takes up the full wing, beyond the footprint of the former store. It removed the escalators, replacing them with stairs. It added soft seating and stand-up work stations. It changed the lighting levels inside, using LED. And it added skylights.
The skylights help mitigate the only drawback to the space: A lack of natural light. The company wasn't going to punch holes in the brick exterior to add it, so it looks for ways to make employees feel comfortable without it.
"We created a space that allows people to walk around," Gaudette said, describing it as open and collaborative. "... They can work in any space in that whole area."
Employee feedback after some pilot projects resulted in some concerns, which Gaudette said his team took into account before the final plans.
"Typically, people are look at what privacy is looking like," he said. "They may not have an office, or they may have a lower cube wall. And how to hand the noise situation."
Noise was addressed with piped-in white noise. And various work groups may have different configurations.
The biggest surprise, Gaudette said, became apparent before staff moved in: "The fact that it was going to work out a lot better than what we thought."
The offices in the mall will influence how Ford sets up more of its campus during its transformation, which will involve new construction and refurbishing existing space.
"Furniture settings and the strategy for how we're setting up interiors will be the same," Gaudette said. That means smaller "me" space for desks, but more "we space."
"That will get people up and moving around," Gaudette said, for what he called a serendipitous collision.
The purpose of the campus changes is to elevate the work environment, Gaudette said. Ford needs to be able to recruit top talent, and putting people into redesigned facilities with cutting-edge technology and proximity to colleagues in different work areas affects that.
Starting with the mall location, Ford is looking at the office setting as more than a place to work. It's considering the employee environment, with access to the outside, and how health and wellness fits into it, both on the interior and exterior.
"We plan to build in fitness facilities, walking paths, add bike sharing," Gaudette said. The varying types of desks - including treadmills - and food options are in play, too. So are other amenities. The campus may end up with a clinic, as an example.
Ford is fully participating in the rebound of the auto industry. Its 2016 earnings were its second-best in its history, and its market share is 13.9 percent. Its valued at $46.9 billion, based on a stock price of $12.48 per share on March 17.
Ford's work at Fairlane was the early part of phase one of the campus work. It continues through 2023, with a focus on parking decks and infrastructure. Additional projects include a new design studio, a sustainability showcase building, and green areas, the company says. Employees at World Headquarters will start to see some modifications to World Headquarters this year, too, including updated work spaces.
Gaudette said his team is working on many specific projects, but understands its overall role to the company.
"It lets you put your thumbprint on Ford Motor Company operations of the future."