Kirk Pinho| Crain’s Detroit Business
Last week, downtown Detroit’s big office leasing news came in the form of Ally Financial Inc. signing on to a mammoth lease — 13 full floors — at One Detroit Center.
The 320,000-square-foot lease and headquarters relocation just as Dan Gilbert closed on his purchase of the landmark building is the latest example of an upward trend in the number of large local leases totaling more than 100,000 square feet.
The Ally lease will also put the squeeze on office tenants looking for prime, Class A space downtown, where large blocks totaling 100,000 square feet are becoming few and far between, real estate brokers said.
Those include 210,000 square feet available at the 500,000-square-foot Stroh River Place and virtually all of the 100,000-square-foot Madison Office Building on St. Antoine Street. With the Ally deal, there will be about 250,000 square feet freeing up at the Renaissance Center, as well.
“With many buildings in Detroit, it’s difficult to put that kind of space together in a contiguous fashion,” said Fred Liesveld, managing director of the local offices of Newmark Grubb Knight Frank. “When you’re looking for more than 100,000 square feet, you have to kind of cast your vision to those buildings that can accommodate that, and there’s going to be some in the city and some in the suburbs.”