DETROIT | Hudson's Detroit | 685 FT & 240 FT | 49 & 14 FLOORS

[ColDayMan]

I dunno. I always got a "If Tyler, TX's two tallest buildings fucked" vibe.


https://upload.wikimedia.org/

[DieselXL]

Originally Posted by ColDayMan

I dunno. I always got a "If Tyler, TX's two tallest buildings fucked" vibe.


https://upload.wikimedia.org/

I hate how accurate this is

[iheartthed]

I see some 270 Park Ave vibes in the Detroit Hudson's tower too.

Originally Posted by ColDayMan

I dunno. I always got a "If Tyler, TX's two tallest buildings fucked" vibe.


https://upload.wikimedia.org/

And the baby was an NBA player lol.

[R1070]

LOL.... so true.

[HomeInMyShoes]

Originally Posted by ColDayMan

I dunno. I always got a "If Tyler, TX's two tallest buildings fucked" vibe.


https://upload.wikimedia.org/

Damn. Now I'm going to laugh every time I see the building.

It's a great building. Looks great from so many angles. Flatters the old buildings close to it. A seriously great building.

[DetroitSky]

GM doubles leased space in Detroit Hudson's building to 4 floors

Excitement is growing inside General Motors for the company to relocate from its current world headquarters at the Renaissance Center along the Detroit River to the new Hudson's Detroit building on Woodward — so much so that the company will now double the space it planned to occupy at the new location, sources said.

GM confirmed to the Detroit Free Press on Monday that it plans to lease four floors in the Hudson's building, rather than the original plan to take up two floors, when it moves into the building either late next year or early 2026.

“It’s good news that we’re taking up more space in the building for our employees,” a person familiar with the plans told the Free Press. The person asked to not be named because they are not authorized to share this information publicly. “There’s a lot of excitement around it and a lot of folks and teams have raised their hands to say they want to be down there.”

The article says a restaurant will occupy the top floor of the block, which I believe is new information. GM will occupy floors 8-11.

[Innsertnamehere]

How much total square footage are they taking? I admit for a company the size of GM, 4 floors seems small, yet alone 2, even with them being massive floorplates.

[animatedmartian]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

How much total square footage are they taking? I admit for a company the size of GM, 4 floors seems small, yet alone 2, even with them being massive floorplates.

Such seems to be the new norm for companies like GM where most of the corporate employees now work remotely. That's pretty much the whole reason they're leaving the Ren Cen.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

How much total square footage are they taking? I admit for a company the size of GM, 4 floors seems small, yet alone 2, even with them being massive floorplates.

Most of the roles from the Ren Cen are being sent to the Warren Tech Center. Getting space in the Hudson's Tower is just a scheme so that they can claim Detroit as their official HQ and avoid the bad headlines about abandoning Detroit. GM leadership has wanted to get out of the Ren Cen for years. The company tried to offload the Ren Cen during the bankruptcy and move the HQ to the Warren Tech Center. The only reason that didn't happen is because the Obama administration vetoed the plan because of how bad the optics would be for the company to leave the city at the time.

I think it's possible, maybe even likely, that GM would have taken more space in the Hudson's Tower had the pandemic not normalized remote work, but I think they were always planning to get out of the Ren Cen.

[Innsertnamehere]

Ah, so Hudson's will effectively just be the executive suite with most of the real jobs out in Warren. Makes more sense.

So in a way GM's move is actually bad news for downtown as it significantly shrinks the number of jobs in the core with most of them moving to Warren?

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

So in a way GM's move is actually bad news for downtown as it significantly shrinks the number of jobs in the core with most of them moving to Warren?

Yeah, but GM was reducing headcount at the RenCen well before they announced the plan to move to Hudson's Tower.

GM's service providers with large footprints in downtown Detroit (places like Deloitte, EY, PwC, IPG Companies, etc) are also trending towards having a smaller presence in downtown Detroit, but still maintaining a presence. Deloitte was the second largest tenant (behind GM) in the Ren Cen prior to the pandemic, but roughly 2 years ago they dumped all the space and moved their Detroit office into a WeWork space.

[The North One]

Originally Posted by Innsertnamehere

Ah, so Hudson's will effectively just be the executive suite with most of the real jobs out in Warren. Makes more sense.

So in a way GM's move is actually bad news for downtown as it significantly shrinks the number of jobs in the core with most of them moving to Warren?

The tech center has always had the majority of jobs. It's not new, been there since the 1950's. All the car companies have engineering centers. These are technical workers and they actually have to design cars and do hands on work. A central city office tower does not provide the kind of space for that.

There's no "scheme" about it, what a total lie. Executives make a headquarters, obviously. And downtown is where the high level positions wanna be, not in Warren.

[animatedmartian]

From Facebook photo group. Not sure of the date. View from Windsor.




https://www.facebook.com/share/p/19k5TM2F7W/

[DZH22]

Originally Posted by animatedmartian

From Facebook photo group. Not sure of the date. View from Windsor.

Incredible picture! I love the cladding (10/10) but the proportions are a little weird, which is encapsulated in this view. The design would have worked a lot better if it had a few more floors and at least eclipsed the Ren Center. It wouldn't even necessarily have to be the original 900'+. However, by retaining the same design it screams for more height than they shrunk it down to. It's both fabulous while simultaneously being a little bit of a letdown compared to what could have been.

[animatedmartian]

Originally Posted by DZH22

Incredible picture! I love the cladding (10/10) but the proportions are a little weird, which is encapsulated in this view. The design would have worked a lot better if it had a few more floors and at least eclipsed the Ren Center. It wouldn't even necessarily have to be the original 900'+. However, by retaining the same design it screams for more height than they shrunk it down to. It's both fabulous while simultaneously being a little bit of a letdown compared to what could have been.

I kinda see what you mean, but to be fair, most of the buildings in this view are all huge office buildings.

A residential/hotel tower is naturally going to look different from the wide floor plates of an office tower.

I don't disagree about the height, but I think from this view it might not look too much taller just because of perspective. It'd be much more noticeable from other views of downtown.

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by DZH22

Incredible picture! I love the cladding (10/10) but the proportions are a little weird, which is encapsulated in this view. The design would have worked a lot better if it had a few more floors and at least eclipsed the Ren Center. It wouldn't even necessarily have to be the original 900'+. However, by retaining the same design it screams for more height than they shrunk it down to. It's both fabulous while simultaneously being a little bit of a letdown compared to what could have been.

Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but I think it's too tall. Since the Hudson's Tower sits square in the middle of downtown, as opposed to the edge of downtown like the Ren Cen, it looks so out of proportion with the rest of downtown and emphasizes how stunted Detroit's skyline growth has been since the 1950s. The Ren Cen didn't have the same effect because it sat too far away from other downtown buildings.

[Innsertnamehere]

Originally Posted by The North One

The tech center has always had the majority of jobs. It's not new, been there since the 1950's. All the car companies have engineering centers. These are technical workers and they actually have to design cars and do hands on work. A central city office tower does not provide the kind of space for that.

There's no "scheme" about it, what a total lie. Executives make a headquarters, obviously. And downtown is where the high level positions wanna be, not in Warren.

Obviously.

I guess what I'm just trying to gauge is the total number of people employed by GM in the downtown. Iheartthed made is seem like the total headcount officially based downtown was shrinking with many positions moving to Warren. Having GM in Hudson's instead of it's fortress on the water will probably help vitality overall, but I'm just curious if it's resulting in a net decrease in employees in the downtown.

[Steely Dan]

Originally Posted by iheartthed

Perhaps an unpopular opinion, but I think it's too tall. Since the Hudson's Tower sits square in the middle of downtown, as opposed to the edge of downtown like the Ren Cen, it looks so out of proportion with the rest of downtown and emphasizes how stunted Detroit's skyline growth has been since the 1950s. The Ren Cen didn't have the same effect because it sat too far away from other downtown buildings.

This doesn't make sense to me.

If you don't want to emphasize how stunted Detroit's skyline is, then I would think that the antidote would be more and taller new skyscrapers, not shorter ones.

[animatedmartian]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

This doesn't make sense to me.

If you don't want to emphasize how stunted Detroit's skyline is, then I would think that the antidote would be more and taller new skyscrapers, not shorter ones.

This 100%

There's often many photos of a city's skyline from past decades often having one or a few prominent towers only to have the area around them filled in with similar in height or taller towers later down the line. It's just the natural progression of things.


https://www.reddit.com/r/skylineporn/comments/1bq6bd5/los_angeles/#lightbox

[iheartthed]

Originally Posted by Steely Dan

This doesn't make sense to me.

If you don't want to emphasize how stunted Detroit's skyline is, then I would think that the antidote would be more and taller new skyscrapers, not shorter ones.

I guess a shorter building could help induce demand for taller buildings. I dunno. Hopefully there it isn't another 30 years before the next tower gets built in Detroit.