DISPATCH :: Detroit's Vinton Building

DETROIT | The headlines out of the Motor City have mostly been focused on the large projects and major redevelopments from out-of-state players. Less attention is paid to the investment from local citizens, who are in a unique position to leverage change in the recovering market.



One example is the Vinton Building, a 14-story skyscraper in the CBD designed in 1916 by renowned architect Albert Kahn. The steel and terra cotta building was added to the National Register of Historic Places in 1983, but that couldn’t protect it from the economic downturn that wracked the city during that same era.



Recently the city of Detroit acquired the building, located at the corner of Woodward Avenue and Congress Street downtown, and began soliciting proposals for a redevelopment project. The group that materialized during the bidding process, however, was a collection of local business professionals committed to redeveloping the building into a collection of loft residences—for their own occupancy. So instead of a master developer, the Vinton Building now has a group of 10 owner/occupiers who not only believe in Detroit’s revitalization, but are prepared to live right in the midst of the CBD.



John Lowry, a project manager for Acquest Realty Advisors, helped guide the redevelopment process and worked closely with the 10 stakeholders. His firm was brought in at the beginning to assemble the financing package and the construction loan.



“It’s different in that it’s not a typical development project [where] somebody puts up some money and tries to get all the tax credits they can,” Lowry explains. “They want to be part of what’s happening in downtown Detroit.”



The Vinton Building’s for-sale residences are all spoken for, leaving just one floor of office space and one floor of retail space available on the lower levels. Both commercial components (about 3,000 square feet per level) are being developed and leased by a pair of owner-occupiers.



The tall, narrow design of the Vinton Building means the floorplates are bereft of the typical support beams found in modern skyscrapers. Each floor will be transformed into a single “white box” loft, which will then be built out as per the individual owner’ designs.



The entire process has been quite interesting, says Lowry, because there were no intermediaries in the development. The same group of people who intend to live in the Vinton Building after the construction were intimately involved in the entire project.

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source: mwrenonline.com