Tall & Urban News

ODA-Architecture out of New York City has been hired as design architect for the Book Tower and Book Building redevelopment on Washington Boulevard in downtown Detroit.

The landmark 38-story tower, designed by Louis Kamper more than a century ago, opened in 1926. Dan Gilbert’s Bedrock LLC acquired the building in 2015 and began exterior restoration in 2016.

Recent changes to the renovation plans include increasing the residential space and scaling back the hospitality and office component. In addition, ODA plans to open up a long-sealed atrium and make the 487,000-square-foot (45,244-square-meter) building accessible to the public from all four sides.

“We think for what this building represents and the kind of work we are going to do there, it is right up our alley,” said Eran Chen, founding principal of ODA, in an interview. “It’s re-imagining the future based on the roots of the past and that’s something extraordinary. It’s essentially 100 years that have passed where this building experienced the changing landscape of Detroit: 50 years of ambitious growth and 50 years of decline and deterioration.”

In 2018, $618 million in tax incentives was approved for the Book Tower/Book Building project and three other new construction efforts totaling $2.1 billion; then the Book Tower/Book Building restoration was expected to cost $313 million. The plans at the time called for 95 residential units; an approximately 200-room hotel; 106,000 square feet (9,848 square meters) of office space; 50,000 square feet (4,645 square meters) of conference and event space; and 29,000 square feet (2,694 square meters) of first-floor retail. A 400-space parking deck was also planned.

Today, the plans have shifted, said Melissa Dittmer, chief design officer for Bedrock, a real estate company that has amassed a portfolio of more than 100 properties totaling north of 18 million square feet (1.7 million square meters), mostly in Detroit. She said plans are now for less retail and office space; approximately 120 hotel rooms; and about 200 to 220 residential units.

“Façade restoration should be done within the next quarter,” Dittmer said in an interview. “That includes masonry restoration, copper replication and replacement, and a complete cleaning and stabilization of masonry. It includes caryatids and corbeling and ornamentation that you have throughout all of the façades, and more than 2,200 windows have been replaced.”

She said more than 10,000 cubic yards (7,646 cubic meters) of debris had been removed from the property, which has been abandoned for years.

One of the key components to the renovation for Dittmer is reopening the atrium space.

“The atrium space was original to the structure and that results in this grand Tiffany glass atrium space in the top,” she said. “That was blocked off and portioned off by both floors and plaster and drywall. People did not know at the very end that existed, and we are opening up the floors and the ceiling and bringing it back. That’s going to be truly breathtaking, and that’s why some of our (programming) numbers fluctuated.”

The project is also to include restaurants and bars and other public spaces, she said.

Other contractors on the project are Detroit-based Kraemer Design Group (historic preservation architect); Brinker-Christman, a joint venture between Lansing-based The Christman Co. and Detroit-based Brinker Group; Detroit-based Giffels-Webster Engineers Inc. (civil engineering); United Kingdom-based BuroHappold Engineering (mechanical, electrical, plumbing, structural, lighting and façade work); and London-based ARUP Group (acoustics, IT/communications, security and sustainability work).

ODA, which is also working on a project on Detroit’s east riverfront, will design the retail, office, residential and hospitality space. It’s expected to be complete in 2022.

Bedrock’s work includes the renovation of a variety of historic skyscrapers and mid-rise buildings throughout the downtown core, as well as planning a series of large-scale, ground-up projects that would alter Detroit’s skyline, including a series of mid- and high-rise buildings on the Monroe Block site east of Gilbert’s Quicken Loans Inc. headquarters in the One Campus Martius building, and what may end up being the state’s tallest building on the site of the former J.L. Hudson’s department store site to the north.

For more on this story go to Crain’s Detroit Business.