Two demolished towers, 600 apartments, and a ‘Navy Pier’ district – here is the plan for the RenCen

DETROIT (FOX 2) – A redesigned riverfront, mixed-housing, and a “Navy Pier-like family-friendly entertainment destination: Bedrock and General Motors have big plans for the most iconic building of Detroit’s skyline.

Officials from the automaker and real estate developer outlined their plans for the Renaissance Center on Thursday, hoping to redesign it into a combination of housing, office space, and accessible land that connects downtown to the Detroit Riverfront.

Renaissance Center Future

Big picture view:

Speaking at the Detroit Policy Conference, the vice president of government affairs outlined the general plan for the Renaissance Center, including a redesign of the site so it is more accessible to the public while converting much of the space in the towers into housing.

• Tower 300 and Tower 400 on the Northeast and Southeast corners, respectively, will be knocked down
• The central tower will be converted into a hotel with 200 apartments at the top
• Tower 100 on the southwest side will be converted into 400 apartments that include mixed-income and affordable units
• Tower 200 will remain an office tower

Jared Fleisher also said the redesign would remove the podium, a “Berlin wall-like structure” that is “impossible to navigate.”

“We remove the podium, we open the site, we reconnect downtown to the riverfront – the sight-line from downtown to the riverfront – and for the first time in 50 years, you’ll be able to walk right up to the front door of the towers,” he said.

The redesign also includes a public park modeled off of Chicago’s Millennium Park while the space currently occupied by parking lots would be converted into a shopping center similar to Chicago’s Navy Pier.

Jefferson Avenue in front of the RenCen would also be updated to be more accessible for the public by adding a pedestrian promenade that makes it easier to get to the riverfront. 

It’s going to be “truly public infrastructure,” Fleisher said.

Dig deeper:

While it was a trend that had been growing, the decline in companies seeking office space was exasperated by the pandemic, GM’s vice president of infrastructure.

As a result, much of the square feet in the complex is vacant that would require “tremendous investment to be functional,” according to David Massaron.

“There really aren’t tenants at that level, at that amount. We’ve spent the last 10 years working on it and the cost to converting residential is not cheap,” he said.

When GM announced it was moving its headquarters from the RenCen to the new Hudson’s Detroit building, it did so with the hope the complex could be redeveloped into something that is more appropriate for the city.

In the same way that Michigan Central was a reminder of Detroit’s demise before Ford revamped it, GM hopes to avoid repeating “the mistakes of the past” by adapting the complex for the modern age.

By the numbers:

Fleisher said the cost of the new Renaissance Center would be about $1.6 billion.

One billion of that would come from Bedrock and $250 million would come from GM. Another $100 million would come from Detroit, while the state would kick in $250 million.

There was pushback from lawmakers about another massive infrastructure project soaking up public funds. Fleisher took the blame for how the original plan was framed. 

“It was a mistake on my part to talk about it (as) ‘this is the number’ rather than ‘this is the policy, this is the use of the funds we’re talking about,'” he said.

Bedrock hopes the new legislature will reauthorize the Brownfield Redevelopment program, which helps fund large projects with the aim of redeveloping old obsolete buildings into new space. 

“It was made for projects like this,” Fleisher said.