Real Estate: IRS to Lease Space in Detroit Tower

The Detroit Free Press

The federal government has signed a 10-year lease in the One Detroit Center office tower in downtown Detroit to house Internal Revenue Service workers.

The IRS will occupy 81,413 square feet, or about four floors, of the tower at Woodward and Congress near the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center. The lease rate is $19.78 per square foot, or $1.6 million a year, said David Wilkinson, a spokesman for the government's General Services Administration regional office in Chicago.

The IRS workers will move from the McNamara Federal Building on the west side of downtown. The move frees up space for FBI staffers to expand within the McNamara building.

Wilkinson said earlier plans to move the FBI out of the McNamara building into a new building to be built somewhere in or near downtown have now been canceled in favor of this new arrangement.

Detroit Invites Bids for Tiger Stadium Site

Bloomberg Business Week

 

 

Bidder up! Detroit is officially seeking bids for the former Tiger Stadium site.

The Economic Development Corp. said in a statement Thursday that the 9.5 acre site at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Trumbull has no specific restrictions on potential uses but city officials anticipate a mixed-use project.

The statement says all proposals "must include a substantive financial plan."

The site is exempt from most state and local taxes for 12 years.

Applications are due by Aug 2. The EDC will hold a mandatory pre-submittal meeting on July 14.

Tiger Stadium opened in 1912 as Navin Field. The Tigers left for Comerica Park after the 1999 season. The last portion of the stadium was demolished last September.

Pontiac Disappointed With Silverdome's Final Sale Price

Detroit News

Nearly 35 years after taxpayers spent $55.7 million building the Pontiac Silverdome and a year after a $20 million sale fell through, city officials have sold the arena once called the most desirable property in Oakland County.

The price: $583,000.

"This was a giveaway," said David J. Leitch, a broker with an Auburn Hills based realty firm.

"The property alone, at $10,000 an acre, should have gone for more than that. And you have the Silverdome, its contents, and the infrastructure already in place. I had estimated it would probably go for between $1.2 million and $3 million. I can't believe it."

Such sentiments weren't uncommon Monday, after city officials unsealed bids showing the property that was home to the Detroit Lions was sold at auction to an unnamed Canadian company that plans to bring a soccer league to the stadium. The company's name will be released when the sale is finalized within 45 days, said Fred Leeb, the city's emergency financial manager. Leeb acknowledged the sale "is not a windfall," but said the Silverdome's $1.5 million upkeep drained the beleaguered city's finances.

"We had hoped it would have brought more, but now the city can be freed of its upkeep and get it back on the tax rolls," Leeb said. Pontiac Mayor Clarence Phillips said he was "disappointed" but knew the city had to shed the costly structure. Councilman Everett Seay said he expects someone -- possibly a prospective buyer turned down in recent years -- to file a lawsuit to block the sale.

"The citizens of Pontiac deserve better," Seay said. "This is pennies on the dollar (of what it cost). It goes to show how bad times are ... Worse, we don't even know who bought it."

The company, which Leeb described only as a Toronto-based group of real estate investors and a "family-run business," was one of four bidders considered during an auction at the Marriott Hotel. Others bidders were not identified and most left without talking to reporters. One, Mickey Shapiro, a Farmington Hills developer, was rushing to catch a plane.

"We tried a bid, but it wasn't good enough," shrugged Shapiro, who declined to reveal his offer. "You win some, you lose some."

Dan Courtemanche, senior vice president of marketing and communications for Major League Soccer, said the league wasn't in discussion with any group on placing a team in the Detroit area.

"We have not had any recent discussions about having an expansion team in Detroit," Courtemanche said.

"We've had very preliminary talks in years past, but nothing in the last six to 12 months of substance."

An official for the Canadian Football League said the CFL has focused its efforts on Canada and not expanding into the United States.

The 80,300-seat stadium opened in 1975 and has largely remained empty since the Detroit Lions left for Ford Field in 2002. The sale included 127 adjacent acres.