Gilbert eyes converting part of Buhl Building for apartments

At least a portion of Dan Gilbert’s Buhl Building downtown may become residential space.

Several sources have told me of requests for architecture proposals for the project going out to national rms, and multiple o ce tenants not having their leases renewed to make way for units.

It’s not known how many oors of the 27-story high-rise are being considered for residential. Some or all of it could be in play.

Bedrock LLC, Gilbert’s Detroit-based real estate company, did not respond to emails seeking an interview and additional details.

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Converting the Wirt C. Rowland-designed tower into apartments would likely be the most substantial o ce-to-residential project in Detroit in the pandemic era. Its history, size and location make it one of the more prominent buildings in the city.

It opened in 1925, according to Historic Detroit, which tracks Detroit buildings and architecture history. At one point, it was the tallest in the city.

In 1982, a gunman opened re on the building’s eighth oor, killing a young woman in a law o ce and injuring dozens of others after he rebombed the oor.

Gilbert paid $38.5 million for the 400,000-square-foot building and its

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652-space parking deck in late 2017.

While Gilbert and his team have experience with such conversions — see: the former Detroit Free Press building and the David Stott Building, among others — this would be the most prominent to come to light in the last three years. In addition, Gilbert has plans to convert the Harvard Square Centre building on Broadway into residential, but those plans have been in the works since before the pandemic.

Many o ce landlords have been exploring what other uses they can put into their buildings as the COVID-19 pandemic sent many companies into a hybrid work mode where employees come to their desks some days but work from home others. at dynamic has left gobs of o ce space either partially or completely unused. Developers in Detroit and the suburbs have seen multifamily conversions for certain o ce buildings as the most likely repurposing. Henry Ford Health in February said it was converting its One Ford Place property totaling some 610,000 square feet into an unknown number of residential units — the rst large-scale ofce-to-residential conversion in Detroit announced during the pandemic.

Contact: kpinho@crain.com; (313) 446-0412; @kirkpinhoCDB