Quicken Loans founder and chairman Dan Gilbert is looking farsighted for not only moving his company to downtown Detroit in 2010, but moving to buy or control through master leases more than 40 buildings spanning 8 million square feet, according to the latest figures release by Gilbert’s umbrella firm, Rock Ventures, and reported by MLiveMedia Group.
“They’re being swallowed up almost as quickly as we have them available, which is a concern because we’re pushing, pushing, pushing to get more companies to come down here, and we’re running out of space,” Jim Ketai, managing partner of Bedrock Real Estate Services, tells the Detroit Free Press.
Detroit’s vacancy rate has dipped from a 2010 high of 33 percent to around 25 percent, the Free Press reports.
A successful renovation of the Madison Theatre as a space for tech startups has grown into “The M@dison Block,” a sort of startup zone bordered by Woodward Avenue, Broadway, Witherell and John R. The M@dison Block is a partnership between Detroit Venture Partners, a Google-backed tech training institute called Grand Circus, Gilbert’s Bedrock Real Estate Services, and Bizdom, a startup incubator program Gilbert founded.
Bedrock’s latest project is the “Z”, a 10-story, 1,300-space parking garage with 34,000 square feet of retail space on the ground floor that will feature murals by 30 street artists.
