DETROIT _ It's a healthy sign of how far greater downtown Detroit has come in a few short years that the collapse of auto-seat manufacturer Adient's plan to move its headquarters downtown elicited reactions ranging from disappointment to "meh."
Adient announced in late 2016 that it would move its headquarters to Detroit in what was considered a major plus for the rapidly redeveloping downtown. For the past year or so construction work has been done on the historic Marquette Building that Adient purchased.
But now we know that the company, which suffered a big loss in its second quarter financial results, was having second thoughts over the cost of renovating the Marquette Building across from Cobo Center. This week, it said it would stay in Plymouth and sell the Marquette Building to someone else.
A disappointment, for sure. But with Ford launching its historic renovation of the Michigan Central Station and dozens of other projects large and small in the works, the reaction to the Adient announcement barely registered beyond ho-hum.
It wasn't always so. Back in 2004, the first deal to renovate the derelict and long-vacant Book-Cadillac Hotel fell apart. Kimberly-Clark, the Dallas-based corporation that had planned to do the renovations, cited rising costs and lower revenue estimates that made the deal impossible to pursue.
Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick and his "deal team" touted the Kimberly-Clark renovation plan as a major sign of Detroit's comeback. It was one of the few bright spots during the years leading up to Detroit's bankruptcy filing in 2013. It came long before Quicken Loans moved downtown in 2010.
So when that first Book Cadillac deal fell through, it ranked as a bummer of epic proportions. Fortunately, Cleveland-based developer John Ferchill stepped in and reopened the hotel as the upscale Westin Book Cadillac in 2008. But the gloom in 2004 when the first deal collapsed was all too real.
Not so today when the Adient deal fell apart. There's just too much happening in the greater downtown to weep too loudly when one deal, even a big one, falls through.
Now, of course it would be great to have Adient move its headquarters and hundreds of well-paid staffers to the heart of downtown. Losing Adient is not a small thing.
But neither is it the thunderclap of disappointment that the first Book Cadillac deal collapse delivered in 2004.
Sue Mosey, director of the nonprofit Midtown Detroit Inc., a group that has done so much to promote progress in the Midtown area, keeps a map of current and in-planning developments. The map shows 101 individual projects.
Those include big ones like Wayne State University's Mike Ilitch School of Business just north of Little Caesars Arena and the 400-plus-unit City Modern residential and retail project in Brush Park. There are also smaller projects like brewpubs, restaurants and residential work.
The reality of this great volume of rebuilding may not have sunk in yet for metro Detroiters. People may focus just on the biggest deals like the new arena or Ford's plans for the Michigan Central Station and overlook the rest.
But take a walk or drive from downtown up along Cass or Second or John R all the way to New Center and north and you'll see dozens of examples of redevelopment work _ cranes against the skyline, scaffolding surrounding buildings under renovation, hard-hatted workers and heavy equipment on multiple sites.
Against that backdrop, it seemed not at all over-optimistic when Adient promised to work with Mayor Mike Duggan's office to sell the Marquette Building to a new owner "who also appreciates the historic significance of the building."
And it was perfectly reasonable when Duggan said in a statement, "I expect it to be a great headquarters building for another company wanting to relocate to Detroit."
The site, steps from so many downtown attractions downtown, is too promising to stay on the market for very long. In today's hot downtown office market, it seems likely that a new buyer will emerge fairly soon.
