The world's largest holding company of creative agencies plans to move to downtown Detroit in a move that could bring more than 1,000 jobs to the city.
London-based WPP plc — which includes GTB, VMLY&R, Burrows, Hudson Rouge, Iconmobile, Xaxis and Zubi — said Tuesday morning that it anticipates to move into the vacant Marquette Building at 243 W. Congress St.
GTB, which stands for Global Team Blue, works heavily with Ford, which is renovating the Michigan Central Station in Corktown as an anchor to its $740 million autonomous and electric vehicle campus in the neighborhood west of downtown.
The new WPP space is expected to be open by the end of next year, the company said in a news release. It said it will also maintain a presence in Dearborn, where it has space in the 217,000-square-foot Corporate Crossings at Fairlane building, which was built in 1999 on about 14 acres, according to CoStar Group Inc., a Washington, D.C.-based real estate information service. The agency has about 850 employees in Dearborn.
The Michigan Strategic Fund board on Tuesday approved a $1.65 million Michigan Business Development Program grant for the move.
GTB CEO Robert Guay said in an interview Tuesday morning that discussions over the move were well underway when he joined the company in July.
"As someone who has worked in a creative environment in the city of Detroit, I am thrilled with the opportunity to identify and recruit emerging tech and creative talent," he said.
An MSF board briefing memo says the move is a $19.24 million investment and that in addition to the 850 Dearborn employees, another 182 jobs are anticipated. The new building would house client engagement, finance, human resources, design, analytics and other company functions, the memo says.
The memo also says the city of Detroit has offered a personal property tax abatement up to 10 years with an estimated value of $993,000. The grant would not be disbursed until certain performance milestones are met, according to the memo.
The news comes a year after Ford replaced WPP as its longtime lead creative ad agency with BBDO of New York City. It switched shops following five months of review.
"Ford and GTB were on parallel paths looking for the same thing: Proximity to the city center and access to tech resources and talent," Guay said. "I can't say that we necessarily looked at the space solely because of Ford building in Corktown, but it certainly was an assuring thing."
BDG Architecture + Design, which is owned by WPP, is designing the Detroit office space interior, according to the release.
The Marquette Building, once owned by Mexican billionaire Carlos Slim Helu, is now owned by Detroit-based Sterling Group, which is the real estate company founded by TCF Bank Executive Chairman Gary Torgow. His adult children now run the company and he has no involvement in it.
Danny Samson, chief development officer for Sterling Group, said there is about 10,000 square feet of first-floor retail space available for lease across three or four different spaces in the Marquette Building.
The Colasanti Cos., which is based in Macomb Township and has a Detroit office, is the contractor on the project.
Adient plc, the spinoff of Milwaukee-based Johnson Controls Inc., paid $36.13 million to acquire and improve the property over the course of a year between November 2016 and November 2017, according to city property records. Then the auto supplier took a roughly $11 million haircut on it in a $25 million sale of the building, an approximately 400-space parking deck at 328 W. Congress St. and a surface parking lot at 225 W. Congress St. a year ago.
A source familiar with the matter said WPP will lease most of the Detroit building and have its employees park in the parking deck and surface lot. Guay declined to comment on parking.
Adient was planning to turn the Marquette Building into its new $100 million headquarters, but that plan was scrapped in June 2018. Adient is remaining in its Plymouth Township headquarters, a spokeswoman said at the time. Detlef Juerss, the company's vice president of engineering and chief technology officer, said in August 2018 that the downtown Detroit plan was a mistake.
It would have been home to about 500 employees, including more than 100 new hires in such departments as legal, accounting, audit and treasury. It received a $2 million state incentive. The city also offered a property tax incentive, according to the Michigan Economic Development Corp.
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November 26, 2019 at 10:07PM
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WPP to move up to 1,000 jobs to Detroit in vacant Marquette Building - Crain's Detroit Business
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