Posted Jan 31, 2019, 7:11 PM
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Registered User
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Join Date: Nov 2010
Posts: 2,957
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Not a space issue, a traffic issue. Or rather, space for traffic. If 500-600 people are showing up for work around 7-9 AM, at the current location, a majority of employees would likely use the I-75 exit at 2nd & 3rd/Grand River. At least according to Google this is the quickest route from most any direction. However, the tower as currently proposed only has ~400 parking spaces attached, so roughly 200 people will have to park in the surrounding area or use some other method of getting to work.
That's kind of inconvenient, but tolerable given that the only competition in that area for parking is really Olympia and the stadium traffic on game days. But if the company is expected to grow with this new merger and any possible future acquisitions in only a few years, it can be easily expected to grow the employee count. That means more people using that one exit which will of course lead to congestion. Some employees will try to avoid it and use alternate routes, but there's generally not a lot of options. That why Woodward and Jefferson is a better spot because of the direct connection to the freeways as well a being close to the QLine for any number of employees who might use it.
In a lot of cities, you often see a pattern where financial districts or clusters of financial companies usually have direct connections to nearby freeways or around the confluence of multiple mass transit routes. In finance, time is money and time wasted just getting to the office is inefficiency. Site locations become increasingly important as the size of the company gets bigger.
As as far as using Dan Gilbert's space, that's not very ideal either because if the company is growing, they need to flexibility of being able to grow within the same building while keeping the costs of being in the building low. If Chemical/TCF move into one of Gilbert's buildings, he could just jack up the rent every year TCF needed more floor space. Gilbert could also end up filling space in the rest of the building with other companies which would limit the size of a growing TCF and force them to move anyway. Of course, it all depends on what deal Gilbert would offer them and he has the advantage by owning the most ideal locations, but generally a growing regional company doesn't want a landlord.
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