The planned Little Caesar Enterprises Inc. headquarters along Woodward Avenue is expected to feature a unique formed-glass exterior that should make it a signature building in Detroit’s downtown core.
The facade of the 234,000-square-foot Little Caesars Global Resource Center will be made out of glass shaped in 14-foot-tall triangles that look like pizza slices, an homage to the third-largest pizza chain in the country that helped produce the Ilitch family fortune.
Planned for the corner of Woodward and Columbia Street, construction on the nine-story building, which would be the first major new corporate headquarters built in Detroit since the Compuware Building (now One Campus Martius) was built for Compuware Corp. in 2002, is expected to begin this summer pending city permit approvals, Steve Marquardt, vice president of Olympia Development of Michigan, the Ilitch family’s real estate company developing the project, said Tuesday during a media briefing.
One Kennedy Square, which is the newest addition to Detroit’s skyline, was built in 2006. It was developed by Southfield-based Redico LLC.
Construction costs were not disclosed, but David Scrivano, president and CEO of Little Caesars, said it’s expected to cost more than the general rate of about $300 per square foot of downtown Class A office space, which would put the new building’s price tag over $70 million.
It’s expected to be 100 percent privately funded with no use of tax abatements.
Scrivano called the building “sleek, fresh and modern.” It is expected to be ready for occupancy in 2018.
In the end, the building is expected to house up to 700 Little Caesars employees, with some of the pizza company’s, Olympia Development’s and Ilitch Holdings Inc.’s remaining workers in the current Fox Theatre headquarters across Columbia Street. The two buildings would be connected by a seventh-floor bridge.
It’s expected to have floor-to-ceiling wraparound windows with no space between windows, balconies on multiple levels, a work cafe, fitness center, two-story lobby and generally be a part of re-envisioning Columbia Street west to Park Avenue.
The first floor is expected to have restaurant space and other retail uses in about 25,000 square feet, Marquardt said. The Southfield office of CBRE Inc. is marketing the space to retail tenants.
The building — which will include research and development space, a modern test kitchen and quality assurance operations — was the first office project announced as part of The District Detroit project, which includes the new Detroit Red Wings arena under construction.
The District Detroit is Detroit-based Olympia Development’s sweeping $1.3 billion development project that includes the $627.5 million Little Caesars Arena, expected to be open by September 2017 in time for the start of the 2017-18 National Hockey League season.
Ancillary development is planned in dozens of individual projects spread across the 50 largely Ilitch-owned blocks that the district comprises, which will bring hundreds of thousands of square feet of office and retail space, plus about 1,000 multifamily units, to the market in the next several years.
The headquarters plan grew in the planning: The new Little Caesars building was originally envisioned to be 205,000 square feet and eight stories.
Olympia Development said it has awarded more than $300 million in contracts to Detroit-based businesses for The District Detroit project; nearly $500 million has been awarded to Michigan-based businesses.
Brinker-Christman, a Detroit-based joint venture between Detroit-based Brinker Group LLC and Lansing-based The Christman Co., is the construction manager on the Global Resource Center project. Detroit-based SmithGroupJJR is the architect of record.
Marquardt said a contractor outreach meeting is scheduled for June 28.
The new headquarters, announced in 2014, is part of the company’s expansion strategy. Another major piece was unveiled in April when the Ilitches announced their new hockey arena for their Detroit Red Wings would be called Little Caesars Arena.
The naming rights deal is for $120 million over 20 years, and will include the pizza chain’s logo on the roof and elsewhere around the building. Naming rights revenue is kept by the Ilitches under their management and lease deal with the city’s Downtown Development Authority, which ultimately owns the building.
Olympia Development of Michigan has said the arena will be used at least 180 days a year, meaning the Little Caesars name will get exposure beyond hockey. ODM is the Ilitch-owned real estate company managing the arena project.
Little Caesars had $3.4 billion in 2015 gross sales via its 4,059 locations, according to data from industry magazine Pizza Today. It has stores in all 50 states and 18 international markets.
The chain is the third largest in sales and number of stores after Plano, Texas-based Pizza Hut (7,863 locations) and Ann Arbor-based Domino’s Pizza (5,067 locations). Pizza Hut has 25.1 percent of the U.S. pizza market, followed by Domino’s at 18.8 percent and Little Caesars at 14.7 percent.
By: By KIRK PINHO and BILL SHEA, Crain’s Business Detroit
