First National Building parking garage receives major upgrades

The parking garage in the First National Building, 660 Woodward Ave, in downtown Detroit is receiving decades worth of overdue TLC this summer.

Bedrock Real Estate Services, the real-estate management art of the Quicken family of companies, is spending $4.5 million to upgrade the 420 spaces in the multi-level parking garage on the back of the skyscraper overlooking Campus Martius. The turn-of-the-century building's parking garage hasn't received any significant improvements in about 20 years.

"We are literally gutting out whole floors of the garage and putting new structural supports in," says Lynnette Boyle, senior property manager with Bedrock Real Estate Services. "It's really quite the undertaking."

One of the biggest improvements is to the parking garage's lighting systems. Bedrock Real Estate Services is swapping out older bulbs with far more energy efficient induction lighting fixtures. The First National Building's new parking garage lighting system is expected to last 10 times as long as the one it is replacing and use only half of the energy.

A grant from the city of Detroit's SmartBuilding's program is helping make this project possible. Work on the parking garage began last November and is expected to finish up by the Fourth of July.

Source: Lynnette Boyle, senior property manager with Bedrock Real Estate Services
Writer: Jon Zemke

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