ROSSETTI all moved into Federal Reserve building, overseeing all renovations

ROSSETTI – the architecture firm behind the Quicken renovation of "The Qube," the Greektown Casino Hotel, the Wayne State University Welcome Center, and numerous other high-profile projects throughout the state and country – has officially moved its headquarters into a new office downtown.
 
As the first non-Bedrock tenant of the Rock Ventures-owned historic Federal Reserve Building at 160 W. Fort Street, ROSSETTI is handling all of the renovation work currently being done to the 176,000-square-foot building, which has sat empty since 2004. They have completely cleared out of their Southfield office and have moved all 60 employees into their 13,000-square-foot space on the fourth floor of the building, which is nearly completed.
 
"It made a lot of sense for us to be downtown," says Denise Drach, Director of Business Development and Marketing for ROSSETTI. "We are doing masterplanning (for Detroit, including) streetscapes and concepts for retail…we are intimately involved in the design of the urban environment so it made sense for us to be in it. We didn't want to do just an office in the city; we wanted to make the entire commitment."
 
Bedrock currently has offices in the basement of the building. Once renovation work is complete, the first floor will have retail and the remaining floors will be leased as office space. According to Drach, these spaces will be "relatively unfitted," left to the new tenants to personalize. 
 
All renovation work on the 1927 building (with a Minoru Yamasaki glass and marble annex added in 1951) is being done under the guidelines of the Detroit Historic District Commission. Changes to the exterior so far have been relatively unobtrusive: they have replaced the windows, removed the bulletproof airlock in the front, and also removed a large overhang not original to the building.
 
Inside they completely gutted the fourth floor to make it more in keeping with contemporary office space sensibilities. "Offices of the past had a different work approach than what we're working in now," Drach says. "Particularly for architecture, design doesn't happen as individuals. It's really a team effort, so to be in a team environment is critical." Their floorplan is basically a big open loft-style room with lots of lounge areas. "Having a 'third place' is becoming a big trend in offices, so we have a lot of little spaces with living room furniture."
 
The space looks like a studio loft with 14-foot-high ceiling and windows across three walls. The fourth floor also has a 2,700-square-foot patio deck that looks out at the Penobscot Building and all the way to the Detroit River.
 
In addition to finishing their fourth floor offices, which will also be the new home of Lawrence Technological University's  experimental design lab detroitSHOP (which will take 3,000 square feet), ROSSETTI has been focused on finishing the lobby, adding planters to the exterior, and cleaning up the first floor and mezzanine.
 
ROSSETTI is celebrating the move with an open house on Oct. 2 from 4:30 to 8:30 p.m.
 
Source: Denise Drach, Director of Business Development and Marketing for ROSSETTI
Writer: Nicole Rupersburg

Got a Development News story to share? Email Nicole here.