Tenants move in to One Kennedy Square

One Kennedy Square, the new 10-story building in the heart of downtown, has leased four of its nine office floors. The top two stories are occupied by accounting firm Ernst & Young; Walbridge Aldinger, a general contracting firm, has leased floors two and three, with move-in planned for June.

The first floor will eventually feature two restaurants accessible from both the street and the building’s lobby. Tysen McCarthy, senior vice-president of the building’s owner, Redico, says the 22-foot-tall first floor is glass-clad because they “didn’t want to hide from being downtown.” The lobby features unusual red marble interior walls that frame the elevator doors.

The One Kennedy site is triangular, necessitating a building footprint that is less-than-ideal for an office tower. However, architect Ken Neumann of Neumann/Smith Architecture proposed a novel solution: extend two corners of the second floor out over the road’s right-of-way. The extended corners are supported by girders that run vertically to the eighth floor. Thus, floors two through ten of the building have rectangular footprints, each 25,000 square feet.

Ernst & Young moved into the building in January, and its offices are scattered with 40 original works by Detroit artists. The main conference room features an installation by Clinton Snider and Scott Hocking called “Boxes from RELICS Installation.” Yero Bain, the firm’s facilities administrator, describes it as “one of the more daring pieces of art you will find in an accounting firm.” Indeed, the rough-hewn wood boxes that comprise the piece are affixed with artifacts the artists found discarded around the city. The materials include gears, wooden signs, bumper stickers and tools.

Other prominent works include:

• Darcel Deneau’s downtown streetscape oil paintings;
• “Community,” by Marcia Freedman, 149 relief impressions of the artist’s face;
• A grainy black and white photograph of the Spirit of Detroit by Kevin Shea;
• 2 color photographs of houses painted by the controversial Object Orange collective; and
• Three paintings by Victor Pythko, including one of the One Kennedy Square building.

The firm hopes to host an open house later this year to allow the public to view its art collection.

Sources: Tysen McCarthy, Redico and Yero Bain, Ernst & Young