By Veronica Grecu, Associate Editor
In a move that simply doesn’t surprise anyone anymore, Detroit real estate mogul Dan Gilbert snagged two more properties in the city.
View of Lothrop Parking Garage and adjacent Albert Kahn Building – Detroit
A pair of surface parking decks situated in the New Center recently joined Gilbert’s real estate portfolio in Motor City. Financial terms remained undisclosed, according to Crain’s Detroit Business who first reported the deals.
Totaling 1,800 parking spaces, the acquisition consists of the 1,300-space Lothrop Parking Garage located at 116 Lothrop Rd., and a smaller parking deck of 500 spaces located at 6540 Cass Ave. The two properties have almost 677,800 square feet of space.
While Gilbert’s most recent acquisition might not seem that interesting, the Lothrop Parking Garage is particularly important because of its location directly east of the Albert Kahn Building. This iconic office building will be hitting the auction block in a couple of weeks—and so will its much larger next-door neighbor, the 635,000-square-foot Fisher Building. Now that Gilbert has been buying properties left and right in downtown Detroit, the parking decks purchase is a strong indicator of his next potential move: bidding for the Albert Kahn/Fisher duo, which would add more than 900,000 square feet to its real estate portfolio in the city.
Since 2010, Gilbert has invested more than $1.7 billion in downtown Detroit through his real estate company Bedrock Real Estate Services. More than 70 office buildings and parking garages accounting for more than 11 million square feet are currently owned by Bedrock. Less than two months ago, Gilbert’s Detroit empire expanded with the acquisition of One Detroit Center, a Class A office tower encompassing nearly one million square feet of space.
Image via Google Street View