The northeast corner of Detroit’s Campus Martius Park will be home to Monroe Blocks, Schmidt hammer Lassen Architect’s first U.S. project. The project will span a 134,548-sf site across two city blocks and include the first high-rise office tower built in downtown Detroit in more than 25 years.
Monroe Blocks will include a mix of modern office space, residential units, restaurants, retail, and approximately 51,660 sf of public outdoor space. Schmidt Hammer Lassen will work with Neumann/Smith Architecture to reintroduce historic alleyways and public access points and prioritize the public realm by connecting the outdoors with each structure’s ground floor.
See Also: 62-story luxury rental tower provides 40,000 sf of indoor and outdoor amenities in Manhattan
Courtesy Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects.
The development is being built in an area that was known as Detroit’s first theater district. The National Theatre, the sole remaining building from this original theater district, will have its ornate terracotta archway incorporated into the Monroe Blocks design. It will be disassembled, catalogued, and relocated to a new pedestrian walkway that will bisect the new development.
Courtesy Schmidt Hammer Lassen Architects.
A groundbreaking event recently took place on Monroe Banks Plot A, which will include a 35-storey glass and terracotta office tower, a 17-story, 148-unit residential building, and a total of 66,000 sf of retail space.
Monroe Blocks is scheduled to complete in early 2022.
Courtesy Hayes Davidson.
Courtesy Hayes Davidson.
Related Stories
| Aug 11, 2010
CityCenter Takes Experience Design To New Heights
It's early June, in Las Vegas, which means it's very hot, and I am coming to the end of a hardhat tour of the $9.2 billion CityCenter development, a tour that began in the air-conditioned comfort of the project's immense sales center just off the famed Las Vegas Strip and ended on a rooftop overlooking the largest privately funded development in the U.
| Aug 11, 2010
Gold Award: Westin Book Cadillac Hotel & Condominiums Detroit, Mich.
“From eyesore to icon.” That's how Reconstruction Awards judge K. Nam Shiu so concisely described the restoration effort that turned the decimated Book Cadillac Hotel into a modern hotel and condo development. The tallest hotel in the world when it opened in 1924, the 32-story Renaissance Revival structure was revered as a jewel in the then-bustling Motor City.
| Aug 11, 2010
Silver Award: Palmer House Hilton Hotel & Shops Chicago, Ill.
Chicago's Palmer House Hilton holds the record for the longest continuously operated hotel in North America. It was originally built in 1871 by Potter Palmer, one of America's first millionaire developers. When it was rebuilt after the Great Chicago Fire it became the first hotel in the U.S. to put a telephone in every room.
| Aug 11, 2010
Gulf Coast Hotel's Stormy Road to Recovery
After his initial tour of the dilapidated 1850s-era Battle House Hotel, Ron Blount, construction manager with Retirement Systems of Alabama, said to his boss: “You need a priest more than you need a contractor.” Those words were more prescient to RSA's restoration of the historic Mobile landmark than he could have known at the time.
| Aug 11, 2010
Lifestyle Hotel Trends Around the World
When the Rocco Forte Collection opens the Verdura Golf & Spa Resort in Sicily in early 2009, the 200-room luxury property will be one of the world's newest lifestyle hotels. Lifestyle hotels cater to guests seeking a heightened travel experience, which they deliver by offering distinctive—some would say avant-garde, or even outrageous—architecture, room design, amenities, and en...
