GM’s new Detroit HQ is taking shape — but don’t overlook revamped Warren Tech Center

TRAVERSE CITY — General Motors Co. President Mark Reuss reaffirmed the automaker’s commitment to Detroit on Wednesday, hyping up its anticipated new headquarters even as the company pumps billions of dollars into its Warren campus.

GM, which is leaving the Renaissance Center to be the marquee office tenant of the new $1.4 billion Hudson’s development, will build out an “indoor/outdoor showroom” at the Woodward Avenue site, Reuss said.

“We just looked at renderings of that yesterday, and it’s a beautiful space for us,” the executive said on stage at the Center for Automotive Research Management Briefing Seminars in Traverse City. “We’ll share that with other companies. The building will be branded GM.”

The ground-level showroom will accompany the space GM plans to take in the top two floors of the 12-story office building at Bedrock’s Hudson’s site, which will face the 45-story skyscraper to the south.

Many of GM’s employees left the RenCen in recent years for its Global Technical Center in Warren, pictured, where the automaker has invested $2.5 billion in the past five years.

“It is a state-of-the-art campus now,” Reuss said. “We’ve got a brand new design center we just opened that is world-class. Each one of those pieces is brand new. For the first time, we have marketing and sales on the same campus as product development, and so very efficient and very collaborative.”

While recent visitors have likened the Ren Cen — whose future remains under review — to a ghost town since the pandemic began in early 2020, there’s so much activity in Warren that the company is running out of parking space. Company representatives in June submitted site plans to the city Planning Commission for two new parking lots, according to city records.

GM’s manufacturing footprint in Michigan is also a bit uncertain. The expansion and electrification of Orion Assembly, and various supply plants cropping up around it, continue, though production launch has been pushed out again. Although EV demand is increasing slower than expected, Reuss expressed optimism that the company’s mammoth EV investments will pay off.

“There will be gives and takes on the segment, the region, infrastructure, all that,” he said. “We’re in it for the long haul. Whatever that is, we’ll work it out.”

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