Hudson's Detroit lands third office tenant

Hudson’s Detroit has its third office tenant.

Accenture is moving its employees from the Dan Gilbert-owned 1001 Woodward high-rise to the office component of the real estate and mortgage mogul’s trophy mixed-use development, the company confirmed Tuesday.

Accenture, based in Dublin, Ireland, expects to move into part of the fifth floor in the “block” component of the $1.4 billion Hudson’s Detroit project after its suite build-out is completed in December, a spokesperson said. The number of employees involved, build-out cost and contractors were not disclosed.

Accenture is the latest tenant name to trickle out as Gilbert’s Bedrock LLC and its contractors near the finish line on the grueling, complicated project, which started construction in December 2017. Bedrock officials have said the office component, clocking in at 404,000 square feet, is 93% leased, although not all the users are known.

General Motors Co. is the anchor office tenant, taking some 200,000 square feet in a pending move of its global headquarters from the Renaissance Center that was announced in April 2024.

Retail users Alo and Tecovas have emerged recently, as has the Detroit-based Ven Johnson Law PLC law firm, taking about 22,000 square feet of office space. The Department at Hudson’s, which is three floors of event space, opened earlier this year and is now hosting events in its 56,000 square feet.

“We are committed to Detroit – our clients, our partners and our local community, and we wanted to stay downtown,” Accenture said in an emailed statement. “We have been watching the construction on the Hudson’s Detroit complex for several years and are excited to call it home in the near future.”

Neither Accenture or Bedrock would disclose the size of the lease or the number of employees involved.

In November 2023, Crain’s reported that Accenture was laying off 83 employees working out of a former office at 1515 Woodward Ave., also a Gilbert-owned building. Its remaining office at 1001 Woodward, formally called the Accenture Digital Delivery Center and Quantum Experience Zone, opened in 2018.

The Hudson’s Detroit development, situated on the site of the former J.L. Hudson’s department store, consists of the 12-story block building with office, event and retail space on the north side of the 2.3-acre site and a 49-story, 685-foot skyscraper with 97 Edition-branded luxury condos and a 227-room luxury Edition hotel space on the south side.

The skyscraper component topped out about a year ago.

That component, originally slated to become the state’s tallest building at 734 feet (plus various taller height proposals), was pared back several years ago and it is now the second-tallest, behind the 727-foot Marriott hotel at the RenCen, which is the subject of a multi-pronged redevelopment proposal spearheaded by Bedrock and GM, the owner of the majority of the complex.

The construction elevator was removed earlier this year.

The project received a $60 million-plus tax break in 2022 and is part of a grouping of Gilbert-led developments that received $618.1 million in so-called “transformational brownfield” funding.