One of the smaller Renaissance Center high-rise towers has a new owner.

Dr. Mahmoud Al-Hadidi, an internal medicine specialist, closed on the $9.2 million purchase of the 21-story 600 Tower of the Renaissance Center on Thursday following the property’s auction last month. Al-Hadidi also runs an Orchard Lake-based real estate investment firm called Stockbridge Enterprises Inc.

Jared Friedman, co-CEO of Farmington Hills-based Friedman Real Estate, which coordinated an online auction of the 334,000-square-foot largely vacant office tower, said Al-Hadidi intends to keep it as office space.

An email was sent to Al-Hadidi late Thursday afternoon seeking additional information on his purchase.

Friedman called the auction which ran March 15-17 “a competitive process with a dozen registered bidders.”

“Despite the issues in the office sector, this sale highlights that there is still investor activity for the right office buildings,” Friedman said.

Not much is known about Al-Hadidi’s investments through Stockbridge, although it was reported in 2017 that the company bought the Lakeshore Mall in Gainesville, Ga. at auction.

A Redford Township organization called the World Peace Association lists Al-Hadidi as one of its founders. The group’s website describes Stockbridge as a company with “investments in and outside of the state of Michigan with special interest in reviving distressed projects and transforming them into profitable and sustainable enterprises through cost-effective management.”

The RenCen 600 Tower had been owned by a joint venture between F&F Capital Group and Friedman Real Estate.

It is one of the two shorter RenCen buildings and is not owned by General Motors Co., which is working on a separate redevelopment plan for the central five towers the automaker owns.

Friedman Real Estate was a minority partner of the 600 Tower in an ownership group led by Irvine, Calif.-based private equity firm F&F Capital, which was majority partner in a late December 2023 purchase, Steven Silverman, senior vice president of Friedman’s national investment and brokerage advisory and investment services, told Crain’s in January.

In the deal, F&F Capital and Friedman paid $15 million for the 500 and 600 Towers, plus another $10 million to $15 million to retain Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan in the 500 Tower and relocate some of the health care system’s employees to that building from the 600 Tower and building out space.

That left the 600 Tower largely vacant, save for the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy, the Canadian consulate, a dental clinic and a day care center, Silverman said in January.

That same day — Dec. 21, 2023 — F&F Capital Group and Friedman Real Estate flipped the 500 Tower to an entity connected to Hallandale Beach, Fla.-based Kawa Private Investments LLC for $30.4 million, according to city land sale records.

In May 2024, Friedman received approval from the City Planning Commission to bring a mix of uses to the 600 Tower, which could include things like hotel, multifamily housing, restaurants, retail and others.

The sale of the 600 Tower at auction comes as GM and Bedrock continue to promote their $1.6 billion-plus redevelopment plan for the adjacent five-building RenCen complex GM owns, which consists of four 39-story office towers flanking the state’s tallest building, the 73-story hotel tower at the center. 

The project would ultimately tear down two of the four office towers that surround the central hotel tower as a part of a development vision that involves activating the riverfront with more public space. That project now includes an observation deck on top of the central hotel tower.

GM and Bedrock are seeking hundreds of millions of dollars in public subsidies as a component of financing the project, one of the sticking points in the effort. They originally sought about $350 million, although that has since dropped by at least $100 million. 

Under the vision, the 300 and 400 towers — the two that sit closest to the Detroit River — would be torn down, freeing up more land for public use almost as part of a complement to the Detroit Riverwalk.

The 200 Tower, sitting at the northwest portion of the site, would be turned into 300-400 apartments, while the 100 Tower at the northeast portion of the site would be renovated to attract new office tenants. The 1,300-room hotel in the middle of the complex would be reduced to about 850 rooms, with the lost hotel keys being converted into luxury condominiums on the top levels.

The retail podium would be reimagined and redesigned to allow for better access to the waterfront from Jefferson.

And the 20-plus acres of largely vacant riverfront land to the east of the entire complex, largely used as surface parking, would be redeveloped as an athletics and entertainment district that project supporters have liked to Chelsea Piers in New York City, Navy Pier in Chicago and London’s O2.

But overall, technically, the auctioned tower sits apart from the Bedrock/GM plan, given its separate ownership.