A largely vacant office tower that’s part of the Renaissance Center complex on Detroit’s riverfront is heading to auction.

The 334,000-square-foot 600 Tower — the downtown complex’s easternmost building — is set to hit the online auction block March 17-19 with a starting bid of $2.75 million, according to the listing on Ten-X.com.

The 600 Tower is one of the two shorter towers not owned by General Motors Co.

Standing 21 stories and just 11% occupied, the tower, along with the companion 500 Tower developed in the 1980s, sits just east of GM’s separately owned main portion of the gargantuan complex that’s a defining symbol of Detroit’s skyline.

Brokers from Farmington Hills-based Friedman Real Estate are handling the online auction, which has a reserve price that is not being made public, said Steven Silverman, senior vice president of the company’s national investment and brokerage advisory and investment services.

Friedman was a minority partner in an ownership group led by Irvine, Calif.-based private equity firm F&F Capital Group, which was majority partner in a late December 2023 purchase, Silverman said.

In the deal, F&F Capital and Friedman paid $15 million for the 500 and 600 towers, plus another $10 million-$15 million retaining Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan in the 500 Tower and relocating 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 daycare center, Silverman said.

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.

“They consolidated occupancy in 500 and 600, spun that office off and from their perspective, they are a California-based firm not focused on office in the Midwest,” Silverman said, noting that they had “completed their business plan.” 

In May, 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.

“We have basically wide open zoning,” Silverman said.

The auction comes as GM and Dan Gilbert’s Bedrock LLC work on a plan that was revealed in late November proposing a new future for the automaker’s portion of the RenCen, which was designed by architect John Portman and sits as kind of a city-within-a-city south of Jefferson Avenue — and separated from the rest of downtown.

GM and Bedrock have proposed a $1.6 billion-plus overhaul of the main complex, which consists of four 39-story office towers flanking the state’s tallest building, the 73-story hotel tower at the center. The project is seeking hundreds of millions of incentives at the state and local level, one of the sticking points in the effort.

Under the vision, the 300 and 400 towers — the two that sit closest to the Detroit River — would be torn down and free 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.