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

TRAVERSE CITY, Mich. — General Motors President Mark Reuss reaffirmed the automaker’s commitment to Detroit on Aug. 7, hyping up its anticipated new headquarters even as the company pumps billions of dollars into its Warren, Mich., 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 2024 CAR Management Briefing Seminars here. “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.

GM previously said there would be showcase space at the new headquarters, where it plans to move in 2025, but has kept details under wraps. Crain’s Detroit Business, an affiliate of Automotive News, asked the automaker for updated renderings.

GM’s office footprint plans have been of great interest to industry observers, and local and state leaders especially. The company’s gradual retreat from the GM-owned RenCen, hastened by an increase in remote work during the COVID-19 pandemic, has sparked questions about its presence in Detroit. The move to Hudson’s represents a significant reduction in its square footage in the city.

The automaker's presence in Warren, meanwhile, has expanded greatly. Many GM employees left the RenCen in recent years for the company's Global Technical Center, where the automaker has invested $2.5 billion in the past five years, Reuss said. The building houses offices as well as new electric vehicle battery cell manufacturing and design labs.

“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 RenCen — whose future remains under review — to a ghost town since the pandemic began in early 2020, there’s so much activity at the Warren campus that the company is running out of parking space. GM representatives in June submitted site plans to the Warren 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, in Orion Township Mich., and various supply plants cropping up around it, continue, though the production launch of full-size electric pickups 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.”