GM CEO Mary Barra doesn't rule out demolition of Renaissance Center

General Motors CEO Mary Barra said the automaker is committed to finding a use for the Renaissance Center as GM prepares to move out next year — but she did not rule out demolition of the iconic structure.

Barra spoke Thursday before the Detroit Economic Club at the Motor City Casino addressing a wide range of topics, including GM's announcement last month that it will relocate its global headquarters in 2025 from the Renaissance Center on Detroit's waterfront to billionaire Dan Gilbert's new Hudson's Detroit building on Woodward Avenue. GM will be the anchor tenant of the Hudson building and have a 15-year lease there.

Barra said GM is "proud to call Detroit our home." But as it looked at the size of the RenCen and with more people working partially remote after COVID-19, it made sense to move to less square footage at the Hudson building. But Barra said GM, city and state leaders and Gilbert's company will work to find a use for the RenCen when GM vacates it.

"We'll look at what's the best use for that building or that property," Barra said. "We're committed to doing the right thing. It's such prime real estate. I'm sure we're going to come up with a good solution."

Barra pointed out that GM did a lot to improve the RenCen during the 28 years it occupied the building, including making it more accessible to the public, adding, "It's a special place." Moderator Rhonda Walker, a WDIV-TV anchor, asked Barra, "Are any of the thought processes demolishing the building?"

Barra said, "We're first looking at what can be done and what would be the appropriate use for the business. We've got a year to do that so that's where we're focused."

'We can't design a vehicle over Zoom'

GM's move is a significant downsizing in the automaker's square footage. GM President Mark Reuss said previously that GM will occupy the top two floors of the building, but commercial real estate brochures show each floor is just under 50,000 rentable square feet. At the RenCen, GM has access to 2.3 million square feet in office space.

After COVID-19, GM was not using all that space as much of its salaried workforce remained remote. It was a situation GM allowed for some time until December 2023 when Barra sent out a companywide email to employees ordering white-collar workers to be at their desks inside GM facilities on three specific days of each week "at a minimum" starting Jan. 8. Those three days are Tuesday, Wednesday and Thursday.

The move was met with some employee pushback. Barra on Thursday defended her decision.

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"We had all these people who had been, for a couple years now, working like they did pre-pandemic so we had to help everybody understand that," Barra said of plant workers and engineers who had been coming into the GM facilities to work because their jobs could not be done remotely. "We build and design vehicles and have support staffs that all need to be there. We are integrating 30,000 parts working with the supply base, and we can't design a vehicle over Zoom. So we asked everybody to be back."

'Cave people' ... 'are against virtually everything'

Barra said GM had hired a lot of people during COVID-19, noting that 40% of GM's technical talent has been with the company less than five years, so "we had people who had never been in the office."

"We also used the pandemic time ... to renovate to more modern facilities so when people did come back and spent a couple weeks there, they were like, 'I get it. I want to be here,' " Barra said.

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She noted that work gets done better when people are in person for "casual mentoring" and networking.

"I would say it's a very small minority that, I think, are just going to be unhappy about everything. I call them cave people," Barra said. "They are against virtually everything. But that's a tiny percentage. So many of our people are excited to be there."

Contact Jamie L. LaReau: jlareau@freepress.com. Follow her on Twitter @jlareauan. Read more on General Motors and sign up for our autos newsletter. Become a subscriber.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: GM CEO Mary Barra does not rule out demolition of RenCen