Chemical Bank moving to downtown Detroit and will build 20-story tower

John Gallagher | Detroit Free Press

In the latest planned addition to Detroit's skyline, Chemical Bank said Wednesday it is moving its headquarters downtown and will construct a new 20-story building at the corner of Woodward Avenue and Elizabeth Street.

About 500 bank employees will work in the building.

“Chemical Bank, Michigan’s largest headquartered bank, is excited and pleased to be a part of the dynamic growth and success of Detroit,” said Gary Torgow, a Detroit native who is chairman of Chemical Financial Corp. “We are honored to be in a position to bring a bank headquarters back to the city of Detroit and become Detroit’s hometown bank.”

The new modernist tower will rise opposite Comerica Park south of the Fox Theatre on land now occupied by a small surface parking lot and a building used mostly for parking.

At a morning announcement on the site, Mayor Mike Duggan said the City of Detroit will now use Chemical Bank as its new primary banking partner for managing the city's operation accounts, with expected balances up to $500 million.

The new tower will rise as the latest addition to a skyline that remained mostly unchanged for decades but has recently seen work begin on businessman Dan Gilbert's Hudson's site tower, a new headquarters building for Little Caesars, Wayne State's new Mike Ilitch School of Business and several more planned projects.

The tower will consist of street-level retail, several floors of vehicle parking, the office floors for Chemical Bank, and likely some condominiums on the upper floors. Torgow said there was no firm cost estimate yet, but at 240,000 square feet the building is likely to cost upward of $70 million plus pre-construction costs for demolition of the existing structure and the like.

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Torgow said Chemical Bank, founded in 1917 and headquartered in Midland since then, will leave a substantial number of employees in Midland even after the move. Until the new tower is finished in about three years, the bank will expand at its current downtown Detroit location, 333 Fort St.

Thanks to a merger with Talmer Bank and Trust, Chemical Bank is the state's largest headquartered bank with more than $20 billion in assets, 3,300 employees, and 212 banking centers across Michigan, Indiana and Ohio.

With its strong industrial history, Detroit was once home to multiple large banks, including Comerica, NBD and others. Mergers and Comerica's decision to move to Texas drained away all those headquarters from the city, but the Chemical Bank move shows that the city remains a hub for Midwest financial activities.

Duggan was beaming as he spoke at the morning announcement.

"Chemical Bank is a great banking partner for the city's fiannces and a great community partner," he said. "I am very excited to welcome Detroit's new hometown bank."

And City Council President Brenda Jones told the announcement ceremony that she once opened a shoe store decades ago in the vicinity and that someone had asked her then if she wouldn't rather open one in the Northland mall in Southfield.

"Look at Northland today and look at downtown today!" she said, referring to the closed and soon-to-be-demolished mall versus the rapidly reviving downtown.

The new tower is being designed by Neumann Smith Architecture, with offices in Southfield and downtown Detroit.

Contact John Gallagher: 313-222-5173 or gallagher@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @jgallagherfreep.