Eight stories will soon be rising in Downtown Detroit, and they’re going to belong to the most-known Motor City pizza empire, Little Caesars.
The 205,000 square-foot building will more than double in size the world headquarters that currently resides in the historic Fox Theatre. It’ll only be the seventh newly constructed corporate headquarters in Detroit since 1950. Currently, there are nearly 7,300 Detroit-based employees in the Little Caesars headquarters and the new facility will add room for 600 more.
“This is a transformational time our city’s history, and we’re honored to continue contributing to the rebirth of our proud community,” said Christopher Ilitch, President and CEO of Ilitch Holdings, Inc. “Detroit is not just our home, it is a great place to do business with a tremendous pool of people who have talent and heart. This city and its people helped make a single Little Caesars pizza shop into one of the world’s largest pizza chains, and we hope our growth, commitment and continued investment will serve as a catalyst for others to call Detroit and Michigan their home.”
With the construction of the new Global Resource Center, which will be connected to the Fox with a pedestrian bridge, Little Caesars will provide training and meeting space for the thousands of franchisees, suppliers and employees that visit the Detroit headquarters campus each year. The building will also include a new “flagship” downtown Little Caesars store.
Other features will include an auditorium, collaborative workspaces and meeting rooms, state of the art training facilities, innovation kitchens, abundant windows to allow plenty of natural light, green spaces and a childcare facility. They’re expecting to build the new structure in compliance with LEED Silver standards.
“We want the millions of visitors to the District Detroit and our headquarters campus each year to know that we are an entrepreneurial Detroit and Michigan brand – born and bred. We’re also thrilled to build an exceptional workplace for our employees that cements our position as a global leader in the restaurant industry, a place that allows us to fulfill our vision to be the most successful pizza chain in the world, right here in the heart of the city and the District Detroit,” said David Scrivano, President and CEO of Little Caesars.
Rendering from Little Caesars. The Resource Center is on the right, Fox Theatre on the left, and Comerica Park in the distance.
The Illitch family is a prominent in the region not only for their pizza chain (which happens to be the largest carryout-only chain in the world) but for their ownership of the Detroit Red Wings and Detroit Tigers, as well as a litany of other businesses.
The project is one of 14 buildings constituting the large “District Detroit” development that includes a new hockey arena, entertainment spaces and residential units. For many years, the Illitch family has come under fire in some circles for their lack of development of land they own, but District Detroit is a sweeping vision for a currently moribund area between Midtown and the Central Business District.
Construction will begin in the spring of 2015 and is expected to be complete by the end of calendar 2016.
