Troy-based Flagstar Bank is expanding its footprint in Troy, after signing a lease for an additional 95,000 square feet in the city.
Flagstar plans to invest in the bank and hire people, said Michael Tierney, Flagstar’s Michigan market president.
“We’ve gone from being a bank with a mortgage focus to a full-service bank, and there’s a lot of things that come with that,” he said. “As a result, we’ve hired a lot of people, and we’ll be continuing to hire this year.”
The bank currently has 366,000 square feet at its headquarters at 5151 Corporate Drive, near Crooks Road and I-75. But as the mortgage servicing department grows and the bank continues to invest in its commercial operations, space in the building has been in short supply.
“We’ve had people doubled up, using conference rooms, training rooms and using every square inch of space,” said Marshall Soura, executive vice president of Flagstar.
And in looking for space for the bank’s mortgage servicing division, Flagstar came across space once used by a competitor — Bank of America — in the Troy Officentre complex along Big Beaver Road near Livernois.
In fact, Bank of America was using the space for its mortgage servicing operations — a contributing factor to choosing the space, Soura said.
“We looked at a number of properties, and this was already laid out very well for mortgage servicing,” he said.
Glenn DesRosiers, a senior vice president of Farmington Hills-based Friedman Integrated Real Solutions, represented the building’s owner, Brighton-based Osprey Management Co.
The leases come on the heels of a strong year for the building, with 215,000 square feet filled in 2011, DesRosiers said. That’s on top of the 383,000 square feet filled since Osprey bought the 745,000-square-foot building in January 2007.
The Flagstar deal, combined with several other deals expected to be signed shortly, brings the building’s occupancy to 71 percent, DesRosiers said.
Garrett Keais, vice president of Southfield-based Signature Associates, represented Flagstar.
The deal is the largest office lease this year in Troy, according to data from the Washington, D.C.-basedCoStar Group Inc.
Last year, Saginaw-based Rehmann LLC leased 40,000 square feet at 1500 W. Big Beaver.
Westlake Village, Calif.-based J.D. Power and Associates also leased 40,000 square feet, moving from the Timberland II building at 5435 Corporate Drive into Building B of the Troy Officentre at 320 E. Big Beaver.
It ends a year when the city of Troy generated more leasing deals than any other office market in metro Detroit, yet finished the third quarter with the second-worst vacancy rate in the region at 34.8 percent, according to data from the Southfield office of CBRE Group Inc.
By Dan Duggan, Crain’s Detroit
