The Kresge Foundation plans to announce on Friday, Sept. 12, that it is moving its headquarters from Troy to the former Marygrove College campus in northwest Detroit.
The move, which is expected to happen in 2028 once construction of the new headquarters is done, would be a further demonstration of the $4 billion foundation’s commitment to the city where much of its philanthropy takes place, according to Kresge Foundation CEO Rip Rapson.
“In the last number of years, it has become clear that so much of our ability to have credibility in our work in any city is to be part of the city,” Rapson recently told reporters. “You have to be able to walk your talk.”
The foundation does only a small amount of philanthropy in Troy, officials said, generally a few grants to Troy-area arts programs.
Along with its new headquarters plan, the Kresge Foundation also announced Friday that it will invest $180 million over the next five years in the neighborhoods surrounding the Marygrove campus.
The funds are to go toward housing stabilization, rent assistance, commercial corridor revitalization, public space enhancement and for various financial support for residents and businesses in the Fitzgerald, Bagley, University District and Martin Park neighborhoods.
“Residents of these neighborhoods have made it clear that promises for improved quality of life have been made time and time again, but too few have been kept,” Wendy Lewis Jackson, managing director of the foundation’s Detroit program, said in a statement. “These investments are about bringing long-standing community aspirations to life.”
The Kresge Foundation intends to officially announce its plans at an event on Friday morning, Sept. 12, on the Marygrove Conservancy Campus. The plans also include spending for various campus upgrades.
The Kresge Foundation dates to 1924 and has been headquartered in Troy since 1984. The foundation reports having a $4 billion endowment and a headquarters staff of 130.
The foundation since 2012 has had a small Midtown Detroit office along Woodward that it intends to close once the new Detroit headquarters opens.
The future 70,000-square-foot headquarters building would be constructed on the northeast quadrant of the Marygrove campus. It will be designed by New York-based Diller Scofidio + Renfro and Detroit-based Hannah-Neumann/Smith will be the architect of record. Visual renderings of the building are not yet available.
The foundation plans to eventually sell its existing headquarters off Big Beaver Road in Troy, Rapson said. That 3-acre campus includes a 44,000-square-foot office building that was last renovated in 2015, plus a restored 1850s barn, farmhouse and old-fashioned windmill that are nods to the site’s early history as the Brooks Dairy Farm.
The Marygrove campus
Marygrove College was a private Catholic liberal arts college in Detroit that closed in 2019 amid financial difficulties. Shortly before the closure, the university, with financial assistance from the Kresge Foundation, created a nonprofit known as the Marygrove Conservancy to which it transferred ownership of the 53-acre campus.
Since the colleger’s closure, the Marygrove Conservancy Campus has evolved into an educational and civic hub that is said to serve more than 900 children and young adults, primarily those living in the surrounding Livernois-McNichols neighborhoods.
The campus is home to a K-12 public school — The School at Marygrove — the Marygrove Early Education Center and the University of Michigan Marsal Family School of Education. The Kresge Foundation says it has invested $196 million in grants, low-cost loans and guarantees to support the Marygrove campus transition.
The Kresge Foundation was founded in Detroit in 1924 by a $1.6 million gift from Sebastian S. Kresge, whose retail stores later grew into Kmart Corp. Its original location was the Kales Building in downtown, which, at the time, was also headquarters for the old S.S. Kresge Co. retail chain, known as “Kresge’s.”
In 1930, the foundation moved along with the retail company to a new Albert Kahn-designed headquarters building at 2727 Second Ave. in Detroit’s Cass Park. Decades later in 1965, the Kresge Foundation moved to a series of rented buildings in Detroit, Birmingham and Troy, according to a past foundation report, before settling in Troy in 1984.
The foundation’s first Troy headquarters building was in time demolished and replaced by a new building in 2006.
The Kmart Corp. also left Detroit for Troy, setting up in 1972 in a new and architecturally distinct corporate headquarters at 3100 W. Big Beaver Road. The retail corporation ultimately abandoned that headquarters when it left Michigan in 2006, and the building was recently demolished.
A near return in ’04
Rapson said he doesn’t know why the foundation’s leaders from decades ago decided to leave Detroit. But he does recall how the foundation came close to returning to the city around 2004, before its board members decided to replace the foundation’s older Troy building rather than relocate.
“That’s a fascinating story of a deeply divided board that just by the skin of its teeth decided to stay in Troy,” Rapson told reporters.
Near the top of the Kresge Foundation’s list of new commitments will be the creation, in partnership with the Live6 Alliance, of a Resident Investment and Opportunity Fund that will prioritize property tax relief, support for renters, home maintenance assistance and side lot activation beautification.
The foundation also plans to complete the Ella Fitzgerald Greenway by entending it east to Livernois Avenue. And it intends to make enhancements to Ella Fitzgerald Park and give assistance to small businesses on the McNichols commercial corridor for interior and facade upgrades.
Issuing bonds
Rapson said the foundation plans to issue about $130 million in bonds to finance its new headquarters project as well as the Marygrove campus upgrades.
Even with its $4 billion in assets, the foundation will be borrowing rather than paying cash for the headquarters so as to not disrupt its normal schedule for giving, according to Rapson.
Contact JC Reindl: 313-378-5460 or jcreindl@freepress.com. Follow him on X @jcreindl
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This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Kresge Foundation to move HQ from Troy to Detroit to boost ‘credibility’
Reporting by JC Reindl, Detroit Free Press / Detroit Free Press
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