Fisher Building, 'Detroit's Largest Art Object,' On Auction Block: Gallery

The Fisher Building in downtown Detroit’s New Center area is the largest marble-clad commercial building in the world. Click through the gallery and take a peek inside. More photos at Auction.com

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Known as “Detroit’s largest art object,” the iconic Fisher Building, goes up for sale in an online auction that begins Monday at Auction.com.

Bidding starts at $3.5 million the landmark 1928 skyscraper at 3011 W. Grand Blvd. and 7430 Second Ave. that towers over the heart of Detroit’s New Center area. The auction runs June 22-24.

Obtained recently a bank through foreclosure, the spectacularly appointed building that occupies a special place in the Motor City’s history could go for a song, real estate experts predict.

A.J. Weiner, the managing director for the real estate firm Jones Lang LaSalle’s Detroit office, told NPR the property could potentially sell in the $20 million to $30 million – a fraction of the cost to build it, about $140 million in today’s dollars.

In less distressed markets like New York or Chicago, the Fisher Building could sell for as much as $500 million, Weiner said.

The building was designed at National Historic Landmark in 1989.

Constructed of limestone, granite, and several types of marble, the handsome building and imposing from the outside. Inside, it achieves the aim of the seven Fisher Brothers, who financed it with the $200 million sale ($2.7 billion in today’s dollars) of Fisher Body to General Motors.

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The brothers reached out to Detroit’s most prolific architect at the time, Albert Kahn, and gave him “a blank check” to build “the most beautiful building in the world,” Ryan Hooper of the Pure Detroit group, which gives tours of the build, told NPR.

Kahn delivered.

The New York League of Architects named the building the most beautiful building of 1928.

One of the building’s most striking features is the 2,089-seat Fisher Theater. The largest marble-clad commercial building in the world, the Fisher’s interior features 52 different types of marble from all parts of the world and in an array of colors. Art deco chandeliers twinkle overhead, lighting a frescoed ceiling. The lobby elevators, at one time the fastest in the world, have cast bronze doors and marble frames.

By the numbers, it has:

• 12,000 tons of steel
• 350,000 cubic yard of concrete and marble
• 1,800 bronze windows
• 641 bronze elevator doors
• 420 tons of bronze finishings
• 350,000 square feet of exterior marble
• 925,000 square feet of office space

The auction also includes a neighboring 10-story Albert Kahn Building, another art deco structure, and two parking garages.

$60 Million Estimated to Restore Fisher’s Shine

Crain’s Detroit Business said national and international investors are interested in the properties for downtown’s largely underserved multi-family residential market, while Detroit locals want the Fisher to remain a commercial office building.

The business journal said one of the interested parties is Chicago-based Capri Investment Group LLC, which has been assembling a group of investors for a $200 million fund to develop more multifamily housing in the 7.2-mile downtown.

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Another likely bidder is Spanish developer Fernando Palazuelo, who bought the abandoned Packard plant and previously tried to buy the Fisher and Kahn buildings from The Farbman Group before it turned over the keys to the bank, the Detroit Free Press said.

Whoever buys the building may have to spend as much as $60 million to restore the Fisher’s shine, the real estate experts told NPR. As important, they’ll have to have faith that the New Center area, once one of the wealthiest commercial districts in the world, truly is the new “it” district that city and development leaders say it is.

Downtown is experiencing what the Detroit Free Press called a “near-miraculous turnaround” due to the investments of Dan Gilbert, the Roxbury Group and others, but the renaissance has largely escaped the New Center area, just three miles away.