Coleman A. Young Municipal Center: Government at its Greatest
By: Tanner Johnston
Standing watch in front of the
Coleman A. Young Municipal
Center in Detroit since 1958 is a
26-foot-tall bronze sculpture known as “The
Spirit of Detroit,” easily one of the most
iconic landmarks in the Motor City. But, just
as iconic are the two, white marble-clad
towers it guards and the people who operate
them. In fact, the property team at the
Coleman A. Young Municipal Center has
pulled off an amazing feat: combining public
service, safety, financial responsibility and
high-quality management into the daily
operations of a busy government building.
The secret to the property’s success is
the team’s governance and management
style, which is laser-focused on efficiency.
Gregory McDuffee, executive director of
the Detroit-Wayne Joint Building Authority,
which owns the property, sees running the
100 percent-occupied municipal center as
a higher calling: “Every dollar we spend is a
taxpayer dollar. We collect rent from the city
and the county. As a result, we view ourselves
as stewards of that resource.”
As part of this stewardship, the property
team wanted to demonstrate to the public
that their money was being well spent,
so they decided to pursue the BOMA 360
designation. “We recognized that achieving
the BOMA 360 designation would be a
reflection of how we maximize the value of
our taxpayer-provided resources,” McDuffee
explains. But, the property team of the
745,000-square-foot municipal center—
complete with courtrooms, a law library,
offices and a 500-seat auditorium—began its
journey to BOMA 360 more than a decade
earlier.
In 2005, the Detroit-Wayne Joint Building
Authority engaged Hines to manage
the building, drawing on the third-party
management company’s industry expertise
to create significant efficiencies and
improvements across all areas of building
operations. When Michael Kennedy, property
manager with Hines, came on board,
the annual operating expenses for the property
were $15 million per year. Now, 13 years
later, that figure has been cut nearly in half,
with a 55 percent reduction in utility costs;
operations are firing on all cylinders; and
the property has the added recognition of a
BOMA 360 designation.
“Quite frankly, we have a better-run
asset with happier tenants and visitors due
to these operational improvements,” says
McDuffee. With its lean, but effective, operations
and management, the center should
make every taxpayer proud. “We saw the
BOMA 360 program as an opportunity to
benchmark and highlight our gains, and
we couldn’t be prouder to have earned the
designation as part of our commitment to
excellence and the community,” he adds.
In the midst of all this efficiency, the
property team at the Coleman A. Young
Municipal Center also takes the time to
focus on the tenant and visitor experience.
The team has to balance tenant and visitor
satisfaction with a high level of security. All
of the nearly 4,000 daily visitors to the towers
must go through a security screening
just as thorough as that found at an airport,
but the atmosphere is significantly more
friendly. “We work hard to ensure that we
provide a welcoming experience to visitors,”
McDuffee explains.
In fact, McDuffee and the property team
consider themselves ambassadors to everyone
who walks through the door. “This is a
very active, multidisciplinary government
center, and anything we can do to bring the
level of anxiety down helps security,” he
says. “Something as simple as helping a visitor
find their way is a valuable opportunity
to help people feel welcome and at ease.”
As you might expect, the center excelled
in the life safety, security and risk management
section of the BOMA 360 application,
one of six major evaluation areas for
the designation. McDuffee and his team
attribute this success to their three-pronged
security plan: engage tenants on preparedness
in a meaningful way, particularly
through regular security trainings for designated
floor wardens; clearly communicate
with tenants, providing both emergency
announcements and ongoing communications;
and maintain a strong partnership
with local and federal security officials.
Preparation has been key to keeping the
building physically safe, but cybersecurity is
a growing concern for government buildings.
For that, the experience of Hines was
critical. “Typically, the public sector is wholly
reliant on their own IT and security infrastructure,”
McDuffee says. “But, rather than
drawing valuable resources into creating
our own systems and platforms, we’ve been
able to aggressively leverage Hines’ existing
protocols and best practices.” This allowed
the property to take advantage of cuttingedge
security best practices while keeping
costs low.
It’s easy to see that the Coleman A. Young
Municipal Center is the model citizen of its
community. And, with the BOMA 360 designation,
it proves its commitment to excellence.