Sachse Construction, Broder & Sachse Moving from Downtown Detroit to Midtown

A prominent construction firm and development company are moving from downtown Detroit to the city’s Midtown neighborhood.

Detroit-based construction contractor Sachse Construction as well as Detroit-based developer Broder & Sachse Real Estate Services Inc. are taking 33,000 square feet in the Orchestra Place building an affiliate of Broder & Sachse owns at 3663 Woodward Ave. at Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard.

Sachse Construction CEO Todd Sachse said the move is spurred by efficiency and company growth, noting that the firm started looking for new space two years ago and is moving in Sept. 28.

In their previous 25,000-square-foot headquarters at the Dan Gilbert-owned building at 1528 Woodward Ave., the companies were spread across five floors, whereas in the new building, they take just one, Sachse said.

“It’s going to be a very different environment,” Sachse said, adding that construction began in January and was paused for a couple of months due to the COVID-19 pandemic that halted most nonessential commercial real estate construction in Michigan.

He declined to reveal the cost of the buildout, on which Sachse Construction was the contractor and Detroit-based Neumann/Smith Architecture was the project architect.

Sachse Construction moved into 1528 Woodward in the summer of 2013 when there were 55 employees in its office and another 45 at other locations; today that figure is about 115 in the office and another 85 employees elsewhere.

Broder & Sachse affiliate 3663 Woodward Owner LLC purchased Orchestra Place in the summer of 2017 for $21 million from the Detroit Symphony Orchestra, according to CoStar Group Inc., a Washington, D.C.-based real estate information service. That’s about $127.13 per square foot.

CoStar says the approximately 165,000-square-foot building leases for $20 per square foot per year.