Wayne County government is moving to buy the former Comerica Bank headquarters building in downtown Detroit for $25 million, with a county commission committee already signing off on the deal. Officials are aiming to close the purchase in October, putting county government in line to take over a nine-story tower with a 243-space parking garage at 411 West Lafayette.
The plan, first reported by The Detroit News, would put the building in county government hands roughly a year after the Detroit-based Sterling Group closed on its own purchase of the same tower. According to Deadline Detroit, Gary Torgow's Sterling Group bought Comerica Bank's office building at 411 West Lafayette, with that sale quietly closing at the end of 2025. Torgow also serves as chairman of the Huntington National Bank board, the outlet noted.
What Sterling Group intended to do with the property was not disclosed at the time. The same Deadline Detroit report stated plainly that it was unclear what Sterling Group would do with the building, leaving the tower's future in limbo until Wayne County's bid emerged this week.
A Nearly 400,000-Square-Foot Downtown Landmark
Comerica vacated the roughly 400,000-square-foot building, located between Cass Avenue and First Street, according to a LinkedIn post by real estate reporter kirkpinho. That same post noted that Comerica was sold to Cincinnati-based Fifth Third Bancorp in a $10.9 billion deal that finalized in February. The building's departure from Comerica's own portfolio and its subsequent sale to Sterling Group set the stage for the tower's next chapter, now potentially as a county government facility.
Wayne County's plan calls for closing the $25 million purchase in October, per the Detroit News report, after the county commission committee already approved the sale. The nine-story structure and its attached 243-space parking garage would give the county a substantial downtown footprint, though the report did not detail what county departments or operations might move in.
How It Fits a Mixed Office Market
A government purchase of this size lands amid a Detroit office market that different research firms are reading in noticeably different ways. CBRE put the overall Detroit office vacancy rate at 19.4% in the second quarter of 2026, while Cushman & Wakefield separately reported an 18.5% vacancy rate for the same quarter, up 10 basis points from the prior quarter, according to its own Detroit MarketBeats report. Colliers, meanwhile, measured Metro Detroit office vacancy at a considerably lower 11.8% for the quarter, which it said was down 20 basis points from the first quarter and below the national average of 13.9%, per its 2026 Q2 office market report.
The firms also diverged on leasing momentum. CBRE reported 546,000 square feet of leasing activity in the second quarter and 93,000 square feet of total net absorption for the Detroit market. Colliers instead reported 622,247 square feet of leasing activity across 155 deals and 286,677 square feet of net absorption for the quarter, while noting that year-to-date absorption remained negative at 1.1 million square feet. CBRE also tracked 437,000 square feet of office space under construction across six Detroit projects, compared with Colliers' figure of 422,382 square feet in the pipeline with no new deliveries. The average asking rent across the Detroit office market was $20.68 per square foot in the second quarter, down 1.9% from the prior quarter, per CBRE.
A Government Redevelopment Precedent Elsewhere in the Region
Wayne County's move echoes, in broad strokes, a separate government-led office purchase in Oakland County, where officials bought two downtown Pontiac office towers for a new county campus. According to Oakland County, that project was set to receive $50 million in addition to $10 million from the county itself. It offers one regional example of local government stepping in to repurpose downtown office space, though the scope, financing and intended use of Wayne County's Comerica tower purchase have not been detailed in the same way.
For now, the closing timeline remains the clearest marker of where things stand: Wayne County government has said it plans to officially close the purchase in October, following the county commission committee's approval of the sale. What the county intends to do with the nine-story building once it takes ownership has not yet been made public.
