DETROIT—Powertrain supplier Tenneco Inc. is abandoning its plans for an office consolidation in suburban Detroit.
Its new $23 million building at 15701 Technology Drive near Five Mile and Beck roads in Northville, Mich., sits vacant and is up for sublease, according to a marketing brochure from the Southfield office of brokerage house Cushman & Wakefield.
Steve Blow, executive director for global corporate communications for Tenneco, said the decision to abandon the move—which was a consolidation of employees in three suburban Detroit locations—"made prudent business sense."
"Given the challenging and changing market conditions earlier this year in the February time frame, we evaluated the state of the business and that it was the right business move to keep the people in the buildings they are in," he said.
Tenneco, based in Lake Forest, Ill., received a $750,000 performance-based grant from the Michigan Strategic Fund, which is overseen by the Michigan Economic Development Corp., with the understanding that 100 jobs would be created over three to five years.
The MEDC said in a statement that Tenneco requested that the grant agreement be terminated and "no disbursements were made."
Tenneco paid $5.4 billion for Southfield-based Federal-Mogul in October 2018 and had been in the process of splitting into two separate publicly traded companies until January, when it put those plans on hold, Crain's Detroit Business reported at the time. Crain's is an affiliate of Automotive News.
Tenneco maintains operations in three southeast Michigan locations in Plymouth Township, Southfield and Grass Lake.
General Motors accounted for 11 percent of Tenneco's business in 2019 and Ford Motor Co. generated another 10 percent of its revenue, according to the supplier's annual 10-K report filed with securities regulators.
About 200 Tenneco employees were to move from its Southfield office to Northville during the first quarter, along with roughly 50 each from Plymouth and Grass Lake. The company is currently in the West Eleven Office Park in a building owned by Friedman Real Estate.
The Cushman & Wakefield marketing brochure says that the 100,000-sq.-ft. building in the Northville Technology Park is fully furnished.
The asking rate is $19 per square foot per year, minus the costs of electricity and other utilities.
Tenneco ranks No. 23 on the Automotive News list of the top 100 global suppliers with worldwide sales to automakers of $11 billion in 2019.
