By: Jon Zemke

Kraemer Design Group has played a pivotal role in transforming downtown Detroit over the last 20 years. Now downtown Detroit is playing an increasingly important role in the architecture firm’s bottom line.

The downtown Detroit-based firm did a lot of marquee projects in its early years, including the Lofts of Merchants Row and Harmonie Park commercial buildings. When the Great Recession hit, more and more of Kraemer Design Group’s workload came from outside of Michigan, so much so that only 20 percent of the company’s workload came from Detroit four years ago.

That has changed in recent years with downtown Detroit’s rapid rebound. Kraemer Design Group has served as the architect for a number of marquee projects in recent years, including the Broderick Tower and the David Whitney Building renovations. That work pushed the share of its revenue from Detroit project past 50 percent two years ago. Today it’s nearly 80 percent.

“Now it’s coming back and coming back incredibly strong,” says Robert Kraemer, principal of Kraemer Design Group.

That has allowed Kraemer Design Group to hire seven people over the last year, expanding its staff to 29 employees and an intern. That team is working on a number of historic renovations in downtown Detroit, including 28 W. Grand River, 1201 Wooward (the new GSTV headquarters), and an expansion of the Lofts of Merchants Row.

That’s going work for now but Kraemer expects the historic rehab work to start tailing off and turning into more new construction over the next few years.

“There are not too many of the big empty buildings left in downtown Detroit,” Kraemer says.

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