Golden towers, nice atrium, plenty of parking. In Southfield (Google Maps photo)
One of the best details of many in the cult film "Office Space" was the generic nature of the office park where the drones at Initech labor.
It was shot in Austin, Texas, but every state in the nation has these places, with a few towers surrounding green spaces, a stormwater retention pond, and plenty of parking.
There's an atrium in every building, so you can see the beautiful day you're missing as you trudge past it to the bathroom or vending machines or, maybe on someone's birthday, to the equally generic chain restaurant that's close enough to see, but you still have to drive because there are no sidewalks.
And Jennifer Aniston never works there.
Here in Metro Detroit, the Southfield Town Center is probably the best example of this sort of place. Faced with competition for tenants from a resurgent Detroit, the complex is raising its game, JC Reindl at the Free Press reports. How? Besides the usual refurbishing of atriums and conference rooms, there's also this:
Those upgrades, which also added food trucks, installed Zagster bicycle-share stations and tore out carpeting and generic drop ceilings for tenants wanting a more "unfinished" look, have been helping the gargantuan 2.2 million-square-foot complex compete with the newly hot downtown Detroit office market, as well as perennially popular Birmingham and Ann Arbor.
Food trucks! Bike shares! Bare concrete floors, for that I-used-to-be-a-glove-factory look! If an office complex could wear a man-bun, this is what it would look like.
There's also a photo of one of the new "amenity rooms," which features pinball machines and a foosball table, because you know those crazy millennials -- they love that stuff.
It's a good story about competition, how we work today and what we want to do at the office.
