The 119-year-old Albert Kahn & Associates -- the architectural firm that defined Detroit’s golden era of opulent buildings and groundbreaking factories -- is fighting to find its role in the 21st Century, Louis Aguilar reports in The Detroit News..
The firm the year facing the threat of eviction from the stunning New Center building designed by Albert Kahn and named for the architect, who died in 1942. The firm owed more than $481,000 in rent for its offices and basement archives that store the original blueprints and drawings for thousands of area buildings, including the Ford Motor Co. River Rouge complex, the Fisher Building, the Detroit Athletic Club, the former Packard Plant and the former headquarters of General Motors.
The rent issue has been settled amicably. But the firm is still adjusting to its latest round of layoffs that pared its Detroit workforce to 80, from a peak of 300 two decades ago.
“We are definitely back on the upswing,” said W. Clift Montague, Kahn’s senior vice president and chief strategic officer, in a recent interview. The unpaid rent — about four months’ worth — was due to the cancellation of a major contract, he said.
