NGKF Will Lease Travelers Towers

DETROIT—The New York-based Time Equities Inc. has named Newmark Grubb Knight Frank as the exclusive leasing and management agent for Travelers Towers I & II, the 790,000-square-foot, class A office complex located at 26533-26555 Evergreen Road in suburban Southfield. NGKF should know the property and submarket quite well. The firm just finished representing Lehman Brothers Holdings Inc. in the sale of the complex to an investor group led by Time Equities last month.

NGKF still has a great deal of work to do. Although thousands of employees for companies such as Quicken Loans have been flooding into the city’s downtown offices, many outlying suburban developments such as Travelers have suffered. The occupancy rate for the complex sank as low as 30% during the recession. In the last 24 months, however, the NGKF team, which also handled Travelers’ leasing when it was owned by Lehman, has boosted that rate up to 50%.