Location
Jackson, MI
Original Construction
1932
Construction Cost
$10,000,000 (post office)
Size
60,000 sqft (post office)
Completion Date
2003

Consumers Energy is Michigan’s largest natural gas and electric utility company.  Currently, its staff of 2,000 employees is spread out in three separate sites in and around Jackson, Michigan, and the company wants to merge these locations into a new state-of-the-art facility.  

In the spring of 2000, Consumers Energy hired SmithGroup to design their new 14-story office tower headquarters. Located in downtown Jackson, the 10-acre campus-like site features the restoration and renovation of an old, unused U.S. post office from 1932—dubbed the Old Main Post Office—which serves as the headquarters’ main entrance.

Eugene C. Hopkins, FAIA, served as principal in charge for the restoration of the old post office. Other features of the facility and site include a large plaza and green space, seating and walkway along the Grand River, formal and informal drop-offs and entryways, and two parking decks, totaling 800 spaces.

SmithGroup’s Historic Preservation Practice is working with Consumers on the restoration and adaptive reuse of the Neo-Classical post office.   Work includes restoration and repair of the building’s exterior and entrance lobbies and adapting the sorting room and utility areas for the building’s new program.

Because the building is historic, any work that affects the structure has to be designed and implemented in accordance with the Secretary of the Interior’s Standards for the Rehabilitation of Historic Buildings. SmithGroup also worked with the Department of the Interior to have the project certified as an Investment Tax Credit Project.