Commercial Contracting Corporation provided interior flatwork, site concrete and structural / misc. steel fabrication and installation for the new visitor center and administrative buildings on the grounds of the historic Edsel and Eleanor Ford House in Grosse Pointe Shores.

The 40,000-square-foot visitor center and the 17,000-square-foot administration building are the first new construction on the estate in more than 25 years and will allow for better preservation of the historic buildings along with enhancements for visitors and new educational initiatives with local schools. This project was significant for CCC as it was the largest structural steel project, at over 1,000 tons fabricated and erected, we had completed to date.

The two-story visitor center was designed to LEED Platinum standards with the minimum goal of LEED Gold Certification. Frank Rewold & Sons Inc., the construction manager for this project, dug 16 geothermal wells to create a closed-circuit geothermal system to heat and cool the administration building — one of the ways the project is trying to achieve a net-zero goal. The geothermal system is just one element of the project, which was designed by architectural firm SmithGroup, that will help Ford House meet its sustainability goals.