Somewhere, the late Alex Manoogian is smiling. The old Masco Corporation Headquarters at 21001 Van Born Road, the result of Manoogian Family’s decades of hard work and innovation and vacant for the last six years, is being renovated into a high-scale, mixed-use facility housing professional service and offices and convention/event venues.

In 1920, a 19-year-old Manoogian immigrated to the United States from Smyrna, Turkey. After holding several jobs on the East Coast – including spending time in the screw machine business – he came to Detroit in 1924. He continued to learn the screw machine business, along with metalworking for automotive components. Six months after the great stock market collapse in 1929, Manoogian founded Masco Screw Products Company with two partners, Harry Adjemian and Charles Saunders.

The name of the company would be created from their names – M(anoogian), A(djemian) and S(aunders) plus the “co” for company.

What started with $33,000 in assets -- some used machines, a truck and a few thousand dollars – would turn into the world’s largest faucet manufacturer and leading American cabinet manufacturer. As the Great Depression grew, so did the company. Masco’s first contract was with the old Hudson Motor Company for $7,000 in 1930. By 1935, the company’s sales reached $100,000. The following year it became publicly traded on the Detroit Stock Exchange and by 1942, Masco sales exceeded $1 million.

Masco Screw Products turned into Masco Corporation and became a huge corporate holding company for numerous creations and acquisitions, probably the most famous of which is Delta, one of the first single-handle hot/cold faucets.

Before Alex Manoogian gave the reigns of Masco in 1986 to his son, Richard, the company moved into its new headquarters in Taylor. Masco Corporation created the largest and most iconic building in the city between Van Born Road and the I-94 freeway. During its heyday, visitors witnessed a headquarters full of impeccable artwork and the top lines of business furnishings – it was a corporate headquarters but looked more like a museum. Masco stayed in the Taylor headquarters until announcing in 2015 that it would be relocated to a new, smaller facility in Livonia.

By 2017, Ford Motor Company agreed to take over the headquarters and the adjacent Kmart property. At that time, Ford needed office space for nearly 1,000 employees during its Dearborn campus transition along with storage areas for vehicles. The old Kmart property is not part of this new proposal for the headquarters building.

Sitting on an 18.75-acre property on the north side of I-94, the old headquarters includes a mammoth 417,000 square feet. Planning Department Director Lora Fell said the key to the proposal was preventing any site demolition. preserving the natural features of the unique building and its campus-like setting.

The Planning Commission approved rezoning it to Light Industrial/Planned Unit Development (I-1/PUD). City Council held the first hearing on the change during its June 2 meeting.

“We couldn’t be more excited about this project,” Mayor Tim Woolley said. “PMI Taylor LLC has been great to work with. It’s been a great relationship. That old headquarters building is, in many ways, a key to moving the Van Born Road corridor forward in the future.

“This plan will create and house good jobs in the medical, storage and events space. It will attract business owners seeking quality office space and it will be a regional economic draw.”

The approvals will lead to a mixed-use facility including professional services and offices (75,782 square feet); an event venue including entertainment and recreation center (60,000 square feet); and executive storage (132,050 square feet). The storage portion of the facility will be housed in what was a windowless section that previously was used for the same reason. The event center will focus on weddings, professional conferences and expositions.

The professional portion will include medical offices, clinics and outpatient surgical centers. That area will include healthcare delivery, procedure rooms, recovery areas and administrative offices. That type of facility will provide stable employment, daytime traffic patterns and have a strong compatibility with both office and event programming, according to the developers of the plan.

The renovations will use the existing headquarters structure and no demolition is planned.

The project overview proposes the adaptive reuse and internal reconfiguration of a large, existing multi-story commercial structure into a five-condominium mixed use development. The PUD approach allows for this type of strategic mixed use of an existing site.

It is designed to introduce diversified employment, medical, commercial and community-oriented uses within a single framework. The redevelopment will leverage the building’s substantial existing floor area, structured circulation and regional access while introducing targeted architectural updates and improved entrances.

The developers will also create a 90-foot state-of-the-art billboard sign parallel to the I-94 corridor along with upgrading monument signage along Van Born Road.