The Pentastar Shines Again

On Wednesday, December 10, elected officials and staff of the City of Auburn Hills visited the Stellantis headquarters here in our community. At just under 5.5 million square feet, it is the second largest office building in the United States, only to the Pentagon. Visiting the building for business between the city and the company used to be a somewhat regular thing, but when Covid hit in 2020 and buildings like this were mostly or completely shuttered, visiting became more complicated. Prior to Covid, the building was bustling with an estimated 15,000 employees working in it every day. Truly, it’s like a city within a city. There were more people working at this building six years ago on a daily basis than the individual populations of well over half the communities in Michigan.

While it was purely coincidental, our tour ended up being on the same day that Antonio Filosa, the company’s new CEO, was in town to conduct an employee town hall at the building. Our elected officials and staff learned a lot about everything that is contained within this massive headquarters, with numerous functions conducted all under one roof. And believe me, that’s a BIG roof.

If you turn back the clock to just a couple of years ago and you took a stroll through the building, you would have found it looking like a ghost town. Some parts of the building were completely unutilized, with the concentration of those who were there working being in the tech center portion of the building. The number of people as we understand it at that time, was about 1,200 employees. On Wednesday, during our visit, it was reported that about 8,000 employees were working in the building, and they were about to hear from their CEO. The company also recently announced that they are about to make a multi-billion-dollar investment in the company and add about 2,000 new employees to the headquarters. They also estimate that their huge investment will create as many as an additional 20,000 jobs at companies that support Stellantis. That is certainly good news for Auburn Hills, Oakland County, and Michigan, as well as the many businesses throughout our community that support the people who travel in and out of that building every day for work.

It goes without saying that Auburn Hills has been the proud home of the company and its predecessor companies for many years now. And hearing the good news about the company’s planned growth, including a wonderful refresh of the building, only makes us even prouder. We especially want to thank CEO Antonio Filosa for his wisdom in making the decision to fully utilize the incredible headquarters building to its fullest potential.

From all of us at the City of Auburn Hills to all of you at Stellantis – ONWARD AND UPWARD!

Thomas A. Tanghe, City Manager