A 102-year-old building near Salt Lake City’s Pioneer Park that once showcased the early heyday of the Ford Motor Co. is to be renovated and turned into new corporate headquarters.

One of the region’s largest commercial real estate brokerages, Newmark Mountain West, announced Wednesday it had purchased the historic Ford Building, located at 280 S. 400 West, and would embark on a $40 million renovation of the two-story structure.

The firm said the soon-to-be refreshed 90,000-square-foot building in west downtown’s Depot District will serve as the company’s headquarters and house more than 320 employees for Newmark and its subsidiary, Mountain West Strategic.

Its purchase price of the 1.25-acre site and building northwest of Pioneer Park from a Charlotte-based real estate investment trust known as Asana Partners was not disclosed.

Chad Moore, chair of Newmark Mountain West’s board of directors, said the move represented its commitment “to this great city.”

“This investment in the Ford Building and west downtown Salt Lake City is part of our ongoing efforts to better serve the clients and community that have been so good to us,” Moore said in a statement, adding that the brokerage has seen its business grow by more than double each year since 2024.

Newmark’s $40 million renovation will add a full suite of new amenities to the 1924 building, the company said, including a 250-seat amphitheater and lecture hall, gym, pickleball and basketball courts, media production facilities, game room and a patio area.

The new headquarters, officials said, will also have access to an adjacent parking structure, which stands five stories, as well as several other parcels.

The original Ford Building was designed by Albert Kahn, a well-known industrial architect for Ford Motor Co., and was placed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2000.

It is said to be Kahn’s only known work in the Intermountain West.

When the building opened more than a century ago, it provided regional offices for the pioneering automaker near the peak of its Model T era, as well as a showroom, automotive servicing, and storage and distribution for parts arriving on nearby railroad spurs.

Though partially vacant now, the Ford Building has housed a variety of companies over the years, including environmental service firm Envirotech Corp. The Salt Lake City restaurant chain Gastronomy bought it in the mid-1990s and converted it into office spaces.

Newmark’s plans extend a long-running streak of adaptive reuses for historic buildings across the Depot District, as a range of former industrial and warehousing properties get preserved and converted to new purposes in the face of the neighborhood’s rapid growth.

Newmark’s purchase and renovation will also bring another sizable regional company headquarters to the perimeter of Pioneer Park, after Big-D Construction acquired and rehabilitated the old W.P. Fuller Paint Co. building at 404 W. 400 South, starting in 2003.

Independently owned Newmark Mountain West was founded in Utah’s capital in early 2009 and provides commercial real estate services across Utah, Idaho, Nevada, Wyoming and Montana.

Nick Wood, CEO for Newmark Mountain West, said in a statement that the firm, whose flagship offices are currently located at 312 E. South Temple, had been seeking a new headquarters “for the last few years.”

Wood said the Ford Building “gives us a space with modern amenities that positions our best-in-class talent to thrive while preserving a piece of Salt Lake City’s history.”