Michigan’s Weirdest Office Park Has Huge Bison and a Zig Zag Tower

Ann Arbor — Five minutes from downtown Ann Arbor, there’s an office park where farm animals roam, bison graze, and a giant lightning bolt-shaped tower rises above the trees.

That place is Domino’s Farms.

Located near the crossroads of U.S. 23 and M-14 in Ann Arbor Township, Domino’s Farms is best known as the massive office complex built by Domino’s Pizza founder Tom Monaghan. But there’s a lot more happening here than just pizza.

The property is part corporate campus, part architectural landmark and part working tribute to Michigan’s agricultural history. The land was originally a working farm started by the Zeeb family in 1925. Decades later, Monaghan purchased the property as a new home for his growing pizza empire, but instead of wiping away the property’s farming past, Monaghan embraced it.

Domino’s Farms Office Park was built in 1985 and designed by architect Gunnar Birkerts. The long, low building was inspired by the work of great American architect Frank Lloyd Wright, whose work Monaghan strongly admired. The result is a half-mile-long office building designed
to blend into the natural landscape around it.

Today, the office park is home to more than 50 tenants, including professional firms, health-care offices and other businesses.

But the office building is nowhere near the coolest thing on the property. Across the way is The Petting Farm, an independent nonprofit that opened in 1984 as part of Monaghan’s efforts to preserve the land’s history and create a farm-themed space for families.

The Petting Farm is now home to around 200 traditional and non-traditional farm animals, including cows, horses, donkeys, llamas, alpacas, pigs, sheep, goats, ducks, chickens, cats and their main attractions, two beautiful peacocks.

Visitors can pet and feed almost all of the animals, and many chickens, ducks and cats roam freely around the property, making it feel less like an attraction and more like spending the afternoon on someone’s family farm.

But the animals do not stop there.

Just across from the office building at Domino’s Farms Office Park is a massive herd of American bison.

The famous Domino’s Farms bison herd was created as a tribute to Michigan’s landscape in the 1790s, when bison roamed parts of the state naturally. Today, the herd has around 80 animals, and some of the largest weigh nearly a ton. Visitors can usually spot them grazing in the fields right across from the office park and petting farm.

So yeah, those weird-looking “cows” you see driving into Ann Arbor are
actually something even stranger.

Then there’s the tower. It looks like a sculpture or some kind of strange
public art installation, but it’s actually a cellphone tower.

The 165-foot tower was also designed by Birkerts and completed in 1997. Its shape is meant to resemble a lightning bolt, with a white platform at the top symbolizing a cloud and a red base matching the Domino’s colors.

This might be one of the only places where a cellphone tower sculpture, a bison herd and a petting zoo all somehow feel like they belong together.

That is what makes Domino’s Farms so unique. It was built to be the headquarters of a pizza empire, yes, but it’s also filled with history, architectural landmarks and a place where families can spend the
afternoon with animals.

So if you ever spot bison grazing beneath a giant lightning bolt tower, you’ve probably found Domino’s Farms.