SEPTEMBER 11 - 17, 2017

Detroit Homecoming 2017

Flocking back to the D

Now entering its fourth year, Detroit Homecoming has brought hundreds of
successful Detroit natives back to the city to re-engage and invest in its rebound. This
year, it opens up a new venue that’s a potent symbol of Detroit’s decline — the Mich-
igan Central Depot. And the train station’s owner has a vision for what it might be
again. See coverage beginning on Page 1 and 9

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 Wayne State University Professor Steve Kahn kicks off a morning
Math Corps lesson with a little humor. “There are kids who come
to us who need to smile right now, today,” says Kahn about the
Detroit middle and high schoolers enrolled in the tuition-free
Photo by Brianna Kelly | Detroit map by Sylvia Kolaski
summer mentoring program.

Warriors reach out

Wayne State University understands that often
the community is the best classroom
Stories by Leslie D. Green | Crain Content Studio
M. Roy Wilson, who over his career worked as
dean, vice president, president and chancellor at four
different universities, had what he called a “plum job”
at the National Institutes of Health when he
contemplated returning to academia as a university
president. If he were going to make the move, the
school had to meet his requirements.
It needed to be a public, urban, research university.
It needed a large medical school.
And it needed an intimate connection with its
community.
Wilson found all of that at Wayne State University.
Programs like Street Medicine Detroit, TeachDE-
TROIT, Math Corps, the Free Legal Aid Clinic and
the Center for Urban Studies serve the city’s
neighborhoods while providing hands-on learning
opportunities for Wayne State’s more than 27,000
students.
“I came because of the programs,” says Wilson, who
became president of the nearly 150-year-old school in
2013. “We have a lot of responsibility to improve the
city in ways in which we have some level of control
and influence. That includes our public safety officers
making neighborhoods safer, and every one of our
schools being involved in some deep way.”
Wilson says most of the school’s neighborhood
outreach programs grow organically from the
university’s 13 schools and colleges and 400 student
organizations.
For instance, TeachDETROIT pairs clinical teacher
training with community outreach and mentoring.
“There was no meeting saying ‘this is what we
should do and here are the resources, let’s go out and
do this program,’” Wilson says. “The fact is, the College
of Education recognized the shortage of teachers in
the city was an issue and there needed to be innovative
teaching programs. They designed this program
themselves.”
It’s all part of what attracts students to Wayne State,
he says. Students have an opportunity to not just read
about the major challenges in society’s urban cores but
to be a part of the solution and address those
challenges in a hands-on way.
Similarly:
■ A group of medical students learned about the
street medicine movement and crafted a model for
Detroit that they took to faculty. Today, Street
Medicine Detroit is one of 100 WSU medical school
outreach programs, working with area nonprofits to
provide medical care and housing solutions to
homeless individuals.
■ University students don’t just help teach math at
Math Corps, created by faculty in the Math
Department: They help change lives. The middle and
high school mentoring and enrichment program is
encouraging kids — and boosting test scores
across the city.
■ Started by Wayne State University Law School
students, the Detroit Free Legal Aid Clinic helps put
students into the courtroom while working to remove
barriers to justice for the area’s low-income and elderly
populations. Students draft wills and estate plans;
handle custody, consumer protection and landlord/
tenant cases; explain legal rights; and sometimes
litigate in court.
■ The Center for Urban Studies develops and
models programs that help make Detroit neighbor-
hoods safer. It facilitates regular conversations
between local police, the community and volunteers
to fight and prevent crime.
Other programs include Make Your Date, a
partnership with the National Institutes of Health to
dramatically reduce infant mortality in the city; the
Transnational Environmental Law Clinic, which
partners with the University of Windsor to teach
students how to successfully affect environmental
policy in state and federal government; and Office of
Adult Literacy, which teaches adults with low reading
skills.
“A lot of urban communities are challenged in
many ways. There’s a responsibility that a public, urban
university has toward its surrounding community,”
Wilson says. “Wayne State is very much aware of its
relationship with the city of Detroit, and we take a lot
of pride in it.
“Being part of the community is part of who we are
as an institution.”
Turn the page to read more about how Wayne
State University connects with neighborhoods
across Detroit.

DETROIT CONNECTIONS
Sponsored by Wayne State University

WSUGatefold2-4NEW.indd 1 9/5/17 3:25 PM


Key Safety Systems poised
to double in size. Page 3
Detroit Homecoming 2017 — More coverage starts on Page 9
Moroun’s vision for depot? Trains
By Chad Livengood
clivengood@crain.com
From mini mall to car museum,
Matthew Moroun has heard every
idea imaginable for what to do with
the expansive concourse of the
long-vacant Michigan Central Sta-
tion train depot.
But he’s starting to settle on an
ambitious, if not audacious, con-
cept that he calls “the oldest idea for
the depot.”
Trains.
Like the kind that carried passen-
gers to and from the Detroit train sta-
tion for nearly 75 years before Am-
trak ceased service in 1988 and the
abandoned depot began a long de-
cline that mirrored the city’s descent.
Amtrak ceased service from
Michigan Central Station in 1988.
The depot has been vacant since.
CHAD LIVENGOOD
Banking
Talmer vets, now steering Chemical Bank, eye growth
By Tom Henderson
thenderson@crain.com
Two former Talmer Bancorp exec-
utives are running the bank that
bought theirs a year ago.
The announcement on June 21 that
David Ramaker, the longtime president
and CEO of both Chemical Financial
and Chemical Bank, would be replaced
by David Provost, former president and
CEO of Troy-based Talmer Bancorp,
and Thomas Shafer, former president of
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SEPTEMBER 11 - 17, 2017
“It’s crazy, right?” Moroun said in
an exclusive interview with Crain’s.
“The idea that we’re most focused
on now, the one that seems to make
sense, is in the name of the building
and it’s what it used to be used for.”
Talmer Bank & Trust and COO of its
holding company, shocked both the
Midland business community and in-
dustry watchers and insiders.
Was it a board-room coup or a
sudden decision to retire? Either
way, the leadership change paves the
way for Midland-based Chemical Fi-
nancial Corp., which bought Talmer
Bancorp last August in a $1.7 billion
deal, to aggressively pursue acquisi-
tions in large urban markets that for-
The son of billionaire transporta-
tion mogul Manuel “Matty” Mo-
roun seems serious about making
the depot a mass transit hub again
as he embarks on a mission to save
an iconic symbol of Detroit’s 20th
“There will be a lot
of things on the
table for Chemical
over the next few
years. It’s a big bank,
now, and will only
get bigger.”
Terry McEvoy, an analyst
with Stephens Inc.
Nikolai
Vitti loves a
challenge, and
he’s got one
A Q-and-A as DPS chief
starts year. Page 28
century rise and fall. ters at the kickoff dinner for the fourth
Matthew Moroun is floating the annual Detroit Homecoming, pro-
idea to transportation planners and duced by Crain’s
government officials ahead of the Detroit Business.
Michigan Central Station playing host “If we decide
Wednesday night to former Detroi- to really push
this ... it’s not to
start out trying
to solicit politi-
cians and gov-
ernments or
whatever for
Matthew money. It’s to
Moroun: Back to see if I can get
the future? folks to embrace
it, that future vi-
sion,” Moroun told Crain’s. “We need
to put the depot back on the map.”
SEE STATION, PAGE 18
mer Chemical management tended
to avoid, in places like Indiana and
big markets and small markets, in left
field and right field,” said Terry McE-
Ohio, according to industry experts. voy, an analyst with Little Rock, Ark.-
Analysts expect acquisitions to based Stephens Inc. “There will be a
happen quickly once federal regula-
tors certify the bank has passed its
lot of things on the table for Chemical
over the next few years. It’s a big
current mandatory stress test for fi- bank, now, and will only get bigger.”
nancial health. That test should be “... But it won’t be a deal just to get
routine and could happen later this
year or early next.
a deal done. These guys are sharp op-
erators,” McEvoy said. “It’ll be a deal
“They’ll find strategic partners at that drives value and makes sense.”
the right price. They’ll be looking in SEE BANK, PAGE 20
Homecoming focuses
on luring jobs
Pages 9-20
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keepsakes. Details on Page L1.
2 C R A I N ’ S D E T R O I T B U S I N E S S // S E P T E M B E R 1 1 , 2 0 1 7

MICHIGAN BRIEFS INSIDE

From staff and wire reports. Find the full stories at crainsdetroit.com CALENDAR 30
CLASSIFIEDS L23
DEALS & DETAILS 33

Audit: MEGA Michigan’s obligation to companies

under MEGA swelled to more than
credits for all participants because
the reporting of estimated credits for
KEITH CRAIN 6

transparency $9 billion in 2015 and busted holes the remaining participants would OPINION 6

limited
State auditors knocked the Michi-
gan Strategic Fund for what it called
a lack of consistency in the way it re-
ports annual obligations under a
now-defunct tax credit program.
Part of the problem, they said, is
that state law allows companies to
shield the amount of tax credits they
receive under the former Michigan
Economic Growth Authority, or
MEGA, program from public disclo-
sure. That makes it difficult to gain a
clear picture of the state’s obliga-
tion, they contend.
In a report, Michigan Auditor
General Doug Ringler questioned
whether the state should be allowed
to grant a corporation confidentiali-
ty from releasing tax credit informa-
tion asking, notably, whether public
knowledge of the amount of tax
credits a company received under-
mines said company’s competitive
edge.
Lack of transparency is a common
complaint about economic develop-
ment incentives; Michigan is not an
exception. The MEGA program has
been a thorn in the state’s side for
years, since it was expanded under
former Gov. Jennifer Granholm’s
tenure to include tax credits for job
retention, not just job creation.
in the state budget, leading to mid-
year spending cuts in part because
more credits were redeemed than
expected.
Ringler’s audit noted 732 MEGA
credits were approved between
April 1995 and December 2011,
worth a total of $14.2 billion.
Some of the largest MEGA deals
went to the Detroit 3 automakers in
an attempt to save jobs during the
recession. In fact, it was a Detroit
automaker’s confidentiality deal
that raised the question for Ringler.
In 2015, the strategic fund and the
Michigan Economic Development
Corp. renegotiated MEGA agree-
ments with Ford Motor Co., FCA US
LLC and General Motors Co. to rein
in ballooning liabilities. Dear-
born-based Ford agreed to cap its
remaining MEGA credit value to
$2.3 billion, while FCA agreed to a
$1.7 billion cap. Both automakers
agreed to invest billions of dollars in
the state in return.
GM agreed to spend $1 billion in
the state by 2029 and cap the value
of its outstanding MEGA credits, but
unlike its competitors, neither the
state nor GM disclosed the value of
the cap.
The strategic fund granted GM’s
confidentiality request because of a
provision in state statute that says
GENERAL MOTORS
GM agreed to spend $1 billion in the state
by 2029 and cap the value of its
outstanding MEGA credits, but unlike its
competitors, neither the state nor GM
disclosed the value of the cap.
financial or proprietary information
the company and the strategic fund
board agree is confidential will not
be subject to state public records
laws, Ringler wrote in his audit re-
port. That information is defined as
“information that if released might
cause the applicant significant com-
petitive harm.”
Ringler wrote that the single con-
fidentiality agreement with GM is
binding on the auditor’s office and,
as such, “limited our ability to fully
report information about MEGA tax
allow the readers of this report to
determine the agreed-upon confi-
dential amount.”
Agencies maintain
Michigan bond ratings
Credit ratings agencies Standard
& Poor’s, Moody’s Investors Service
and Fitch Ratings maintained their
rating of Michigan’s debt obligations
as the state prepares to sell close to
$120 million in bonds to fund envi-
ronmental programs.
The state’s 2017 general obliga-
tion bonds will be sold Sept. 12,
Michigan Department of Treasury
spokesman Ron Leix said last week.
The $119.6 million offering includes
a tax-exempt series worth $79 mil-
lion, and a federally taxable series
worth $40.6 million.
They will be used to pay for pro-
grams related to the environment,
natural resources and water quality
that are managed by the Michigan
Department of Environmental Qual-
ity, according to the treasury depart-
ment.
Fitch upheld its AA rating while
Moody’s affirmed its Aa1 rating;
both considered the state’s fiscal
outlook to be “stable.”
Standard & Poor’s maintained its
AA- rating on the forthcoming bond
issue, but improved the state’s fiscal
PEOPLE 21, L22
RON FOURNIER 6
RUMBLINGS 24
WEEK ON THE WEB 24
outlook from “stable” to “positive.”
The ratings agency cited growth in
the state’s economy, a strong cash
position, sound budget practices
and adequate reserves as evidence
for the improvement.
“I am pleased Standard & Poor’s
has acknowledged the hard work
and effort taken to improve the
state’s financial position and econo-
my in recent years,” state Treasurer
Nick Khouri said in a statement.
Yet the agencies also noted sever-
al factors that could affect their fu-
ture outlook on the state’s fiscal
health, including long-term pension
and retirement obligations, fiscal
stress in local governments and an
infrastructure funding gap.
CORRECTION
A Deals & Details item about AEL
Span in the Sept. 4 issue should have
said Cummins Inc. is located in Co-
lumbus, Ind.

WE MAKE THE WORLD SMALLER Worked with more than

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Learn more at MichiganBusiness.org/PMBC


Mergers & Acquisitions
TRW name to fade as ZF completes integration
By Dustin Walsh
dwalsh@crain.com
Signs will come down from their
perch atop several buildings across
Southeast Michigan, and around the
world, this week. Three letters, TRW,
with nearly 60 years of recognition in
the region will be no more.
German supplier ZF Fried-
richshafen AG plans to end use of the
TRW name after the completing the
integration process of its $12.4 billion
acquisition of Livonia-based TRW
Automotive Inc. in May 2015. ZF
maintained the name of the safety
systems supplier as ZF TRW as it
worked through integration, which is
now complete.
ZF is expected to make the an-
Commerce
Amazon.com Inc. said last week that it is searching for a second North American headquarters, causing cities across the country, including Detroit, to start crafting sales pitches.
Amazon checklist: An uphill battle
By Kirk Pinho
kpinho@crain.com
Amazon.com Inc.'s bombshell last
week that it is searching for a second
North American headquarters caused
cities across the country, including
Detroit and others, to start crafting
sales pitches.
The online retail behemoth laid out
a simple list of requirements to deter-
mine where founder and CEO Jeff
Bezos and his team decide to place
what they say are up to 50,000 employ-
ees with an average annual compensa-
tion of $100,000 or more.
Courting an investment like that to
Detroit will be an uphill battle.
A handful of national publications,
such as Bloomberg and Axios, have
cast Detroit as being a contender.
Perhaps the biggest obstacle: The ar-
ea’s history of city vs. suburbs feuds on
MUST
READS
OF THE
WEEK
C R A I N ’ S D E T R O I T B U S I N E S S // S E P T E M B E R 1 1 , 2 0 1 7
nouncement at The International
Motor Show in Frankfurt, Germany,
this week.
“When we started this (integra-
tion) two years ago, we wanted to
make sure we keep the value of the
TRW brand, particularly in the U.S.
because it was a stronger brand than
ZF at the time,” said Franz Kleiner,
CEO of ZF’s active and passive safety
division, formerly known as ZF TRW.
“Now we believe the public, and em-
ployees, understand and identify
with this organization as a combined
company under ZF.”
ZF North America Inc.’s headquar-
ters in Livonia, which it moved last
year after acquiring TRW, will be the
first to remove TRW from its signage.
everything from regional taxes to water
and sewers to mass transit.
“It can't be this city vs. that city,” said
Luke Bonner, CEO of Ann Arbor-based
economic incentive, real estate and
economic development consulting
company Bonner Advisory Group
LLC. “This is one of the biggest projects
around. They were saying that about
Foxconn. There was the Boeing 777X
project. This trumps both of them.”
Here’s how the region stacks up to
Amazon’s key criteria:
Population
That’s an easy one. Amazon wants a
metropolitan area with more than 1
million people. Detroit and its sur-
rounding counties have more than 4
million.
3
Its active safety operations in Farm-
ington Hills will follow this week and
the rest will be completed in the
coming months, said Bryan Johnson,
senior manager of corporate com-
munications at ZF North America.
The TRW name, however, will live
on in the aftermarket, where brand
recognition is key, Kleiner said.
“We never introduced the double
ZF TRW logo in the aftermarket,”
Kleiner said. “In the broad consumer
area, there is a fear that removing the
TRW name would be negative. For
the garages and general buyers, they
will still be able to find brake pads
under the TRW brands and transmis- COURTESY OF ZF
sions under ZF.” German supplier ZF Friedrichshafen AG plans to end use of the TRW name after its $12.4
SEE ZF, PAGE 8 billion acquisition of Livonia-based TRW Automotive Inc.
Automotive
Ford had to
wait for Luo
to finish his
Takata deal
By David Sedgwick
Crain News Service
While Key Safety Systems has lost
CEO Jason Luo to Ford Motor Co.,
Luo has left the Sterling Heights-
based airbag supplier poised to dou-
ble its size.
Key Safety ex-
pects to complete
the purchase this
month of Japan’s
Takata Corp. for
$1.59 billion — a
deal that will
BLOOMBERG transform Key
Safety into the
world’s No. 2 air-
Jason Luo: Leaves bag maker behind
Key Safety Autoliv Inc.
Systems. On June 26, Key
Safety announced
a deal to acquire Takata’s assets. On
Talent “It can’t Aug. 23, Ford announced that Luo
will become CEO of Ford China.
This is iffy. The region’s unemploy- be this During an interview late last month,
ment rate is currently 4.4 percent, ac- city vs. Luo, 51, said most major issues have
cording to the Bureau of Labor Statis-
tics, meaning that finding the workers
that city. been resolved in the Takata acquisi-
tion, and that Key Safety has the sup-
Amazon wants could prove a challenge. This is port of Takata’s 15 automotive cus-
But that’s a challenge in most of one of the tomers.
the country.
“Are they going to hire 50,000 peo-
biggest The company expects to have a
purchase agreement soon with the
ple in one year? Probably not,” Bon- projects deal closing early next year, he said.
ner said. around. “The team resolved remaining issues
On education, the Detroit area
scores as below average.
They were saying with customers and Takata.”
The purchase agreement will tie up
In addition, 29.5 percent of local that about Foxconn. several loose threads at Key Safety as
residents have a bachelor’s degree or There was the Luo joins Ford China.
higher, compared with 30.6 percent
nationally.
Boeing 777X project. Luo, who has managed Key Safety
for a decade and steered the supplier
The local core of universities could This trumps both of through the 2008-09 economic crisis,
help make up some of that deficit. them.” said a Ford recruiter approached him
Research institutions like University in the summer of 2016.
SEE AMAZON, PAGE 7 Luke Bonner SEE LUO, PAGE 8
Question and answer with The fourth industrial
Detroit superintendent revolution underway
Nikolai Vitti says he loves a challenge; he has Stacy Brown-Philpot of TaskRabbit says
one in the Detroit public schools. Page 28 more and more people will take on second
jobs in a gig economy . Page 4
4 C R A I N ’ S D E T R O I T B U S I N E S S // S E P T E M B E R 1 1 , 2 0 1 7
Q&A: STACY BROWN-PHILPOT
Can the gig economy
transform Detroit?
By Dustin Walsh
dwalsh@crain.com
Detroit is known for its do-it-your-
self attitude.
But changing tastes and busy
schedules have created the rise of the
sharing or “gig” economy, where
technology connects individuals with
work with those needing work. And
native Detroiter Stacy Brown-Philpot
leads one of the country’s fast-
est-growing services, TaskRabbit.
Economic anxiety and sluggish
wage growth has forced more workers
to seek flexible alternative second in-
comes. Roughly 7.6 million in the U.S.
held multiple jobs in July, up 2 percent
from a year earlier, according to the
U.S. Labor Department.
Brown-Philpot, who grew up at Six
Mile and Southfield roads in Detroit,
took over the top spot at the San Fran-
cisco company in March this year, af-
ter serving as its COO and previously
as the head of several Google depart-
ments. As CEO, she quickly made
changes. She led the launch of a mo-
bile app to increase access to tasks
needing taskers and prioritized home
services for clients.
The results have been astonishing.
TaskRabbit says it has quadrupled an-
Real-estate developers building a platform nual revenue.
Brown-Philpot is scheduled to offer
to contribute to Detroit’s resurgence. a keynote at this week’s Detroit Home-
coming IV, presented by Crain’s De-
We are committed to:
troit Business. Her topic? Jobs for De-
Working throughout the city from core to neighborhoods because we can’t bring up one without the other. troiters.
Connecting to communities to plan our developments in thoughtful and relevant ways.
Developing mixed income and market rate communities that are mindful of existing residents and retailers. Crain’s senior reporter Dustin
Excellence in design and construction from rehab to new construction. Walsh interviewed Brown-Philpot on
Placemaking activities that welcome all residents and visitors.
Making smart investments with benefits beyond our bottom-line.
the future of the gig economy and its
Raising the next generation of developers in Detroit. role in Detroit.
Did growing up in Detroit influence your
business acumen?
Growing up in Detroit made me keen-
ly aware to never forget where I came
from and that sometimes the people
theplatform.city
of my city were forgotten by the poli-
info@theplatform.city cymakers and the business executives
in other parts of the country.
How would you describe TaskRabbit’s
status compared to other gig services?
I like to refer to TaskRabbit as a mature
startup which has served as a pioneer
in the sharing economy. We’ve been
B U I L D I N G N E W H O P E FO R T H E FU T U R E around for nine years, which is an-
cient in this industry, and we’ve been
O F CA N C E R CA R E . very careful about growing in a strate-
gic manner over a period of time, as
opposed to just growing for the sake of
it. Our revenue has gone up by 100
percent every year for each of the past
three years. As for profitability, Task-
Rabbit is very close to overall profit-
ability, which really distinguishes (us)
from others within the sharing econo-
my.
Why move from Google to TaskRabbit?
I fell in love with TaskRabbit’s mission
to revolutionize everyday work and
create everyday work for everyday
people like those I grew up with. I
joined TaskRabbit first and foremost
ALL FOR YOU The future is here. Now. At the Henry Ford Cancer Institute we’re leading
because the company had a solid
the way in precision medicine, crafting cancer treatments to the DNA of each patient. And
foundation based upon strong values.
we’re building on our achievements. With the construction of the Brigitte Harris Cancer To me, that’s the most important as-
Pavilion, the world will be turning to Detroit for the next generation of cancer care. See all pect to a company.
we’re doing. HenryFord.com/YourCancerExperts
What is the role of a freelance gig site
like TaskRabbit in the future of Detroit?
The sharing economy is going to be-
come more and more common
“I think more and
more people will
take on jobs in
addition to their
full-time
employment in
order to provide
supplemental
income for
themselves and
their families.”
Stacy Brown-Philpot
throughout the country and take on a
greater sense of normalcy, including
in Detroit. I think more and more peo-
ple will take on jobs in addition to
their full-time employment in order to
provide supplemental income for
themselves and their families. That’s
going to be as true in Detroit as else-
where in the country.
What draws Detroiters in search of work
to your site?
A lot of people don’t know this, but the
average tasker in Detroit and Ann Ar-
bor earns roughly $23.50 an hour,
which is more than three times the
average federal minimum wage per
hour. So, I think this is an example of
how people will become more and
more attracted to being part of the
sharing economy.
The gig economy has created interest
among economists, some saying it’s bad
for the economy because the jobs are
largely low-paid and short-term. How do
you respond to those claims?
There is no doubt that we are in the
midst of a fourth industrial revolution.
And it is important for everyone, from
policymakers to business executives
such as myself, to make sure that op-
portunities are possible for a broader
aspect of society. I can’t speak for ev-
ery company in this industry, but
what I can say is that we pay about five
times the federal minimum wage and
an average hourly rate of $35 an hour
nationally.
How will the gig economy and
TaskRabbit transform to meet
consumers’ changing needs?
We will see more and more partner-
ships between TaskRabbit and well-
known companies along the lines of
our current one with IKEA, for exam-
ple. Our platform will become even
more integrated into the customer
experience for our partners, making
the use of our services as seamless as
possible. Our business model will
continue to focus on the increase of
connectivity of devices within one’s
home. In the not so distant future,
one can imagine the HVAC placing a
call to TaskRabbit to replace the filter
without the homeowner even need-
ing to think about it. Some might
think that as devices get more and
more connected with each other in
the fourth industrial revolution, that
more and more people will end up
just keeping their heads down and
stare at the phones even more than
they do now. But the irony is the op-
posite could be true: as devices get
more and more connected, people
will become more connected to each
other because you can actually have
time for the things that really matter
for families.
Let’s assume the economy takes off. Is
TaskRabbit at risk of losing gig workers
to full-time employment?
We think there will always be a mar-
ketplace full of those who want to par-
ticipate in the sharing economy,
whether they are young professionals
who need to earn supplemental in-
come in order to pay off their student
loans or a new father or mother who
wants to serve as tasker in order to put
away extra money for their new baby
or those who have retired and don’t
need the money but are quite pas-
sionate about providing a valued ser-
vice for a member of the community.
All of these examples, by the way, rep-
resent real people who serve as task-
ers for TaskRabbit.
What do you envision for the future of
Detroit?
In 10 years, my aspiration is that De-
troit will be thriving and living up to its
reputation of hardworking people
who create and build important
things for the world. There are already
beginnings where this is true in the
downtown area, but there are still
plenty of neighborhoods that are des-
olate. I hope to see the revitalization of
communities happen through entre-
preneurship and investment. I want
Detroit to be a destination where mil-
lennials want to and can build a
meaningful life for their families.
Technological innovation can happen
outside of Silicon Valley, and I see no
reason why it shouldn’t happen in De-
troit.
BANKRUPTCIES
The following business filed for
protection in U.S. Bankruptcy Court
in Detroit last week. Under Chapter
11, a company files for reorganiza-
tion.
J Packard Square LLC, 1900 Tele-
graph Road, Bloomfield Hills, volun-
tary Chapter 11. Assets and liabilities
not available.
COME
PLAY
For those returning for the Detroit Homecoming, come
have some fun at the new Beacon Park. It has an open
lawn, daily music, food trucks and more than 600 free
events and activities that bring the community together.
It’s part of the DTE Energy Foundation’s ongoing efforts
to support Detroit’s revitalization. So come play at the
corner of Cass and Grand River.

Go to beaconparkdetroit.com for more information.

6 C R A I N ’ S D E T R O I T B U S I N E S S // S E P T E M B E R 1 1 , 2 0 1 7
COMMENTARY
You asked ...
and we’re listening
W
e asked for your help. You
gave it. Now we owe you
an update.
In March, shortly after my start as
editor and publisher of Crain’s De-
troit Business, we launched our In-
ner Circle, hoping to enlist a hun-
dred or so of you in a special project.
This was my pitch:
“We are collecting advice, opinions,
and even constructive criticism from a
self-selected group of advisers. I’d like
you to be one of them. Please join our
Inner Circle — an in-person and on-
line community dedicated to making
Crain’s the best, most engaging media
company in Michigan.”
“We’re not changing what makes
Crain’s distinctive and important,
but with your help, we will make
Crain’s essential.”
More than 600 of you answered
the call. We conducted five online
surveys with the full group and in-
vited nearly 50 Inner Circle mem-
bers to breakfast conversations. We
asked about our newsroom. What
beats should we cover? What stories
should we write? How can we deliv-
er news and information that helps
your business succeed?
Apart from journalism and jour-
nalists, we asked whether Crain’s
other expert storytellers could help
solve your business problems —
working directly for you, not unlike a
marketing services consultant. Do
you need help with corporate brand-
ing? Personal branding? Tailored re-
search? Custom publishing? Native
advertising? Speech writing?
We listened.
In the first Inner Circle breakfast,
one of you bemoaned the loss of the
“People” column. Two weeks later,
somebody else complained that the
“People on the Move” replacement
was “a pale imitation” of the tradi-
tional feature. A month after that,
over scrambled eggs and bacon, a
reader bluntly told me, “Bring the
damn thing back.”
You got it.
Starting this week, we are accept-
ing submissions for a new “People”
column, which will look like the old
“People,” and which will begin run-
ning in next week’s issue.
A little history: For years, Crain’s
ran a column called “People,” which
featured brief announcements of
company hires and promotions, a
few dozen each week. You used it to
keep track of who’s who at compa-
nies across a range of industries.
A few years ago, we switched to
writing only about C-suite level
hires, mostly CEOs, a few per week.
In addition, we offered companies
the opportunity to advertise their
new hires in another, paid column,
called “People on the Move.”
The combination of our paid list-
ings and too-few stories on high-lev-
el appointments didn’t meet your
needs. So we’ll return to running a
“People” column with many more
OPINION
RON FOURNIER
Publisher and Editor
people in it. (Go to crainsdetroit.
com/peoplesubmit to send us your
People news.)
At the same time, we’ll continue
to offer “People on the Move” as a
paid vehicle for companies that
want to control their message and
more fully tout their new hires or
promotions.
You’ve also asked us to help save
you time. We’re doing so by adding a
new feature called “Need to Know,”
which will summarize each story in
a few bullets, PowerPoint-style, so
you’ll be able to get an executive
summary. They’ll start running on-
line next week and debut in print in
next week’s issue.
Actually, we first got the “Need to
Know” idea from our younger read-
ers who, through Inner Circle sur-
veys and events focused on our in-
fluential millennial audience, said
they value news and information in
short bursts. Turns out, older read-
ers want that, too.
There’s more to come from this
project including:
J An overhaul of our newsletters to
inject more insights and analysis
from our top reporters. Less aggre-
gation and more news you can use.
J Greater access to our reporters
and editors.
J More opportunities for you to net-
work with one another.
J A fundamental change in our
business model.
More on these later in the year.
The bottom-line idea is to make
Crain’s less of a transactional experi-
ence — you pay for your subscrip-
tion and we write our news — and
more of a relationship.
Our reporters won’t flinch from
the core mission: They will seek the
truth and report it, no fear or favor.
They will make you uncomfortable
at times, even angry. But, like never
before, the whole of Crain’s Detroit
Business is going to listen to you.
Please join the Inner Circle at
crainsdetroit.com/innercircle. It’s
free. Your advice is priceless.
Ron Fournier is publisher and editor
of Crain’s Detroit Business. Catch his
take on business at 6:10 a.m.
Mondays on the Paul W. Smith show
on WJR AM 760.
Welcome home, Detroiters
I
t doesn’t seem that long ago, only
about five years or so, when I had
lunch with a long-time friend,
Jim Hayes, who, like a lot of folks, had
decided to move back to Detroit. De-
troit may not have been his actual
hometown, but after working here 10
years, he had some roots.
Jim had been head of Sports Illus-
trated in Detroit from 1967-77, and
he left Detroit to climb the ranks of
Time Inc. to eventually become pub-
lisher of Fortune magazine. When he
retired from that job, he was not
ready to quit working, so he took on
running the national Junior Achieve-
ment organization for several years.
After moving back to Detroit in
2013, he had an an idea, and he
wanted Crain’s Detroit Business to
run with it: So many folks had been
born and raised in Detroit and left
town to make their fame and fortune
somewhere else. Let’s invite back a
couple of hundred Detroit “expatri-
ates” and show them what has be-
come of their hometown. Perhaps
they might be interested in investing
LETTERS
Employers should
offer to pay fees
Thank you for publishing Chad
Livengood’s articles and commentary
exploring the negative impacts of
“driver responsibility fees” and reso-
lution options (Unpaid fines strand
drivers, crimp region’s workforce,
Aug. 7).
I was a Michigan Senate legislative
assistant in 2003 when the fees were
passed into law and thought they
were a bad idea at the time; my opin-
ion hasn’t changed.
KEITH CRAIN
Editor-in-chief
in Detroit.
I liked the idea, and after lunch I
took Jim to meet the group publisher
of Crain’s, Mary Kramer. I told Mary
what we were going to do, and she
was as excited about the project as
Jim and I were.
That was the beginning of Detroit
Homecoming.
We are about to have our fourth
Detroit Homecoming, and Jim Hayes
and Mary Kramer are still partners in
this exciting adventure.
It is an invitation-only event for a
couple of hundred expats who we wel-
come back to Detroit to discover how
However, I don’t think that whole-
sale fine forgiveness, similar to a park-
ing ticket amnesty period, is the right
answer, either. That would encourage
people to delay paying off future fines
in the hope that a legal revision would
eliminate them.
Instead, I would involve the poten-
tial employers that Chad talks about
in his commentary. At a time when
many companies (including my own
employer) are offering $1,000-2,000
employee referral bonuses, paying the
fine for a desirable but unavailable
potential employee seems like a justi-
fiable cost of doing business.
the city has improved and changed
and present ideas for investment. Over
the past few years we’ve seen the dol-
lars plowed back into our city.
It is an exciting few days for expats
who might not have seen their city for
many years.
This year, through the generosity of
Matty Moroun, we’ll have our kickoff
dinner at the Detroit railroad station,
with meetings being held during the
week at a newly created national rac-
ing shop in Corktown.
We hope it will be an exciting few
days to this year’s guests, as in the
past.
We are lucky enough to have the
support of corporations and founda-
tions in our city who realize just how
important and effective Detroit
Homecoming has been for our city.
There is no doubt that Detroit is re-
bounding after a half-century.
We at Crain’s Detroit Business and
Detroit Homecoming are greatly in-
debted to Jim Hayes and Mary
Kramer. And I am very proud of
them both.
Alternatively, an employer could
formalize an agreement with a recruit
where they pay the employee’s fine
and then recover the cost through fu-
ture payroll deductions. Those options
are available today and are not depen-
dent on a slow and fickle Legislature.
Steve Williams
Brighton
Crain’s Detroit Business will consider
for publication all signed letters to the
editor that do not defame individuals
or organizations. Letters may be
edited for length and clarity. Email:
rfournier@crain.com

Several criteria will be used to determine where founder and CEO Jeff Bezos and his team
decide to place what they say are up to 50,000 employees with an average annual
compensation of $100,000 or more in what would be, over 15-17 years, a complex with
about 8 million square feet.
AMAZON
FROM PAGE 3
of Michigan, Michigan State Univer-
sity and Wayne State University,
would be fertile ground for Amazon
recruiting.
Incentives
This is a whole other nut to crack.
Amazon, perhaps inspired by the
bidding war for Foxconn’s mammoth
plant, is looking for incentives to
open what it is dubbing its HQ2. And
Michigan’s available lures may be
lacking.
Yes, new legislation like the so-
called Good Jobs bill and the trans-
formational brownfield tax incen-
Amazon, perhaps
inspired by the
bidding war for
Foxconn’s
mammoth plant, is
looking for
incentives to open
what it is dubbing
its HQ2. And
Michigan’s available
lures may be
lacking.
tives for new development are
helpful, but likely won’t push Michi-
gan across the finish line.
Other states will almost certain
pass new laws to lure in something
the scale of HQ2.
“There may have to be a new in-
centive created or even bonds issued
to snag that type of project,” Bonner
said.
For example, Wisconsin granted
$3 billion in incentives earlier this
year for a $10 billion, 13,000-worker
plant for Taiwan-based Foxconn
Technology Group.
The national average economic
development incentive package is
$2,457 per job, according to the Up-
john Institute, Crain’s reported in
July. At that rate and Amazon’s pro-
jected employment level, that would
be $122.85 million. Yet Wisconsin of-
fered a whopping $15,385 per worker.
Michigan has no incentives in that
ballpark.
C R A I N ’ S D E T R O I T B U S I N E S S // S E P T E M B E R 1 1 , 2 0 1 7
BLOOMBERG
Transit
The region’s fractured transit sys-
tem is definitely a strike against it.
The QLine streetcar system along
Woodward Avenue downtown isn’t
robust enough, and the Detroit De-
partment of Transportation and
Suburban Mobility Authority on
Regional Transportation bus sys-
tems are not effective, Bonner said.
All that, and the Regional Transit
Authority ballot issue last year
failed.
International airport
Yep, we’ve got one of those with
the Detroit Metropolitan Airport.
Also a plus: Detroit and Seattle
are both Delta Airlines hubs, so
there are plenty of direct flight con-
nections.
Real estate
Where would they find the
space?
Amazon says the first phase of its
project would be 500,000 to 1 mil-
lion square feet. Contingent upon
completion, downtown Detroit real
estate and mortgage baron Dan
Gilbert, who has assembled an in-
ternal team to woo Amazon, has no
less than 1.1 million square feet of
new office space planned between
his projects on the former J.L. Hud-
son’s department store site and
two blocks immediately east of his
Quicken Loans Inc. headquarters
downtown.
That figure does not include
planned office components on 10
acres of land immediately east of
the Renaissance Center owned by
General Motors, as well as a
planned office tower on the site of
the half-built Wayne County Con-
solidated Jail.
In addition, Amazon says it is
willing to consider sites of at least
100 acres that are proximate, but
not necessarily contiguous. Sites
like that exist in places like Auburn
Hills, South Lyon, Pontiac, near
Detroit Metropolitan Airport and
around Ann Arbor and elsewhere.
Assembling land like that in or
around downtown would prove
difficult.
Kirk Pinho: (313) 446-0412
Twitter: @kirkpinhoCDB
Arn Tellem: MLS expansion team
could play by 2020 in Detroit
By Bill Shea
bshea@crain.com
If Major League Soccer wants a
team in Detroit, the group seeking
an expansion club for the city says it
will be ready to play downtown by
2020.
That’s according to Arn Tellem,
who is handling the bid process for
Tom Gores and Dan Gilbert, the bil-
lionaire pro basketball owners joint-
ly seeking a Detroit MLS team.
MLS has said it intends to an-
nounce the next two expansion cit-
ies after its owners meet in early De-
cember. Two more expansion
markets will be announced at some
point after that.
Tellem told Crain's on Friday that
the Detroit bid will make its pitch to
league officials in October with the
intention of being one of the two
markets awarded a club that would
begin play in 2020.
“Our hope is to be prepared so
that when MLS makes its decision,
we’re one of the finalists,” he said.
Tellem said MLS is especially in-
terested in the Detroit market. “My
understanding is that we’re one of
the cities they’re focusing on,” he
said.
That echoes what MLS Commis-
sioner Don Garber said in August,
when he mentioned Detroit as one
of four cities that have advanced
their efforts over the summer to se-
cure an expansion team. The others
he singled out were Cincinnati, Sac-
ramento and Nashville. A dozen cit-
ies submitted expansion bids.
The biggest question mark for De-
troit’s bid is the proposed stadium
© 2017 Rush Group of Companies.
LEARN MORE
Dakkota.com
DMSNA.com
RushTrucking.com
All Rights Reserved.
7
36,000 fans in July at Comerica Park,
crowds of more than 100,000 at
Michigan Stadium for past ICC
matches, and the crowds of 5,000-
plus for semi-pro Detroit City FC in
Hamtramck.
The other cities with formal ex-
pansion bids, which had to be sub-
mitted by Jan. 31, are St. Louis; Tam-
pa Bay/St. Petersburg, Fla.; San
Antonio; Raleigh, N.C.; Charlotte,
N.C.; Indianapolis; Phoenix, Ariz.;
and San Diego.
Ultimately, MLS will have 28
ROSSETTI ASSOCIATES INC. teams. Los Angeles FC begins play
The interior bowl of the proposed soccer next year as the 23rd club and the
stadium in downtown Detroit; it is being unnamed Miami team launches for
pitched for the site of the half-built Wayne the 2019 season. After that, the next
County Jail on Gratiot Avenue. two expansion teams are expected
to begin play in 2020. It’s unclear
site. Gilbert and Gores have made when the final two expansion clubs
progress in securing their preferred would formally launch.
location — the unfinished down- The expansion teams awarded in
town jail site at Gratiot and I-375 — December will pay $150 million
when Wayne County announced on each to join the league. A fee for the
July 31 that it intends to work with
them on a deal instead of finishing
final two clubs hasn’t been formally
announced.
the justice facility. New MLS owners aren’t buying
“Detroit just got one step closer to franchises. Instead, MLS is a sin-
having access to the jail site,” Garber gle-entity business, meaning all
said. “That got a lot of energy and at- teams are owned by the league and
tention in Detroit.” all players are its employees rather
Gilbert and Gores unveiled a $1 than employed by the club. MLS
billion plan in April 2016 to build a pays the players. Team “owners” pay
22,000- to 25,000-seat soccer-specif- an investment fee to MLS for the
ic stadium on the jail site, and the right to operate a team in a geo-
project would include towers for graphic area. They become league
residential, retail and office use. shareholders rather than franchise
MLS has told Crain’s that it has owners in a league that has publicly
monitored the success of high-pro- acknowledged it remains unprofit-
file soccer events in the Detroit mar- able.
ket, including the International Teams keep their own books and
Champions Cup match that drew budgets.
We are the sum of our
parts, and our people.
We specialize in component manufacturing, complex
assembly and sequencing, supply chain management,
logistics, and freight distribution for global brands. Our
3,000 highly trained team members at 20 locations in
the U.S. and Canada build and deliver award-winning
quality parts through innovative technologies, including
injection molding, vibration and ultrasonic welding,
and mechanical and robotics engineering. We bring
unparalleled value to our customers. And we create
sustainable job opportunities in diverse communities.
Every day. Since 1984.
Stronger. Together.
8 C R A I N ’ S D E T R O I T B U S I N E S S // S E P T E M B E R 1 1 , 2 0 1 7
LUO
185 Unit Multi-Family
FROM PAGE 3
New Construction
Lafayette Park, Detroit, MI Luo accepted the offer early this
year, but told Ford he wanted to com-
plete the Takata deal before leaving
Key Safety.
He had expected to announce the
92 Unit Multi-Family Takata acquisition in March, but the
Acquisition / Rehab
Japanese airbag maker’s financial li-
Lafayette Park, Detroit, MI
abilities complicated negotiations.
In July, Luo tendered his resigna-
tion to Key Safety’s board of direc-
We are proud to
211 Luxury Loft Apartments
tors.
be equity partners The new job allows Luo, a Chi-
Retail Mixed-Use
with Homecoming New Construction nese-born engineer who has lived in
Expats worldwide. St. Petersburg, FL the United States for three decades,
to return to Shanghai to be near his
aging parents.
Key Safety has hired an outside
100 Unit Multi-Family firm to help recruit a new CEO. In the
Mark J. Bennett, Managing Director meantime, Key Safety Director Yuxin
New Construction
mark@mjbpllc.com | 248-672-1944
Milford, MI Tang will run the company with help
Securities Transactions are conducted through The Enterprise
Securities Company, Member FINRA and SIPC. from a transition committee of Key
Safety executives.
As announced, Key Safety plans to
acquire Takata’s seat belt factories,
R&D and work force — but not its le-
gal liabilities or the plants that pro-
duce the failure-prone inflators that
led to the largest automotive recall in
history.
The company will establish an
Asian headquarters in Tokyo and it
will keep all manufacturing plants in
Japan open.
Takata’s plant managers and re-
gional executives will be offered po-
sitions, but Takata will not retain its
global headquarters.
Loose threads
There is some unfinished business
for Luo’s successor. Key Safety must
name an international production
chief — a critical assignment, given
Takata’s costly quality lapses.
Key Safety’s new chief also must
figure out whether to boost produc-
tion to replace Takata’s defective air-
bag inflators.
Takata’s ammonium nitrate infla-
tors sometimes explode when acti-
vated, spewing metal shards into the
passenger cabin, resulting in the re-
call. They have been linked to at least
18 deaths worldwide. Eventually, the
recall is expected to cover 125 mil-
lion inflators.
ZF
FROM PAGE 3
ZF and TRW generate roughly $2
billion in aftermarket sales com-
bined, Kleiner said.
TRW draws its history to 1901
when it was founded as Cleveland
Screw Cap Co. in Ohio. Within a few
years, the company would begin
manufacturing automotive engine
valves.
Several decades and acquisitions
later, the company entered the aero-
space industry as Thompson Prod-
ucts before merging with Ra-
mo-Wooldridge 1958 to form
Thompson Ramo Wooldridge Inc.,
colloquially known as TRW. The
company eventually became TRW
Inc. in 1965, based in Ohio.
By the late 1980s, TRW employed
more than 120,000 in 25 countries.
Defense contractor Northrop
Grumman acquired TRW in 2002 for
$7.8 billion, selling TRW’s automo-
tive assets, largely operated in Mich-
igan, to private equity firm Black-
stone Group for $4.13 billion later
that year.
TRW Automotive Inc. went public
in February of 2004.
JACOB LEWKOW
CEO Jason Luo and Joseph Perkins, senior
vice president and CFO of Key Safety
Systems, which spent nearly a year
negotiating to buy Takata.
Luo said Key Safety’s acquisition of
Takata won’t affect Takata’s timetable
for replacing the inflators. In July, Re-
uters reported that Takata will wind
down its airbag business in 2020 after
making replacement inflators for the
recall.
Key Safety does not make replace-
ment inflators for Takata customers,
Luo said.
Key Safety is moving ahead with
plans to double inflator production
to 60 million a year, but that output is
for its own customers. The next CEO
must decide whether to start produc-
ing replacements, Luo said.
Another loose thread involves
Takata’s financial liabilities. In Janu-
ary, the company agreed to pay $975
million compensation to automakers
and consumers, but the company
still faces numerous liability lawsuits.
Active safety
While those lawsuits could com-
plicate life, they don’t represent a fi-
nancial threat to Key Safety.
Takata’s U.S. subsidiary sought
Chapter 11 bankruptcy protection in
June, and Key Safety will not inherit
Takata’s liabilities. That leaves Key
Safety free to focus on its two global
ZF, in search of new technology,
started the acquisition process for
TRW in 2014, making it the world’s
second-largest component supplier,
with 2016 sales of $37.89 billion, be-
hind Robert Bosch AG.
ZF incorporated TRW into its ac-
tive and passive safety technology
division, now the springboard for its
transformation. Since closing the
deal, ZF has been on an acquisition
binge to add to its new unit’s capa-
bilities.
Epitomizing the new mission is
Zukunft Ventures, a ZF subsidiary
formed last year to scout new tech-
nologies and quickly link ZF to them
without burying their developers’
innovative and entrepreneurial en-
ergy in corporate bureaucracy.
Translated into English, Zukunft
means “future.”
The latest Zukunft endeavor was
ZF’s acquisition in March of a 45
percent stake in Astyx Communica-
tion & Sensors GmbH, which devel-
ops and produces ultra-high-fre-
quency radar sensors and modules.
The Astyx deal expands ZF’s capa-
bilities in environmental and object
recognition necessary for autono-
mous driving.
The acquisition follows moves last
rivals: Autoliv Inc. and ZF Fried-
richshafen.
Once the acquisition is complete,
Key Safety will have more than 60,000
global employees plus $7 billion in
revenue.
Only two airbag makers, Autoliv
and ZF, can rival Key Safety’s size. On
the other hand, those two companies
have invested heavily in active safety
— that is, collision avoidance and
self-driving vehicles.
Key Safety is a newcomer to the
fast-growing market. The company
has developed 360-degree camera vi-
sion for vehicles, and it plans to mar-
ket Takata’s in-cabin driver monitor-
ing system.
But the company won’t try to
match its rivals’ portfolios of camer-
as, radar, lidar, control units and soft-
ware, Luo said. Instead, it will focus
on what it does best: protecting pas-
sengers from injury.
If a vehicle’s sensors determine
that an accident is unavoidable, for
example, the vehicle could activate
airbags before the impact. That
would be especially useful for
side-impact collisions that can’t be
dampened by a vehicle’s crush zone,
Luo said.
“For the future, we will focus on
anything that is safety-related,” he
said. “Once you know an accident is
going to happen, you have more time
to react. So the [airbags and seat
belts] will perform much, much bet-
ter.”
Luo said Key Safety also may get
help from its corporate parent, Chi-
nese electronics giant Ningbo Joyson
Electronic Corp. Ningbo Joyson also
owns a stake in Preh GmbH, a Ger-
man supplier of sensors and elec-
tronic control units. Preh’s German
r&d center could prove useful in fu-
ture development work.
Now that the Takata deal is wrap-
ping up, Luo said he hasn’t sched-
uled any time off to clear his head
before joining Ford.
He had planned to fly to Shanghai
Saturday, Sept. 2, and start work the
next week.
Said Luo: “I’ll store my luggage
and jump in.”
This story originally appeared in
Crain's sister publication Automotive
News.
year to snap up 40 percent stakes in
Ibeo Automotive Systems GmbH, a
lidar and sensor fusion company in
Hamburg, Germany, and dou-
ble-Slash Net-Business GmbH, a
Friedrichshafen company involved
in software for vehicle networking.
Lidar, an acronym for light detection
and ranging, uses laser pulses to
sense objects in the area.
Kleiner said the company’s
growth in active safety is likely to
translate to roughly 100 to 200 new
jobs at its facility in Farmington Hills
in the next few years. The rest of ZF’s
operations will remain “stable,” with
no new consolidation tied to the
TRW integration.
“There’s no need to consolidate,”
Kleiner said. “We took two years to
integrate to get those tensions; it
wasn’t handled all at once. We didn’t
get distracted from customers and
were able to keep pace with the mar-
ket. We kept our people motivated
and staged an effective approach,
which is why we were able to grow
these past two years with a financial
performance that was better than
expected.”
Dustin Walsh: (313) 446-6042
Twitter: @dustinpwalsh

DETROIT’S JOBS OPPORTUNITY
As expats return to the city, its pool of workers hungry for work could offer companies solutions
By Dustin Walsh
dwalsh@crain.com
Employers across the U.S. have a
consistent message: There isn’t
enough available talent.
Detroit has too many workers who
want jobs.
Those facts mean that the city’s un-
employment problem could be a big
opportunity for businesses that need
workers.
The need for jobs for Detroiters and
the opportunities presented by its sup-
ply of available workers will come into
focus at this week’s Detroit Homecom-
ing IV, presented by Crain’s Detroit
Business. Attendees, who are native
Detroiter “expats” who have found
success elsewhere, are set to learn
about ways that they can help beef up
Detroit’s jobs picture.
Among the ideas they’ll hear are
the potential for outsourcing jobs
such as call center work to Detroit, or
Why Homecoming idea is universal — and spreading
In August 2013, as Detroit was slid-
ing into history as the largest munici-
pality in the United States to file for
bankruptcy, Jim Hayes had an idea:
What if successful people — people
with influence, people with money —
who had a tie to Detroit could be per-
suaded to return, re-engage and rein-
vest in the city?
The retired publisher of Fortune
magazine took the concept to Keith
Crain, chairman of Crain Communi-
cations and editor-in-chief of Crain’s
Detroit Business.
A year later, in September 2014, we
C R A I N ’ S D E T R O I T B U S I N E S S // S E P T E M B E R 1 1 , 2 0 1 7
FOCUS
SPECIAL REPORT: DETROIT HOMECOMING
steering office purchases to Detroit-
and Michigan-based businesses.
As the working-age population
across the nation continues to rapid-
ly decline, coupled with a strength-
ening economy, Detroit’s unem-
ployed and out-of-the-labor force
population may provide businesses
in need of workers with new hope —
particularly as the city gets better at
training potential workers to match
what employers need.
The difference in employment pic-
tures between Detroit and much of
the rest of the country is stark.
The unemployment rate in the city
was 9.4 percent in July, compared
with 3.7 percent for the state of Mich-
igan and 4.3 percent for the U.S. as a
whole. That rate remains one of the
highest in the nation, providing pro-
spective employers a large pool of
potential applications.
Plus, Detroit leads the nation in ma-
MARY KRAMER
Group Publisher
welcomed 150 “expats” to the inau-
gural Detroit Homecoming. Now, as
Detroit Homecoming IV begins on
jor cities in working age people out of
the labor force. Only 49 percent of De-
troit residents aged 16 to 64 were em-
ployed in 2015. In Cleveland, it’s 55
percent; in Atlanta, 69 percent.
If Detroit’s unemployed are put to
work and demand increases, those
no longer looking could be pulled
back into the labor picture.
Solving the skills gap
In 2015, Detroit Mayor Mike Dug-
gan revived the Mayor’s Workforce
Development Board, co-chaired by
Strategic Staffing Solutions CEO Cin-
dy Pasky and DTE Energy Vice Chair-
man Dave Meador, with the region’s
top executives and workforce devel-
opment agency heads to restructure
its efforts to prepare Detroiters for
the future economy, and more im-
portantly, get them back to work.
The board’s audacious goal was,
Sept. 13 with 230 invited expat guests,
we are tracking millions of dollars of
commercial and philanthropic in-
vestments led by or including expats.
Now other cities are borrowing the
idea, staging their own “homecom-
ings” to re-engage their own “sons
and daughters” of those communities.
Flint hosted its inaugural homecom-
ing in August (see story, Page 19). Erie,
Pa., has been at it for two years. Our
team has been offering counsel and
advice to Baltimore, Cleveland and
Newark — all three considering
SEE KRAMER, PAGE 11
9
Tune in to Detroit
Homecoming
Portions of the Detroit Homecoming IV
program will be available to stream online
through a partnership with WXYZ-Channel 7.
To view, go to Detroithomecoming.com.
The live stream will include:
n 7 p.m. Wednesday:
An opening night
presentation
featuring a fireside
chat between actress
and Detroit native Lily
Tomlin and Crain’s
Group Publisher and
Detroit Homecoming
Director Mary Kramer.
Lily Tomlin It will be followed by a
tribute to Tomlin and
all things Detroit by songwriter and
performer Allee Willis.
n 9 a.m. Thursday: Mayor Mike Duggan.
n 9:45 a.m. Thursday: A panel on jobs for
Detroiters featuring Stacy Brown-Philpot,
CEO of TaskRabbit.
n 8 p.m. Thursday: A
discussion between
philanthropist and
University of Michigan
donor Stephen Ross
and Golden State
GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKPHOTO Warrior Draymond
Green of Michigan
State University,
moderated by Dan
Stephen Ross Gilbert.
n 9:20 a.m. Friday:
Rockefeller Foundation President Rajiv
and still is, to put 100,000 of those un- Shah on Workforce and the future of
employed Detroiters back to work. In Detroit.
the near-term, it has set a more rea- n 9:35 a.m. Friday: Columbia University
sonable, yet still bold, goal of 40,000 economist and Earth Institute Director
new jobs in the next four years. Jeffrey Sachs.
“We’re planning for what we expect
n 10 a.m. Friday: A
to happen; for Detroit’s economy to
expand and to recapture our place in panel on the 50 years
the U.S. and, maybe, abroad,” said Ni- since the 1967 Detroit
cole Sherard-Freeman, president and riots, called “Looking
CEO of the Detroit Employment Solu- Back To Look
tions Corp. and former corporate con- Forward,” featuring
sulting executive. “The way we are ap- Mary Wilson of the
proaching job readiness with a large Supremes; TV
urban population, quite frankly, is ag- producer David
gressive and none of our peers in other La June Salzman; W.K. Kellogg
cities are keeping pace.” Montgomery Foundation CEO La
The board is initially focusing on Tabron June Montgomery
five industries — health care, manu- Tabron; Detroit
facturing, construction and transpor- Planning Director Maurice Cox; school board
tation, information technology and member Misha Stallworth; and Garlin
retail, hospitality and entertainment. Gilchrist II, a expat who returned home to
Its work includes pilot programs run for city clerk. The panel is moderated by
SEE JOBS, PAGE 11 Crain’s Editor and Publisher Ron Fournier.
CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS
Tables are set for dinner for more than 200 participants of Detroit Homecoming III last
year, at the former Brewster Wheeler Recreation Center in downtown Detroit.
The world is watching.
Home is calling.

SPECIAL REPORT:
DETROIT HOMECOMING
JOBS
FROM PAGE 9
that have trained 240 Detroiters this
year for patient care associate and pa-
tient sitter roles at Detroit’s three health
systems, more than 100 jobs in four IT
training programs, a prison reentry
program that’s trained 175 convicts in
culinary arts and
hi-lo operation and
dozens more in ba-
sic construction.
It’s a small start,
but it’s a massive
operation to steer
new training meth-
ods away form tra-
ditional workforce
development, said
Nicole Sherard- Sherard-Freeman.
Freeman: There are nearly
Approaching 400 workforce de-
lifelong learning as velopment organi-
an expectation. zations operating
in the city, and the
work has been uncoordinated.
“We always thought that if we built
training programs, jobs readiness pro-
grams and market it differently, just go
out and tell people, they’d be lined up
around the building. That’s not true in
Detroit or in Baltimore or in Kansas
City,” she said. “We thought we knew
how to do this, we’d talk to employers
and tell them how to train their em-
ployees. That’s not how it works. May-
be that’s not how it ever worked.”
The board and the DESC began val-
KRAMER
FROM PAGE 9
their own versions in 2018.
Why has this formula worked?
My own armchair theory is that suc-
cessful people, once they reach a cer-
tain stage in life, look back to their roots
that helped shape their future success.
You can’t deny that there are special
relationships people form with the
identity of their hometowns, whether
it’s Detroit or Cleveland or Baltimore or
Flint.
In Detroit’s case, its underdog, “De-
troit vs. Everybody” image resonates
with many expats.
Everybody loves an underdog, and
it’s hard not to love Detroit. The city has
survived the ups and downs of a cycli-
cal and sometimes fickle auto industry.
It survived 1967. As Ford Foundation
CEO Darren Walker said when he
spoke at Detroit Homecoming III in
2016, Detroit is remarkable because it
“embodies all that’s amazing and re-
markable about America” but also has
its share of America’s contradictions
when it comes to race, class and in-
equality.
Richard Florida, an urban theorist,
once declared that Detroit’s greatest ex-
port wasn’t cars, it was talent.
The tide may be turning. In an Aug.
31 post on his CityLab blog, Florida
took note of one of the greatest expat-
return-to-the-Rust-Belt stories: NBA
great LeBron James’ return to Cleve-
land to play in northeast Ohio and raise
his kids in his native Akron.
In that blog, Florida examines how
another beleaguered city, Youngstown,
Ohio, was benefiting from re-engage-
ment of expats. The city has gotten
some buzz because of its dynamic may-
or, Jay Williams. Like Detroit,
Youngstown had a steep population
C R A I N ’ S D E T R O I T B U S I N E S S // S E P T E M B E R 1 1 , 2 0 1 7 11
idating existing programs by creating a
demand forecast, securing hiring
commitments from employers and
working with them to design training,
largely for the first time in the city’s
workforce development history.
Barriers still remain, such as a weak
public transportation system, the hang-
over of unpaid driver responsibility fees
that keep people from driving legally
and illiteracy from a failed public
school district. The board is working to
knock some obstacles down.
But if the board is successful in
reaching its 40,000 jobs goal, the city
could serve as a beacon to expanding
businesses across the U.S. No other
city has the available space — 900 va-
cant industrial buildings spread
throughout the city, according to a
June report by Detroit Future City.
Mash in a ready workforce, and De-
troit is an attractive solution.
But don’t mistake the city for a char-
ity case, where an employer can come
in and be a savior, said Sherard-Free-
man.
“This is an element of the stars being
aligned. We could have plateaued; we
could have stayed in the stinkhole,” she
said. “But we’ve come out of bankrupt-
cy, after a couple of decades of being
unhappy, and we have an entirely dif-
ferent tone. ... If you want to establish
your business and grow your own tal-
ent in ways you’ve never thought of,
you’re in the right place.”
Dustin Walsh: (313) 446-6042
Twitter: @dustinpwalsh
loss — 30 percent from 1990 to 2010.
Florida also cites a study by sociolo-
gist Jill Harrison, who did deep inter-
views with 22 people who had returned
to their native Youngstown.
All but two of Harrison’s subjects
were under 40; the sample was split
evenly between men and women.
ANNOUNCING A PREMIER
LEASING
And here’s what was surprising
about Harrison’s research. Yes, there
were family or economic reasons to re-
turn. But more importantly was a deci-
sion shaped by what Harrison called
“place character” — the character of OPPORTUNITY WITH AN
the city itself.
That authenticity is what seems to UNLIMITED FUTURE
power a lot of what people love about
Detroit (and yes, maybe the sports
teams, too, even when they’re not win-
ning). CONSIDER THE GMRENCEN.
Detroit Homecoming alumni may IT’S WHERE DETROIT MEETS THE WORLD.
never move “home.” But they’re mak-
A GLOBAL BUSINESS DESTINATION.
ing a difference, as you can see on the
pages in this section. AN AMERICAN ICON AND A VIBRANT
But don’t count out luring young col- REFLECTION OF THE NEW DETROIT.
lege grads home to Detroit, either.
Last year, Google co-founder Sergei
Brin advised attendees at a global en-
trepreneurship summit that it might be
easier to start a company outside of Sil-
icon Valley.
It’s cheaper — salaries, real estate
and other hard costs — and the battle Now for the first time in 10 years, the GMRENCEN has
for talent may not be so intense. But premium real estate available; in the heart of the new
once a company has traction, he sug- downtown. See what a new worldview can do for your
gested, it may be easier to find investors business. Share the excitement. And energize your team.
in the Valley.
His advice may well have been: “Go Visit gmrencen.com/leasing
east, young man and young woman.”
Authenticity, cheap real estate and
major universities a stone’s throw away
for talent. Those are a pretty good foun-
dation upon which to build an econo-
my.
Mary Kramer is group publisher of
Crain’s Detroit Business and director
of Detroit Homecoming.
14 C R A I N ’ S D E T R O I T B U S I N E S S // S E P T E M B E R 1 1 , 2 0 1 7

SPECIAL REPORT:
DETROIT HOMECOMING

COSTAR GROUP INC.

DuCharme Place is an apartment project in Lafayette Park.

Expats find real

estate deals way
to add to Detroit
Kirk Pinho the redevelopment of the former Ti-
kpinho@crain.com ger Stadium site; and a real estate
Two years ago, Teresa Sebastian fund by Century Partners, which is
bet on her hometown. redeveloping homes along the street
The Detroit native who currently where she was raised.
splits her time between Florida and “They were projects that are really
Tennessee made her first real estate being catalysts and anchors for the
investment in the city, where she turnaround of Detroit, so that was
grew up on Atkinson Street. very important, and they are projects
Hers is a tale like those of many that spur some economic benefits to
others who have attended the Detroit the community in terms of jobs and
Homecoming event the last three housing, and they were certainly via-
years, and who are ble because they
attending this are attractions for
year’s event that individuals,” said
starts Wednesday: Sebastian, who
One way to con- left Michigan in
tribute to Detroit 2010 and returns
is investing their this week for the
money in real es- fourth Detroit
tate development Homecoming.
deals. She declined to
Today, the pres- reveal how much
Teresa Sebas- ident and CEO of Tess Mateo: Has she invested.
tian: Invested suburban Orlan- invested in Tess Mateo, who
where she grew up. do-based venture properties, land. went to Troy Ath-
capital firm The ens High School
Dominion Asset Group’s money is in and the University of Michigan, said
four wildly different projects — and she has invested about $200,000 in
she expects more to follow. over a dozen residential and commer-
For Sebastian, those deals are the cial properties, plus vacant land, in
DuCharme Place apartment project the city since she attended Detroit
in Lafayette Park; the Assemble Homecoming I in 2014. The managing
Sound music studio, which repur- director of CXCatalysts, Mateo said
posed a former Corktown church; SEE PROJECTS, PAGE 15

SPECIAL REPORT:
DETROIT HOMECOMING
Three neighborhoods
During the Detroit Homecoming event
this week hosted by Crain’s Detroit
Business, expats will go on immersion
tours of three distinct neighborhoods
outside downtown and Midtown where
serious revitalization efforts are underway.
Here are brief overviews of the three:
Neighborhood: Brightmoor.
Private investment: $4.1 million.
Home renovations: 155.
Homes: 5,192.
Home sales (2016): 39.
City-owned commercial properties: 29.
Overview: This northwest Detroit
neighborhood is in the vicinity of a new
Meijer Inc. store plus other planned
projects by Detroit-based The Platform
LLC and others. The Brightmoor
Alliance and Sidewalk Detroit, for
example, received a Kresge Foundation
grant allowing them to pair artists and
community members and organiza-
tions at Eliza Howell Park for six- to
12-week residencies to design and
implement participatory performanc-
es, workshops, classes and park
improvements.
Neighborhood: Dexter-Linwood.
Private investment: $10.7 million.
Home renovations: 222.
Homes: 3,719.
Home sales (2016): 23.
Chris Lambert, CEO of Life Remodeled, greets a volunteer at the former Durfee
Elementary-Middle School building where a new innovation center will be located,
converting the expansive school into a community hub.
PROJECTS
FROM PAGE 14
she was speaking with someone from
Detroit-based Loveland Technologies
Inc. that year when she heard about
properties selling for $500 at the
Wayne County tax-foreclosure auc-
tion.
“I’m from New York, so $500 is like
a few dinners,” she said with a laugh.
Since then, Mateo’s contractors, De-
troit-based Building Hugger and Cork-
town Maintenance, have provided
jobs to dozens of unemployed and/or
homeless people to renovate the prop-
erties, which are not only in the greater
downtown area, but also neighbor-
hoods like Warrendale and East En-
glish Village.
Others, like Detroit native John
Rhea, have been more publicly active
in downtown real estate. For example,
he is planning a nearly 300-acre multi-
C R A I N ’ S D E T R O I T B U S I N E S S // S E P T E M B E R 1 1 , 2 0 1 7 15
City-owned commercial properties: 26.
Overview: Organizations like Life
Remodeled and others are working on
things like teaching Detroit students
software and assembly line robot coding
in this central Detroit neighborhood,
where the 1967 Detroit riots/rebellion
began. Life Remodeled also recruited
12,000 volunteers and hundreds of
companies to remove blight from 300
blocks in the area, board up 300 homes
and complete home repairs for 50 Thanks to the generosity of the Michigan
homeowners.
State University Federal Credit Union,
MSU is opening the Science Gallery Lab
Neighborhood: University District.
in Detroit—the first of its kind in the
Private investment: $3.4 million.
U.S. It’s aimed at igniting a passion for
Home renovations: 276.
science, art, technology, and innovation
Homes: 1,252.
Home sales (2016): 71.
in Detroit’s young people.
City-owned commercial properties: 1.
Overview: This area, anchored by the
University of Detroit Mercy and Marygrove
College, has been a key target in the city's
redevelopment efforts outside the greater
downtown area. Development interest
has been robust, as The Platform LLC,
Century Partners and Matt Hessler all
have projects afoot in the area. The Live6
Alliance, an effort by UDM, Kresge and the
Detroit Economic Growth Corp., launched
two years ago to bring economic
development to the Livernois-McNichols
area, which includes the Fitzgerald
neighborhood targeted by The Platform
and Century Partners.
Source for data: TheNeighborhoods.org
WHEN ALL ROADS LEAD HOME,
WE’LL LEAVE THE LIGHTS ON FOR YOU.
JACOB LEWKOW
family housing development in Brush
Park with a mix of incomes and home
styles, ranging from apartments to car-
riage houses and
townhomes. He is
also a member of
the ownership
team of the Fisher
Building and Al-
bert Kahn build-
ings in the New
Center area, which
were purchased in
2015 for $12.2 mil-
John Rhea: Active lion.
in downtown real The Fisher
estate. Building is under-
PROUD A/V PARTNER OF
going a multimil-
lion-dollar renovation; last month, the
ownership group put the Kahn Build-
ing up for sale for an undisclosed price
through the Royal Oak office of JLL. DETROIT HOMECOMING 2017
Kirk Pinho: (313) 446-0412
Twitter: @kirkpinhoCDB
(248) 461-6343
3 P
PREMIEREVENTTECH.NET
R
16 C R A I N ’ S D E T R O I T B U S I N E S S // S E P T E M B E R 1 1 , 2 0 1 7
SPECIAL REPORT:
GLOBAL THINKING. DETROIT HOMECOMING
DETROIT ATTITUDE.
The Factory at 1907 Michigan Ave. and 1927 Michigan Ave., a 45,000-square-foot,
connected two-building complex, has been undergoing renovations since 2015.
The Factory at
Corktown revs up
8325 E. Jefferson | Detroit | Michigan | 48214
313-207-5960 | robarpr.com
for Homecoming
By Annalise Frank
afrank@crain.com
Its full renovation won’t be com-
plete for about a month, but The Fac-
tory at Corktown officially opened
last week, its owners announced new
plans for another nearby lot — and it
will get a test drive at this week’s De-
troit Homecoming IV.
The 45,000-square-foot facility will
be the first official headquarters for
Buhl Sport Detroit and aftermarket
automotive parts maker Brothers
Tuning Detroit. It is a three-story
building and a two-story building
joined in the middle by a
9,000-square-foot garage.
The Factory at 1907 Michigan Ave.
and 1927 Michigan Ave. also has a
rooftop terrace and 8,000 square feet
of special event space with catering
by Troy-based Continental Services.
It will also host breakfast and
lunch events during the fourth annu-
al Detroit Homecoming, a gathering
produced by Crain’s Detroit Business
for Detroit natives who return to the
city to learn, reconnect and invest.
This year’s event takes place at The
Factory, in Michigan Central Station
and other locations Wednesday
through Friday.
Brothers Robbie and Tom Buhl
founded Buhl Sport Detroit in 2015
as a racing team and motorsports
marketing business.
The Buhl family and Britt Greene
bought the building complex in 2015
under Riverfront Partnership I LLC
and have been renovating since,
Greene said. Greene is a real estate
developer and former president and
CEO of the Florida-based St. Joe Co.
The owners will also lease out first-
floor retail space and some office space
after the renovation is finished. Greene
declined to disclose the exact cost of
renovation but said it was a “multimil-
lion”-dollar project. The general con-
tractor is Midtown Building Co.
“We took it back to its original
100-plus-year-old look,” Greene said.
“We took a building that had been
ANNALISE FRANK/CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS
“We took a building
that had been
vacant ... in the
center of Corktown.
I think it’s a huge
plus for the city. I
think it’s
Corktown’s turn
now.”
Britt Greene
vacant ... in the center of Corktown. I
think it’s a huge plus for the city. I
think it’s Corktown’s turn now.”
Duggan echoed Greene’s senti-
ment after the ribbon cutting: “I’m
just glad to see the historic buildings
in the city get reused,” he said. The
Factory is evidence of development
“spreading out across Michigan Ave-
nue” from downtown, he added.
The red brick buildings, built in
1907 and later expanded, sit across
the street from the old Tiger Stadium
site and were home to the former
Chicago Hosiery and Detroit-Alaska
Knitting Mills factories.
Greene and the Buhls have also
purchased a 2.5-acre lot across Michi-
gan Avenue from The Factory, run-
ning from Rosa Parks Boulevard to the
Gaelic League Irish American Club
along the Fisher Service Drive. Greene
declined to provide details on the pur-
chase, but he did say the open trian-
gular plot would be changing signifi-
cantly in the future. It was purchased
under Corktown Equities LLC.
“We’re just high on Corktown,” he
said.
Until the owners move forward
with development plans, Buhl Sport
Detroit will use the empty space for
its Teen Street Skills driving program.
The Factory has already begun
hosting events: It held the city’s first
Cars in Corktown event Aug. 26 pre-
sented by Crain’s sister publication
Autoweek, with classic cars on dis-
play.

SPECIAL REPORT: DETROIT HOMECOMING
When Wright Lassiter met Arn Tellem
By Jay Greene
jgreene@crain.com
It started out as a joke suggested by
CEO Wright Lassiter III of Henry Ford
Health System at Detroit Homecom-
ing II in 2015.
But over time it eventually led to the
Detroit Pistons choosing Henry Ford
Health System as the team’s official
health care provider and a
100,000-square-foot practice and cor-
porate headquarters in Detroit’s New
Center neighborhood, Lassiter said.
Lassiter was moderating a panel
discussion Oct. 2, 2015, with Arn Tel-
lem of the Detroit Pistons and several
other celebrities on the impact of
sports on racial issues. Both men
were new to Detroit and new to their
roles.
“I met Arn for the very first time on
the very day of the panel,” Lassiter
said. “We chatted off stage about
questions we put together to ask ev-
eryone. When it came to Arn, I said
jokingly there is a question beyond
any standard questions that everyone
wants me to ask you: ‘Are the Pistons
going to move downtown?’”
Lassiter recalled Tellem looked
sheepishly at him and said: “Do you
want me to answer the question?”
Lassiter replied no, he just wanted to
make a joke about the widely reported
rumor in front of the audience.
But that joke turned into something
much more over the next 18 months,
BE INSPIRED.
TUNE INTO DETROIT HOMECOMING
ON OUR DIGITAL SIMULCAST
SEPTEMBER 13-15
WEDNESDAY
7:00 pm Lily Tomlin and Allee Willis
THURSDAY
9:00 am Mayor Duggan
9:45 am Jobs for Detroiters panel featuring TaskRabbit’s Stacy Brown-Philpot
8:00 pm Philanthropist Stephen Ross and Golden State Warrior Draymond Green
Followed by a Detroit Music Revue featuring Supremes Mary Wilson and
Mike Ellison
FRIDAY
9:20 am Rockefeller Foundation President Rajiv Shah
9:35 am Columbia University’s Earth Institute’s Jeff Sachs
10:00 am Looking Back to Look Forward Panel
detroithomecoming.com
C R A I N ’ S D E T R O I T B U S I N E S S // S E P T E M B E R 1 1 , 2 0 1 7 17
Ford being the medical partner.”
In early 2016, the Pistons and Hen-
ry Ford put together small manage-
ment teams to hash out the details
about a marketing sponsorship and
team medical care, Lassiter said. “We
wanted small teams because we Wright Lassiter Arn Tellem:
didn’t want a lot of public discussion III: Joked about Looked at Henry
at that point,” he said. Pistons move. Ford as partner.
Lassiter said he was excited about
the possibility. He said, coincidental- playing games in an urban center.
ly, he had asked Henry Ford managers They had a strong business and emo-
to put together a strategic plan to ex- tional attachment to moving down-
CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS pand the health system’s professional town.”
Arn Tellem (far right), vice chairman of Palace Sports & Entertainment, speaks during sports partnerships. Now called the Henry Ford-Detroit
2015 Detroit Homecoming panel discussing how sports can be a catalyst for improving “We have longstanding relation- Pistons Performance Center, Lassiter
race relations. Also on the panel was moderator Wright Lassiter, CEO of Henry Ford ships with the Lions and the Ford said the multi-purpose building will
Health System (left); Ndidi Massay, CEO of RISE; Dave Bing, former mayor and NBA family, but never with the Pistons,” further boost Henry Ford’s image in
player; George Gervin, NBA Hall of Fame; Lauryn Williams, four-time Olympian; and Tim Lassiter said. “I didn’t know what the health care world. It is expected
Richey, Detroit PAL. would happen, but I told (Tellem) to be completed sometime in 2018.
whatever you decide (Henry Ford) “There is a halo effect for health
said Lassiter. tons organization. It also will include wants to be part of any endeavor. The systems to provide care to pro sports
Last November, team owner Tom a sports medicine, treatment and re- city would love for you to be down- teams. If system X and doctor Y are
Gores announced the Pistons would habilitation facility managed by Hen- town, but we would work with you in good enough for a professional team,
move to Little Caesars Arena for the ry Ford. any environment.” they are good enough for me,” Lassit-
2017-2018 season after 29 years at The Lassiter said Tellem invited him to When the deal was finally an- er said. “It helps in market percep-
Palace in Auburn Hills. breakfast at the Rugby Grille at the nounced it February, Lassiter said tion and enhancement as well as see-
In February, the Detroit Pistons Townsend Hotel in Birmingham sev- the trusting relationship he had ing pure business growth.”
struck the deal with Henry Ford for eral months after the Homecoming struck with Tellem back at the Home- Lassiter said he expects Henry
the facility in New Center, where Hen- panel. coming event produced by Crain’s Ford’s orthopedic and sports medi-
ry Ford Hospital and its corporate “He (Tellem) said Tom Gores had Detroit Business led to a perfect end- cine programs, already premier clini-
headquarters are also located. asked him to evaluate the potential of ing for both organizations. cal programs, will receive a further
The approximately $65 million fa- moving downtown and getting more “Arn made it clear that Tom was boost in patient volume and addition-
cility will also bring about 200 to 250 involved in” Detroit’s comeback, Las- fiercely interested in broadening Pis- al revenue.
Pistons-related employees to New siter said. “It was the first time I un- tons interest and connection with
Center. The facility will be privately fi- derstood (the Pistons) were looking Detroit,” he said. “The Pistons were Jay Greene: (313) 446-0325
nanced and will be owned by the Pis- downtown. He talked about Henry the only remaining franchise not Twitter: @jaybgreene
TOMLIN
GREEN
BROWN-PHILPOT
ROSS
The Detroit Homecoming
simulcast is brought to you by:
#detroithomecoming
18 C R A I N ’ S D E T R O I T B U S I N E S S // S E P T E M B E R 1 1 , 2 0 1 7

S
SPECIAL REPORT: DETROIT HOMECOMING D

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Visitors tour the first floor concourse of hom
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The 110,000-square-foot concourse, for t
with its marble walls and columns that 15 a
soar to a 54-foot-tall ceiling, has limited othe
commercial reuse options. CHAD LIVENGOOD/CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS O

STATION and connecting the old train station to

FROM PAGE 1
Moroun envisions the depot having
a straight-shot rail line to Detroit Metro
Airport and being a stop for Amtrak’s
high-speed train routes to Chicago and
a connection to Ontario’s VIA through
the adjacent rail tunnel that dips below
the Detroit River.
One of the biggest obstacles to rede-
veloping the train station is its location
along Michigan Avenue on the out-
skirts of Corktown, nearly two miles
west of Campus Martius in the central
business district.
To overcome that barrier, Moroun
said a second QLine streetcar could be
built along Michigan Avenue to con-
nect downtown with the depot (like
there used to be in the first half of the
20th century, as evidenced by old rails
exposed along Michigan).
“All of that is big bucks. I get that,”
Moroun said. “But all of those moves
are moves that happen over a long peri-
od of time because of a mass transit
plan.”
In pitching the idea, Moroun is es-
sentially seeking public feedback — a
noticeable departure from the often re-
clusive nature of his family’s business
dealings in Detroit.
Two influential players in Detroit’s
transportation planning circles are re-
ceptive to the idea of the old train sta-
tion going back online.
“I’m excited that Matthew and his
family are putting the energy into it that
they are and that they’re evaluating
these different ideas and I think it
should be on the table,” said Matt Cul-
len, CEO of M-1 Rail, the private non-
profit that runs the QLine.
Moroun has broached the idea of
Amtrak trains running through the old
train depot with Kirk Steudle, director
of the Michigan Department of Trans-
portation.
Steudle said he’s receptive to the idea
the central business district in the same
way the QLine street car connects New
Center with downtown.
“I’ve had a number of people come
up to me and say ‘How do we do some-
thing on Michigan Avenue like they did
on Woodward?’” Steudle said. “If Mat-
thew (Moroun) can be the person who
brings together that group, well ... let’s
continue having a conversation.”
Moroun is putting forward the idea
just as MDOT is starting to consider
long-term planning for the Amtrak
train station at the corner of Woodward
and Baltimore in New Center. The train
station, which is easy to miss for pass-
ersby, is near the QLine’s Baltimore
Street stop.
MDOT owns 3 acres on the south
side of the railroad crossing over Wood-
ward that is envisioned for a future in-
termodal station for QLine and Amtrak
trains, bus rapid transit and possibly
autonomous vehicles when they hit the
road.
Cullen thinks the intermodal station
in New Center “still happens,” whether
or not the old train station is resurrect-
ed.
But having two intermodal stations is
not out of the question, Cullen said.
“It seems to me that there’s opportu-
nity for both to be used in a transit
mode over time,” said Cullen, who also
is principal in Dan Gilbert’s Rock Ven-
tures LLC. “I think they can perform
different functions.”
Easy lifting, hard lifting
As he toys with the idea of trains
parked outside the train station again,
Matthew Moroun is trying to make the
numbers work for filling the rest of the
building.
Moroun has pegged the cost of reno-
vating the entire train station at north of
$100 million.
“It would be really cool if some For-
tune 500 company made it their head-
quarters in Detroit — and I wouldn’t
turn down that opportunity,” Moroun
said.
But a mixed use of the building is a
more likely option, Moroun said.
The Moroun family’s real estate busi-
ness, Crown Enterprises Inc., has con-
cluded the top 13 floors of the train sta-
tion can be redeveloped into office,
hotel and residential space — or a com-
bination of all three. Each floor has
25,000 square feet and the 12th and
13th floors were never developed, said
Michael Samhat, president of Crown
Enterprises.
“We can afford to make a case to de-
velop the tower — with one big caveat
— if the train station portion of the
building doesn’t wreck it,” Moroun
said. “That first floor is the elephant in
the living room — you can’t just ignore
it.”
The 110,000-square-foot first-floor
concourse, with its marble walls and
columns that soar to a 54-foot-tall ceil-
ing, has limited commercial reuse op-
tions that would keep the building bus-
tling, Samhat said.
Interest in the building has picked up
in recent years after the Morouns spent
more than $8 million installing 1,100
new windows, building a freight eleva-
tor in the building’s original smoke-
stack and removing debris and toxic
asbestos.
Crown Enterprises was recently
“close” to inking a deal with one poten-
tial tenant to occupy 60 percent of the
tower, Moroun said.
“What kind of did us in was the train
station portion,” Moroun said. “Once
we started factoring it in, it drove the
cost out of reason.”
A neighborhood rising
One reason Moroun is mulling a re-
turn to trains is to create foot traffic in
the burgeoning Corktown neighbor-
hood and Roosevelt Park, which sepa-
rates the train station from the Michi-
gan Avenue streetfront.
Connecting Corktown to the central
business district with mass transit
could spur development west of down-
town, Moroun said.
“Now you’ve connected Corktown,
this area here, and you’re rolling,” Mo-
roun said during a lunchtime interview
at Nemo’s, a popular Corktown bar.
The QLine came to fruition thanks to
some deep pockets with business inter-
ests who were looking to spur redevel-
opment momentum along the Wood-
ward corridor.
Auto racing and truck rental indus-
trialist Roger Penske spent the better
part of a decade championing the 6.6-
mile QLine loop, eventually convincing
corporations, universities and hospitals
along Woodward to invest $187.3 mil-
lion in the street car system’s capital
costs and initial operations.
Troy-based Kresge Foundation do-
nated $50 million — the largest single
gift — and the foundation’s president,
Rip Rapson, has shown interest in help-
ing finance another street car project.
Steudle said the development of
mass transit along Michigan Avenue
needs an influential voice like Penske
and Rapson provided for the Wood-
ward Avenue project.
“If you get more people excited
about it and you get somebody like
Matthew Moroun who has a lot of influ-
ence, you never know what will hap-
pen,” Steudle said.
The family history
In recent years, Matthew Moroun
has become the public face of his fami-
ly’s businesses, which are primarily
based in Warren.
As vice chairman, he has essentially
taken over day-to-day operations of the
business empire his father and grand-
father spent decades building from a
small truck-hauling company in De-
troit to a nationwide trucking and logis-
tics firm, CenTra Inc.
The Moroun family is widely known
for its ownership of the Ambassador
Bridge and a years-long battle for con-
struction of a publicly-owned bridge to
preserve its lucrative control of interna-
tional truck traffic.
Last week, the Moroun-owned De-
troit International Bridge Co. won con-
ditional approval from the Canadian
government to build a new bridge to
replace the 88-year-old Ambassador. Che
That win came a week after Moroun Still
companies suffered another loss in over
court in a bid to block construction of
the new Gordie Howe International expa
Bridge. “W
Matty Moroun, who turned 90 in com
June and remains chairman of his com- expe
panies, has spent decades acquiring Frai
property in Detroit for his bridge, com- D
mercial trucking and logistics opera- prod
tions. has
His most notable asset is the train of in
station, which he bought in 1995. atte
A razor wire fence has encircled the Mic
building ever since as the Morouns who
have contemplated multiple ideas for ing
the train station’s reuse, ranging from a mak
trade and customs center to Detroit’s terg
police headquarters. F
None of the previous ideas have ever emu
come to fruition, much less gained any Afte
traction. And, until late 2015, the build- ers
ing sat windowless for years, making it a and
frequent stop for gawkers of Detroit’s aud
so-called “ruin porn.” mer
The years of inaction has made Matty niza
Moroun the subject of public scorn, ness
which is not lost on the son. “Th
Mindful of the public’s emotional at- do t
tachment to the hulking train depot, spon
Matthew Moroun said he feels “an im- Det
mense pressure” to deliver the best re- area
development solution for both the city of s
and his family’s bottom line. troit
“I don’t want it to be an economic D
disaster for my family,” he said. “So I’ve Det
gotta get it right on both ends.” mor
wer
Chad Livengood: (313) 446-1654 troit
Twitter: @ChadLivengood even
 C R A I N ’ S D E T R O I T B U S I N E S S // S E P T E M B E R 1 1 , 2 0 1 7 19

SPECIAL REPORT:
DETROIT HOMECOMING

Other communities
inspired by Detroit’s
Homecoming events
By Annalise Frank and businesses to show expats what
afrank@crain.com the city has to offer and what it’s miss-
Inspired by Detroit Homecoming’s ing — its “gaps,” she said. She wanted
focus on luring investment from ex- to show Flint expats their own city’s
pats, other communities are getting in gaps, and also the enormous potential
on the game. the city had to offer.
Organizers of recent events in Erie, “There was such an excitement (at
Pa., and Flint inspired by Detroit Detroit Homecoming),” DeFrain said.
Homecoming are left contemplating “Mayor (Mike) Duggan talked about
the expat-centric gathering’s dual the communities and what it used to
purpose as a community-builder and be and what it is now and what it can
an investment opportunity. Cleve- be, and you could just feel an excite-
land, Baltimore and Newark, N.J., are ment from the expats.”
also considering their own events and Flint’s event featured panels, a
have consulted with Detroit Home- community tour, pitches from local
coming officials, Crain’s Group Pub- projects and speakers including
lisher and Detroit Homecoming Di- Kramer, General Motors Co. executive
rector Mary Kramer said. Mark Reuss and Lt. Gov. Brian Calley.
Flint held its first homecoming And now, in its wake, Flint’s leaders
Detroit is reinventing itself. We invite you to be part of the rebirth by investing in our revitalization and
Aug. 16-17, with building blocks pro- are “sitting down and evaluating” bringing your meeting to America’s great comeback city.
vided by the three-year-old Detroit whether they'll host another next year,
Homecoming. Detroit, the original DeFrain said. DISCOVER ALL THERE IS TO SEE AND DO IN THE D.
home of the networking event for en- By contrast, Erie, Pa., held its sec-
gaging former residents, will play host ond homecoming Aug. 24 and plan-
for the fourth annual event Sept. 13- ning is already underway for a more
15 at Michigan Central Station and substantial, investment-focused turn
other spots around the city. in 2018, said Jake Rouch, vice presi-
ESS On the heels of Flint’s first foray into dent of economic development for
homecoming, the Erie Regional
own which drew 55-60 Chamber and
ador expats, Cheryl De- Growth Partner-
con- Frain, director of ship.
ge to operations and Erie is nearly
rna- planning for the 300 miles from De-
Flint & Genesee troit. But a busi-
De- Chamber of Com- ness contact be-
con- merce, said they tween the two
dian are still waiting for cities drew them
e to overall investment together and rec-
dor. Cheryl DeFrain: numbers to come Jake Rouch: ommended the
oun Still waiting for in. But the event Planning to draw Pennsylvania city
s in overall numbers. did receive posi- expats to invest. dream up an event
n of tive feedback from to “help change
onal expats and local businesses, she said. the brand of Erie,” Rouch said.
“We feel that for our first home- “But also get them reconnected to
0 in coming, this was more than what we the community so they could share
om- expected and it was wonderful,” De- their expertise and play a role in its re-
ring Frain said. vitalization,” he said.

om- Detroit’s homecoming program,
era- produced by Crain’s Detroit Business,
has drawn tens of millions of dollars
rain of investment to the city; 200 expats
attended last year, including former
the Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer,
ouns who, with his wife Connie, are open-
s for ing a philanthropy office in the city to
om a make grants focused on reducing in-
oit’s tergenerational poverty.
Flint first considered the idea of
ever emulating Detroit’s program in 2015.
any After meeting with Detroit event lead-
uild- ers to see how homecoming worked
g it a and if Flint could adapt it to its own
oit’s audience, the Flint chamber of com-
merce met with interested local orga-
Matty nizations, came up with a viable busi-
orn, ness plan and decided to go for it.
“That was the discussion: ‘Can we
al at- do the same thing and have a like re-
pot, sponse for the Flint area? We’re not
im- Detroit, but is this feasible in our
t re- area?’ Because in a way there are a lot
city of similarities between Flint and De-
troit,” DeFrain said.
mic DeFrain and a colleague attended
I’ve Detroit Homecoming in 2016 to get a
more immersive experience. They
were particularly impressed by De-
troit’s community tours, she said. The
event offers a variety of tours of land
fresh. family.
Erie was inspired by the original,
but its homecoming isn’t as similar to
Detroit’s as Flint’s is — yet. The past
two years, Erie’s chamber of com-
merce has brought 25-50 expats back
to reconnect and speak about their
paths to success. For next year, the or-
ganizers are hunting for more inves-
tors and executives to engage. They’re
planning to draw expats back to the
city with opportunities to invest in
promising startups, the regeneration
of the city’s downtown core and possi-
bilities for satellite or branch loca-
tions, Rouch said.
“Going forward, we’ll evolve into a
much closer model to what (Detroit
has), targeting the higher net-worth
individuals to come back and make a
higher investment,” he said.
The event’s evolution is based on
what Erie has seen out of Detroit, he
added.
“I think that message of optimism
and belief in the future, for us, was
very important to hear,” Rouch said.
Cleveland is also planning to host a
homecoming event inspired by De-
troit Sept. 26-28, 2018, but Crain’s
Cleveland Business Publisher and Edi-
tor Elizabeth McIntyre declined to
comment further.
20
BANK
FROM PAGE 1
“Chemical Bank has a strong histo-
ry of both organic growth and growth
through acquisitions. We are focused
on our Midwest footprint of Michi-
gan, Ohio and Indiana where we be-
lieve we have significant opportuni-
ty,” Shafer told Crain’s. “We have a
record for consistent, strong organic
growth and market and competitive
trends suggest that strong organic
growth will continue. Therefore,
when and if we do acquisitions, we
will be highly selective and disci-
plined.”
Was it a coup?
Provost replaces Ramaker as presi-
dent and CEO of Chemical Financial.
Shafer replaced Ramaker as presi-
dent and CEO of Chemical Bank,
which became the largest bank head-
quartered in Michigan after the deal
and now has $18.8 billion in assets.
Following the acquisition, Provost
was named vice chairman of Chemi-
cal Financial and Shafer was named
the executive vice president and di-
rector of regional and community
banking at Chemical Bank.
Gary Torgow, who had been Talm-
er Bancorp’s chairman before the ac-
quisition, was named Chemical
chairman after the deal closed and
remains chairman. Dennis Klaeser,
who was Talmer’s CFO, is Chemical
Financial’s CFO.
The bank will remain based in Mid-
land, the new executives said.
The announcement that Ramaker
was stepping down characterized it
as a retirement, but some in the Mid-
land business community and the
Michigan banking community use
the word “coup,” which Provost and
Shafer dispute vociferously.
MADE IN DETROIT
In 1817, the “University of Michigania” was founded in Detroit and benefited from land
ceded by the Ojibwe, Odawa, and Potawatomi tribes.
Today, in 2017, we celebrate 200 years of connection, with the Detroit Festival
on September 15 at Grand Circus Park, commemorating U-M’s founding and honoring
our deep connections to the city, past, present, and future.
detroit.umich.edu
C R A I N ’ S D E T R O I T B U S I N E S S // S E P T E M B E R 1 1 , 2 0 1 7
David Provost: Thomas Shafer:
A true merger of Focused on
equals. Midwest footprint.
Coup or not, the change in leader-
ship was widely praised by industry
observers. They said some of Talmer’s
large commercial customers had
been disgruntled over lingering IT
problems connected to merging two
bank systems, and that shareholders
were disappointed over recent lack-
luster quarterly earnings reports and
a declining share price — $47.87 to
open trading June 21, off from a high
of $55.55 on Dec. 12. There was also a
“There was no board
coup. When you put
two teams together,
there is going to be
some churn...”
Frank Wheatlake
perception that Provost and Shafer
would be more adept than Ramaker
at quickly growing Chemical’s busi-
ness in large urban markets like De-
troit and Cleveland and expanding
the bank’s footprint in the Midwest
through acquisitions.
Ramaker himself had a track re-
cord of acquiring community banks,
but in small markets.
Scott Siefers, an analyst with San-
dler O’Neill, wrote the day the retire-
ment was announced that “in the
limited time we had spent with them
bicentennial.umich.edu
during their days at Talmer, we found
the team very, very impressive. They
came across as clear and logical
thinkers, and we sensed a results-
and accountability-driven culture.”
The six analysts who follow Chemi-
cal rate it positively, with two ratings
of overweight, one strong-buy rating,
one outperform rating and two buy
ratings.
Three of those ratings were made
after the Ramaker announcement.
“Both Ramaker and Provost will go
down in Michigan banking history as
two of the best CEOs ever,” said John
Donnelly, a managing director in the
Grosse Pointe investment banking
firm of Donnelly Penman & Partners.
(Donnelly wasn’t involved in the
Talmer deal.) “What Talmer accom-
plished over the years is unprece-
dented. Ramaker is a great banker,
but Tom Shafer is the right guy, the
perfect choice, to replace him. I’ve
known him for 30 years and he’s ab-
solutely the right guy for the job. His
background includes big markets and
small, and he can mesh Chemical’s
outstate and downstate cultures per-
fectly.”
Provost and Shafer say the change
in management proves that the deal
was a true merger of equals. Talmer
shareholders got $1.61 in cash and
0.4725 shares of Chemical stock for
each share of Talmer they owned, be-
coming 45 percent stakeholders in
the combined company.
“It wasn’t a coup,” said Shafer.
“Dave Ramaker retired after bringing
the companies together and a system
conversion, and it made all the sense
in the world to look internally for suc-
cession planning. This is really about
Chemical Bank continuing to grow
and taking advantage of markets we
are in.”
Frank Wheatlake has been a mem-
ber of the board since 2006. “David
Ramaker was a tremendous visionary
and the architect who took Chemical
from being a $3 billion bank to being
an $18 billion bank, and he wanted to
retire,” he said. “There was no board
coup. When you put two teams to-
gether, there is going to be some
churn, and I am very positive about
Tom Shafer and the management
team.”
Ramaker, a past president of the
Michigan Bankers’ Association,
couldn’t be reached for comment.
Some surprised
Feeding the coup narrative,
though, is the timing of Ramaker’s de-
parture. One source said he had a
meeting with Ramaker in early June
and that the bank executive talked
about long-term plans for growing
the bank and didn’t mention retire-
ment. He said he talked to other peo-
ple who met with Ramaker in the
days before the announcement. Ra-
maker gave no hint of leaving in those
meetings, either.
Then there is how quickly his re-
tirement took place. The June 21 press
release said that Ramaker, who joined
Chemical Bank as a vice president in
1989, became president and CEO of
the bank in 2001 and president and
CEO of the holding company in 2002,
would retire by the end of September.
But a press release by the bank on July
13 already listed Provost as CEO.
According to an SEC filing by the
bank, on Aug. 9 Ramaker entered into
an agreement with the bank, giving
him ongoing payments totaling $4.2
million and immediately vesting his
unvested stock options. The filing
read in part: “In consideration of the
foregoing, Mr. Ramaker has agreed to
a general release of all claims against
the corporation.”
One possibility, said bank observ-
ers, is that while there was no coup,
per se, it became clear to Ramaker
prior to his announcement that Talm-
er execs had grown more influential
with his board than he was. Rather
than prolong things or start butting
heads, it was easier to step down.
After the Talmer deal went through,
five of its executives got spots on
Chemical’s 12-member board. But
several of Chemical’s directors joined
Chemical through acquisitions and
might have had less institutional loy-
alty to Ramaker than others on the
board, including Larry Stauffer,
whose Caledonia Financial Corp. was
acquired in 2003; John Pelizzari,
whose Northwestern Bancorp was
bought in 2014; and Richard Lievense,
whose Lake Michigan Financial was
acquired in 2015.
Said one industry insider, an in-
vestment executive in Midland who
knows both Ramaker and Shafer well
and thinks highly of each: “This was
shocking to everyone in Midland. I
got a text in the middle of the night
saying David was out. It was totally
shocking. You had two organizational
approaches. Trying to integrate two
banks together can take a lot of time
or a little time. The Talmer people
didn’t like the way things were going.
They wanted to make things go faster
and got some Chemical board mem-
bers to flip and join them.”
“I was surprised by the announce-
ment of the CEO change,” said McEv-
oy. “But after putting thought into it, I
can see why the board thought David
Provost was the individual who could
take the bank to the next level and
into new markets. I agree with the
board that Provost was that person.
Ramaker is a very good banker and it
couldn’t have been an easy decision
by the board. They are two very quali-
fied individuals. But Provost has the
willingness to crank up progress fast-
er than Ramaker.”
McEvoy, who upgraded the bank to
an outperform on July 10 with a one-
year target price of $56, praised the
rest of what has become a Talmer-led
management team, particularly
Klaeser. “He was the mastermind be-
hind the Chemical acquisition, which
created a lot of shareholder value for
both companies.”
Talmer is seen as the bank that
more vigorously pursued the acquisi-
tion, convincing a reluctant Ramaker,
who until then had assiduously
avoided big markets like Detroit and
southeast Michigan.
Insiders say Ramaker eventually
agreed to the deal to help mitigate the
extra cost of more regulatory compli-
ance required under Dodd-Frank of
banks when they surpass $10 billion
in assets. At the time the deal was an-
nounced, Chemical had $9.2 billion
in assets.
By joining together, the combined
entity could offset increased compli-
ance costs by closing overlapping
branches and merging back-office
and other operations.
As of June 30, the bank had 249
branches in Michigan, northeast
Ohio and northern Indiana and about
3,500 employees.
Banks’ history
On March 14, Chemical Bank cele-
brated its 100th anniversary by hav-
ing its management team ring the
opening bell at the Nasdaq exchange.
The bank first opened its doors in
downtown Midland as Chemical
State Savings Bank.
Chemical Bank had made 12 previ-
ous acquisitions since 2000, buying
Holland-based Lake Michigan Finan-
cial Corp. and its $1.2 billion in assets
in 2015 and the $873.8 million in as-
sets of Traverse City-based North-
western Bancorp in 2014.
In 2007, Talmer was founded as the
single-branch First Michigan Bank in
Troy. It quickly grew by buying the as-
sets of distressed Michigan banks as
they were shut down by federal regu-
lators during the Great Recession, ac-
quisitions funded in part by raising
$200 million in equity capital in April
2010, including almost $50 million
from New York financier Wilbur Ross
Jr.
By the time the Chemical deal was
announced, Talmer Bank had grown
through eight acquisitions, most of
troubled banks being shut down by
the Federal Deposit Insurance Corp.
It had gone from a one-branch bank
with $75 million in assets to 71
branches in three states and assets of
about $6.6 billion.
As it eyed expansion into Ohio, Illi-
nois and Wisconsin, First Michigan
Bank changed its name. Talmer was
coined as a combination of the last
name of Provost’s grandfather, John
Talmage, and Torgow’s grandfather,
M. Manuel Merzon. The bank began
trading on the Nasdaq exchange in
February 2014 after an initial public
offering of $250 million.
In February 2016, Ross, now the
U.S. Secretary of Commerce, told the
audience at the annual Crain’s M&A
event why he made his investment.
“We didn’t think Michigan was go-
ing to zero, which was the prevailing
wisdom at the time. And we believed
in Dave and Gary,” Ross said, refer-
ring to Provost and Torgow. “Banking
is the most management-intensive
business in the world, and we be-
lieved in their management.”
Tom Henderson: (231) 499-2817
Twitter: @TomHenderson2
 C R A I N ’ S D E T R O I T B U S I N E S S // S E P T E M B E R 1 1 , 2 0 1 7 21

SPOTLIGHT New HUD grant application planned for Brewster-Douglass

Plunkett Cooney By Kirk Pinho tation grant by the Nov. 22 deadline. application.
elects president, CEO kpinho@crain.com For fiscal year 2017, HUD has $132 The city selected a joint venture be-
Bloomfield Hills-based Plun- The city of Detroit and Detroit million available to be divided up tween Dan Gilbert’s Detroit-based
kett Cooney PC elected Thomas Housing Commission are again em- among an expected five recipients. Bedrock LLC; Novi-based Ginosko
Vincent its new barking on an effort to secure up to Applicants can request up to $30 mil- Development Co.; Columbia, Md.-
president and $30 million in U.S. Housing and Ur- lion under the program, which is de- based Enterprise Community Part-
CEO. ban Development grant funding to signed to replace low-income hous- ners; and KBK Enterprises, which has
Vincent be- redevelop the former site of the Brew- ing that has been demolished. offices in Columbus, Ohio and Pitts-
gan his new ster-Douglass housing projects. In October, the city was informed burgh, to develop the project.
role Sept. 1. He The Choice Neighborhoods grant that it was not one of five finalists se- When asked if “reviewing team
replaces Den- would be a key financing piece in the lected for the grant, which would configuration options” meant that
nis Cowan, city’s effort to redevelop the 22 acre CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS have been used to fund a $416.7 mil- one or more of those four companies
who will con- site, one of the largest residential- The Brewster-Douglass housing project lion redevelopment of the site of the could be replaced as a member of
tinue to lead ly-zoned plots of land in an area that was demolished in 2014. former housing projects along I-75 what’s known as an Implementation
the firm’s gov- has attracted attention from many de- south of Mack Avenue, plus two oth- Entity, Jemison said: “We are review-
Thomas Vincent ernment af- velopers in recent years. being updated and the city and com- er sites in Eastern Market. Jemison ing all options to make our proposal
fairs practice Arthur Jemison, Detroit’s director mission are “reviewing team configu- said Tuesday that it’s not yet known as competitive as possible.” He said
group and practice full time, ac- of housing and revitalization, said Fri- ration options” with plans to apply for whether the Eastern Market sites Tuesday that a new request for pro-
cording to a news release. day that the master plan for the site is a Choice Neighborhoods implemen- will be included in this year’s grant posals does not need to be issued.
Vincent is a partner and board
member at Plunkett Cooney,
where he has worked for more
than three decades. Prior to join-
ing the litigation and transaction
firm, Vincent was a senior trial at-
torney for nearly four years in the
Oakland County Prosecutor’s Of-
fice.
During his three-year term,
Vincent will remain a trial attor-
ney as he manages the company’s
140 attorneys and 300 employees
and nearly a dozen offices across
Michigan and in Chicago, India-
napolis and Columbus.

Ford ad agency picks

new creative leader
WPP’s dedicated Ford agency
has hired an Argentina native
with nearly two decades of U.S.
auto ad agency experience, as its
global chief creative officer, Ad-
vertising Age reported.
Tito Melega assumes the role as
the automaker enters a critical
advertising phase amid slowing
market conditions.
Melega replaces Toby Barlow,
with whom GTB parted ways ear-
lier this year.
The agency, known as Global
Team Blue, or GTB, spans 52 of-
fices across six continents and is
headquartered in the shadow of
Ford’s corporate campus in Dear-
born.
Melega, 50, who came to the
U.S. at age 20, has 17 years experi-
ence working on auto brands. He
oversaw Nissan advertising from
2010-14 as creative director for
the Americas at Omnicom’s TB-
WAChiatDay. He previously
worked on Mitsubishi as a vice
president at BBDO from 2005-08.

On My Own chooses
new leader
Troy-based On My Own of
Michigan Inc. has named Jennifer
Roccanti its new executive direc-
tor.
She replaces Bruce Benson,
who now leads community and
church engagement at Olive Crest
children’s shelter in Tacoma,
Wash.
Roccanti, 32, brings nearly a
decade of experience at Miriam’s
Kitchen Washington, D.C., most
recently serving as chief perfor-
mance officer of the $4.5 million
nonprofit that combats homeless-
ness.
Roccanti has a print journalism
degree from Suffolk University in
Boston, an executive certificate in
nonprofit management and a cer-
tificate in strategy performance
management from Georgetown
University.
22 C R A I N ’ S D E T R O I T B U S I N E S S // S E P T E M B E R 1 1 , 2 0 1 7

CRAIN'S LIST: WAYNE COUNTY'S LARGEST EMPLOYERS

Ranked by full-time employees July 2017, excluding Detroit, Hamtramck and Highland Park
Full-time Full-time
employees in employees in Full-time
Company Wayne Wayne employees in Worldwide
Address County County Michigan employees
Rank Phone; website Top local executive(s) July 2017 July 2016 July 2017 July 2017 Type of business
Ford Motor Co. Jim Hackett 42,740 42,105 48,000 B NA Automobile manufacturer
1 1 American Road, Dearborn 48126
(313) 322-3000; www.ford.com
CEO

Beaumont Health John Fox 9,436 7,391 28,061 28,071 Health care system
2 2000 Town Center, Suite 1200, Southfield 48075
(248) 213-3333; www.beaumonthealth.org
president and CEO

Trinity Health Richard Gilfillan 4,636 3,970 22,211 NA Health care system
3 20555 Victor Parkway, Livonia 48152
(734) 343-1000; www.trinity-health.org
president and CEO

Dearborn Public Schools Glenn Maleyko 2,181 C 2,028 2,181 C 2,181 C Public school district
4 18700 Audette, Dearborn 48124
(313) 827-3020; www.dearbornschools.org
superintendent

Henry Ford Health System Wright Lassiter III 2,152 1,958 18,520 18,520 Health care system
5 1 Ford Place, Detroit 48202
(800) 436-7936; www.henryford.com
president and CEO

U.S. government NA 1,877 1,855 29,027 2,086,347 Federal government

6 477 Michigan Ave., Detroit 48226
(313) 226-4910; www.usa.gov
AAA Michigan Joseph Richardson 1,850 1,826 3,548 7,847 Provider of insurance, travel agency services and emergency road services
7 1 Auto Club Drive, Dearborn 48126
(313) 336-1234; www.aaa.com
president and CEO, The
Auto Club Group
Plymouth-Canton Community Schools Monica Merritt 1,787 C 1,806 C NA NA Public school district
8 454 S. Harvey St., Plymouth 48170
(734) 416-2700; www.pccsk12.com
superintendent

General Motors Co. Mary Barra 1,765 1,284 52,427 221,083 Automobile manufacturer
9 300 Renaissance Center, Detroit 48265
(313) 556-5000; www.gm.com
chairman and CEO

U.S. Steel - Great Lakes Works Ronald Kostyo 1,758 1,758 1,865 NA Steel manufacturer; hot and cold rolled sheet steel for automotive,
10 100 Quality Drive, Ecorse 48229
(313) 749-2100; www.uss.com
general manager,
Automotive Operations
appliance and construction applications

FCA US LLC Sergio Marchionne 1,609 1,476 34,000 86,900 Automobile manufacturer
11 1000 Chrysler Drive, Auburn Hills 48326-2766
(248) 576-5741; www.fcanorthamerica.com
chairman and CEO

Livonia Public Schools Andrea Oquist 1,591 C 1,604 C NA NA Public school district
12 15125 Farmington Road, Livonia 48154
(734) 744-2500; www.livoniapublicschools.org
superintendent

Wayne-Westland Community Schools Michele Harmala 1,530 1,435 NA NA Public school district
13 36745 Marquette St., Westland 48185
(734) 419-2000; wwcsd.net
superintendent

U.S. Postal Service Lee Thompson 1,495 1,495 18,577 508,908 Postal service
14 1401 W. Fort St., Detroit 48233-9998
(313) 226-8678; www.usps.com
district manager

Yazaki North America Inc. Yutaka Inagaki 1,475 1,530 1,677 290,000 Automotive supplier
15 6801 Haggerty Road, Canton Township 48187
(734) 983-1000; www.yazaki-na.com
president and CEO

ZF Franz Kleiner 1,455 1,293 3,075 65,362 Automotive supplier

16 12001 Tech Center Drive, Livonia 48150
(734) 855-2600; www.zf.com
CEO

Acro Service Corp. Ron Shahani 1,296 1,287 2,978 6,458 Staff-augmentation, outsourcing and IT and engineering consulting
17 39209 W. Six Mile Road, Suite 250, Livonia 48152
(734) 591-1100; www.acrocorp.com
president and CEO

State of Michigan Rick Snyder 1,257 1,028 NA NA State government

3042 W. Grand Blvd., Cadillac Place, Suite 4-400, governor
18 Detroit 48202
(313) 456-4400; www.michigan.gov
DTE Energy Co. Gerard Anderson 1,232 1,320 9,530 10,014 Energy and energy-technology company
19 1 Energy Plaza, Detroit 48226
(800) 235-8000; www.dteenergy.com
chairman and CEO

Adient plc D R. Bruce McDonald 1,190 NA 8,815 80,569 Automotive seating

20 49200 Halyard Dr., Plymouth 48170
(734) 254-5000; www.adient.com
chairman and CEO

Comerica Bank Michael Ritchie 1,120 1,224 4,803 7,989 Financial services provider
21 411 W. Lafayette, Detroit 48226
(248) 371-5000; www.comerica.com
Michigan market
president
Taylor School District Ben Williams 941 C 1,007 C NA NA Public school district
22 23033 Northline Road, Taylor 48180
(734) 374-1200; www.taylorschools.net
superintendent

General Electric Joy Fewell 850 B 850 3,062 NA Information technology, manufacturing
23 1 Village Center Drive, Van Buren Twp 48111
(734) 707-4203; www.ge.com
CIO and site leader

Ilitch companies Christopher Ilitch 832 804 9,202 23,534 Food, sports and entertainment industries. Companies include Little
2211 Woodward Ave., Detroit 48201 president and CEO Caesars Pizza, Olympia Entertainment, Detroit Red Wings, Detroit Tigers,
24 (313) 471-6600; www.ilitchcompanies.com Blue Line Foodservice Distribution, MotorCity Casino Hotel, Ilitch
Holdings Inc., Champion Foods, Olympia Development and Little Caesars
Pizza Kit Fundraising Program.
University of Michigan Mark Schlissel 829 820 33,591 48,000 Public university and health system
25 Ann Arbor 48109
(734) 764-1817; umich.edu
president

This list of Wayne County's largest employers encompasses companies headquartered in Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Livingston or Washtenaw counties. It is not a complete listing but the most
comprehensive available. The number of full-time employees may include full-time equivalents. Unless otherwise noted, information was provided by the companies. Companies with headquarters
elsewhere are listed with the address and top executive of their main Detroit-area office. Actual figures may vary. NA = not available.
B Company estimate.
C Figures are FTE counts from the Center for Educational Performance and Information.
D Adient spun off from Johnson Controls on Oct. 31, 2016, to become an independent company.
LIST RESEARCHED BY SONYA D. HILL
 C R A I N ’ S D E T R O I T B U S I N E S S // S E P T E M B E R 1 1 , 2 0 1 7 23

CRAIN'S LIST: WASHTENAW COUNTY'S LARGEST EMPLOYERS

Ranked by full-time employees July 2017
Full-time Full-time Full-time
Company employees employees employees in Worldwide
Address Washtenaw Washtenaw Michigan July employees
Rank Phone; website Top local executive July 2017 July 2016 2017 July 2017 Type of business
University of Michigan Mark Schlissel 31,920 30,835 33,591 48,000 Public university and health system
1 Ann Arbor 48109
(734) 764-1817; umich.edu
president

Trinity Health Richard Gilfillan 6,883 7,169 22,211 NA Health care system
2 20555 Victor Parkway, Livonia 48152
(734) 343-1000; www.trinity-health.org
president and CEO

U.S. government NA 3,147 3,172 29,027 2,086,347 Federal government

3 477 Michigan Ave., Detroit 48226
(313) 226-4910; www.usa.gov
Ann Arbor Public Schools Jeanice Swift 1,929 B 1,907 B NA NA Public school district
4 2555 S. State St., Ann Arbor 48104
(734) 994-2200; www.aaps.k12.mi.us
superintendent

Faurecia North America Kevin Lammers 1,664 1,850 3,392 100,000 Tier-one automotive supplier
5 2800 High Meadow Circle, Auburn Hills 48326
(248) 724-5100; na.faurecia.com
U.S. president

Eastern Michigan University James Smith 1,634 1,617 1,817 2,916 Public university
6 140 McKenny Hall, Ypsilanti 48197
(734) 487-8198; www.emutix.com
president

State of Michigan Rick Snyder 1,429 1,377 NA NA State government

7 3042 W. Grand Blvd., Cadillac Place, Suite 4-400, Detroit 48202
(313) 456-4400; www.michigan.gov
governor

IHA Health Services Corp. Mark LePage, M.D. 1,389 1,268 1,747 1,747 Multi-specialty physician group practice
8 24 Frank Lloyd Wright Drive, Lobby J2000, Ann Arbor 48105
(734) 747-6766; www.ihacares.com
CEO

Washtenaw County Gregory Dill 1,252 1,260 1,252 NA County government

9 220 N. Main St., Ann Arbor 48107-8645
(734) 222-6850; www.ewashtenaw.org
county administrator

Thomson Reuters Jon Baron 1,155 1,100 C 1,290 45,700 Software and information services for
10 6300 Interfirst Drive, Ann Arbor 48108
(734) 780-8000; www.thomsonreuters.com
SVP and GM, tax and accounting professionals.

Domino's Pizza Inc. Patrick Doyle 812 734 810 14,838 Restaurant franchisor
11 30 Frank Lloyd Wright Drive, Ann Arbor 48105
(734) 930-3030; www.dominos.com
president and CEO

City of Ann Arbor Howard Lazarus 729 729 729 729 City government
12 P.O. Box 8647, Ann Arbor 48107
(734) 794-6000; www.a2gov.org
city administrator

Ford Motor Co. Jim Hackett 700 720 48,000 D NA Automobile manufacturer
13 1 American Road, Dearborn 48126
(313) 322-3000; www.ford.com
CEO

NSF International Kevan Lawlor 647 578 650 2,732 Testing, inspection and certification
14 789 N. Dixboro Road, Ann Arbor 48105
(734) 769-8010; www.nsf.org
president and CEO

Washtenaw Community College Rose Bellanca 550 565 550 550 Higher education
15 4800 E. Huron River Drive, Ann Arbor 48105-4800
(734) 973-3300; www.wccnet.edu
president

ProQuest LLC Kurt Sanford E 542 539 NA NA Information databases and microform products
16 789 E. Eisenhower Parkway, P.O. Box 1346, Ann Arbor 48106
(734) 761-4700; www.proquest.com/en-US
CEO

Ypsilanti Public Schools Benjamin Edmondson 519 B 527 B NA NA Public school district
17 1885 Packard Road, Ypsilanti 48197
(734) 714-1210; www.ycschools.us
superintendent

FCA US LLC Sergio Marchionne 511 486 34,000 86,900 Automobile manufacturer
18 1000 Chrysler Drive, Auburn Hills 48326-2766
(248) 576-5741; www.fcanorthamerica.com
chairman and CEO

DTE Energy Co. Gerard Anderson 453 472 9,530 10,014 Energy and energy-technology company
19 1(800)
Energy Plaza, Detroit 48226
235-8000; www.dteenergy.com
chairman and CEO

U.S. Postal Service Lee Thompson 440 440 18,577 508,908 Postal service
20 1401 W. Fort St., Detroit 48233-9998
(313) 226-8678; www.usps.com
district manager

Lincoln Consolidated Schools Sean McNatt 437 B NA 437 B NA Public school system
21 8970 Whittaker Road, Ypsilanti 48197
(734) 484-7000; lincoln.k12.mi.us
superintendent

Chelsea School District Julie Helber 324 B NA 324 B NA Public school district
22 500 Washington St., Chelsea 48118
(734) 433-2200; chelsea.k12.mi.us
superintendent

Chelsea Milling Co. Howdy Holmes 319 318 319 319 Retail, institutional, food service baking mixes
23 201 W. North St., Chelsea 48118
(734) 475-1361; www.jiffymix.com
chairman, president and CEO

The Suburban Collection David Fischer 257 237 2,027 2,093 Automobile dealerships
24 1795 Maplelawn Drive, Troy 48084
(877) 471-7100; www.SuburbanCollection.com
chairman and CEO

Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan/Blue Care Network Daniel Loepp 152 167 8,948 10,213 Health care insurer
25 600 E. Lafayette Blvd., Detroit 48226
(313) 225-9000; www.bcbsm.com
president and CEO

This list of Washtenaw County employers encompasses companies headquartered in Washtenaw, Oakland, Wayne, Macomb or Livingston counties. Number of full-time employees may include full-
time equivalents. It is not a complete listing but the most comprehensive available. Crain's estimates are based on industry analysis and benchmarks, news reports and a wide range of other sources.
Unless otherwise noted, information was provided by the companies. Companies with headquarters elsewhere are listed with the address and top executive of their main Detroit-area office. Actual
revenue figures may vary. NA = not available.
B Figures are FTE counts from the Center for Educational Performance and Information.
C Crain's estimate.
D Company estimate.
E To be suceeded by Matti Shem Tov in the third quarter of 2017.
LIST RESEARCHED BY SONYA D. HILL
24
THE WEEK ON THE WEB
SEPTEMBER 1 - 7 | For more, visit crainsdetroit.com
Moroun company
permit sets stage
for battle of
the bridges
C A
anada’s transportation agen-
cy has given conditional ap-
proval to billionaire Manuel
“Matty” Moroun’s Detroit Interna-
tional Bridge Co. to build a long-
sought new Detroit River bridge that
would replace the aging Ambassa-
dor Bridge.
The permit sets the stage for a race
between Moroun’s company and the
governments of Canada and Michi-
gan to build competing new bridges
over the Detroit River following a
years-long battle over control of the
international border.
DIBC announced Wednesday its
Canadian subsidiary, Canadian
Transit Co., has won approval from
Transport Canada to construct a $1
billion six-lane cable-stayed bridge
alongside the four-lane Ambassador
Bridge, which opened in 1929.
Transport Canada said in a state-
ment Wednesday that the Ambassa-
dor Bridge would have to be disman-
tled within five years of a new span
opening and that the bridge compa-
ny would have to make improve-
ments to local infrastructure and
public green spaces in Windsor.
Matthew Moroun, vice chairman
of his family’s company, said DIBC
has already spent $500 million in the
development of land and roadway
infrastructure to build a second span.
The Moroun-owned bridge company
has sought a twin span to the Ambas-
sador since the early 1990s.
“There have been many challenges
our company has faced over the
years in pursuit of this moment,”
Matthew Moroun said Wednesday in
a statement. “We are now tasked with
the duty to construct a privately
funded bridge with the hard work of
thousands of engineers, steel work-
ers, construction experts that will be
employed to deliver this once in a
lifetime project.”
Marc Garneau, Canada’s minister
of transport, said his country is still
moving forward with its plans to
build the Gordie Howe International
Bridge, connecting an Ontario free-
way south of Windsor with southwest
Detroit and I-75.
BUSINESS NEWS
J Kelly Services has acquired Min-
neapolis-based Teachers on Call, a
substitute teacher staffing service,
the Troy-based staffing services
company announced Wednesday.
Terms of the deal were not disclosed.
J Como’s Restaurant in Ferndale has
lost its food services license for the
second time in less than a year due to
food safety violations and a history of
noncompliance. The popular Ital-
ian-American eatery and bar at the
busy intersection of Woodward Ave-
nue and Nine Mile Road remains
open during its appeal. Como’s was
notified of the action Aug. 22 through
a letter from the Oakland County
Health Division. Addressed to owner
Antoinette Grego, it cited a “lack of
active managerial control which has
been demonstrated by the facility’s
inability to maintain compliance
with food safety standards and prac-
tices.”
C R A I N ’ S D E T R O I T B U S I N E S S // S E P T E M B E R 1 1 , 2 0 1 7
A rendering of the proposed new Ambassador Bridge. The Canadian government gave
signoff to it, on condition that the old bridge be demolished.
Detroit digits
A numbers-focused look at last
week’s headlines:
1,000
Number of wireless access points
installed throughout Little Caesars
Arena, provided by Comcast Corp.
1,300
Number of video monitors in the
arena.
$120 million
The value of the naming rights deal,
over 20 years, to put the Il-
itch-owned Little Caesars name on
the arena.
J The 20th annual Arts, Beats &
Eats over Labor Day weekend drew
7 percent fewer visitors than last
year. The festival announced
Wednesday that 385,000 attended
over the course of the four-day hol-
iday weekend — a drop from
415,000 in 2016. Arts, Beats & Eats
lost out on about 40,000 attendees
Monday night due to severe storm
warnings, event producer Jonathan
Witz said.
J The city of Detroit and Detroit
Housing Commission are again em-
barking on an effort to secure up to
$30 million in U.S. Housing and Ur-
ban Development grant funding to
redevelop the former site of the
Brewster-Douglass housing projects.
The Choice Neighborhoods grant
would be a key financing piece in the
city’s effort to redevelop the 22 acre
site.
J Silicon Valley investors have led a
funding round of almost $1.5 million
in Ann Arbor-based Akadeum Life
Sciences Inc., a spinoff from the Uni-
versity of Michigan, to develop its
technology for tissue, water and food
testing. The lead investor, BioInfleX-
ion Point Partners, specializes in ear-
ly-stage life-science investments. The
round was joined by other Silicon
Valley and Michigan investors.
J The Michigan Gaming Control
Board has released more than $1 mil-
lion in horse racing purse pool mon-
ey held in escrow for more than two
years to the Michigan Harness
Horsemen’s Association and Hazel
Park Raceway. The association will
receive about $850,000 to cover prize
purses for future races at Northville
DETROIT INTERNATIONAL BRIDGE CO.
Downs, while Hazel Park Raceway
will receive about $150,000 for track
operations and enhancements.
J Citizens Bank has launched a
new digital platform giving cus-
tomers a unified look at their ac-
counts on their online banking
homepage as well as investment
and portfolio guidance. Citizens
said it is the first large regional
bank to offer a fully integrated dig-
ital banking and wealth advisory
offering.
OTHER NEWS
J A Michigan legislative leader said
any proposal to automatically re-
duce auto insurance premiums
would be “dead” on arrival in the Re-
publican-controlled state Senate.
The pronouncement Wednesday
from Senate Majority Leader Arlan
Meekhof is a reminder of just how
difficult it will be for lawmakers to
tackle one of their top priorities be-
fore year’s end. Meekhof, R-West Ol-
ive, called a government-mandated
rate rollback “price fixing” and said
Republicans should not interfere
with private transactions. Crain’s re-
ported Sunday that Detroit Mayor
Mike Duggan wants a 25 percent to
30 percent mandatory rollback in
auto insurance rates as part of a re-
form package that would reduce
medical costs to insurers for injured
drivers.
J The U.S. House voted Wednesday
to speed the introduction of self-driv-
ing cars by giving the federal govern-
ment authority to exempt automak-
ers from safety standards not
applicable to the technology, and to
permit deployment of up to 100,000
of the vehicles annually over the next
several years.
J The city has a message for people
who illegally dump trash and debris
in Detroit: someone is watching.
More than a dozen hidden cameras
have been placed at known dumping
locations across the city, helping po-
lice to make 22 arrests with warrants
pending on three others, The Associ-
ated Press reported.
J Detroit is set to become home to
only the second indoor cycling velo-
drome in the U.S. in December as
part of a new multisport complex
from the Detroit Fitness Foundation.
A bright white air dome sprang up
Wednesday at I-75 and Mack Avenue.
The complex, first announced in Jan-
uary, will be part of the city’s planned
improvements to Tolan Playfield
there.
RUMBLINGS
An autonomous test
drive for Bedrock
utonomous vehicles will be
shuttling Bedrock LLC em-
ployees in downtown Detroit
next month in a pilot program with
Ann Arbor-based May Mobility Inc.
Owner Dan Gilbert announced the
plan to bus staff to and from a park-
ing structure Wednesday during an
event at the Technology in Motion
conference at Cobo Center.
“We’re taking a square block here
and testing a couple of vehicles that are
ready to go,” Gilbert told the crowd.
Bedrock confirmed to Crain’s that
the service will run from the First Na-
tional Building in Cadillac Square to
the Bricktown Parking Garage at Beau-
bien and Fort streets. It will run along
Congress Street to Beaubien Street to
Monroe Avenue to Farmer and Bates
streets back to Congress Street.
The test run is set for Oct. 9-13, offer-
ing service to staff 7-10 p.m. for a total
of 15 hours of testing. The shuttles will
be manned during the test run.
Financial details of the program
TOM WEGEHAUPT/TANNER FRIEDMAN STRATEGIC COMMUNICATIONS
The Suburban Collection is the 14th business to sponsor a storefront at Junior Achieve-
ment of Southeast Michigan’s Finance Park in downtown Detroit.
Suburban opens ‘store’
at JA Finance Park
T
he Suburban Collection has
teamed with Junior Achieve-
ment of Southeastern Michi-
gan’s youth finance program to spon-
sor a high-tech storefront at JA’s
downtown Detroit Finance Park.
The storefront will offer students a
car-buying workshop, which includes
lessons about credit scores, budgeting
and financing. Students can also gain
insight on careers in the automotive
industry, including sales and service.
The Troy-based dealership group
declined to disclose how much it in-
vested into the program.
“Transportation is a major part of
life,” JASEM President and CEO Mar-
garet Trimer-Harley said in a state-
ment.  “Thanks to the generous in-
vestment by The Suburban
Collection, about 13,000 students
will learn how to make the right
transportation choices given their
budgets and their needs.”
The Suburban Collection is the
14th business to sponsor a storefront
at the 10,000-square-foot simulated
city, which includes storefronts
sponsored by Detroit-based Quicken
were not disclosed.
“We are not going after government
grants and things like that to be able to
fund [the program],” May Mobility
co-founder and COO Alisyn Malek
said. The Crain’s 2014 Twenty in their
20s honoree left GM Ventures LLC to
join May Mobility in April. “We are
working as a business looking to gain
strong customers and partners in the
community,” she said.
The two electric vehicles, manu-
factured by Medina, Minn.-based
Polaris Industries Inc., are equipped
with six doors for six seats, May Mo-
bility CEO Edwin Olson told Crain’s.
The startup was incorporated in
January, but the team of 15 has been
building robots and autonomous
cars for more than a decade, Olson
said. The pilot program with Bedrock
marks the team’s sixth major autono-
mous vehicle project.
“This is a huge opportunity for us,
and we are really committed to making
sure it goes extremely well,” Olson said.
Loans Inc., Detroit-based Ally Finan-
cial Inc. and Oakland University in
Rochester Hills. Grand Rapids-based
Meijer Inc. has committed to sponsor
a storefront in the future, Trim-
er-Harley told Crain’s.
“We remain committed to the
communities in which we live and
work,” Suburban Collection Chair-
man and CEO David Fischer said in a
statement. “Investing in today’s
youth is paramount and something
we feel passionate about.”
Trimer-Hartley said it costs com-
panies $25,000 to operate a storefront
each year. The storefronts allow stu-
dents to learn personal budgeting
through a program that simulates
shopping for products and services
such as insurance, home loans and
electricity.
Finance Park is at 577 E. Larned St.,
where it hosts about 13,000 students
in grades 7-12 each year. It is one of
five different programs JA hosts,
which include entrepreneurship and
workforce readiness programs.
JA serves about 55,000 students
each year, the release said.
A new season is
starting in Detroit...
Welcome home.
We salute Detroit’s returning expats and celebrate all who are
promoting and advancing the economic, cultural and civic vitality
of our region.
InterCHANGE

| 2016 Annual Report

From The Kresge Foundation 2016 Annual Report

The Next Step: Bringing

Recovery to Neighborhoods
Wendy Lewis Jackson an Benjamin S. Kennedy
Managing Directors, Detroit Program

T here is perhaps no other topic that evokes more

passion about Detroit’s long-term potential for revi-
hood-based projects across the geography. In 2016, we
brought our tally of planning and project grants to nearly
talization than the future direction of its neighborhoods. 40, and collected just shy of 70 new applications for the
So, years from now when we look back, the Kresge Detroit Ț_—
«œ¶šp
œ€
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Program team wants 2016 to be recognized as the year call for applications in 2014, we’ve gained new insight
we brought Detroit’s neighborhoods into greater focus by into the supports that neighborhood-based organiza-
deepening our commitment to their healthy and inclusive tions need to bring about transformative changes.
recovery. Neighborhoods provide Detroit its character
Our Kresge Arts in Detroit initiative – through the
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College for Creative Studies – saw another success-
where generations of Detroiters have placed their bet on
ful year supporting an arc of artistic careers. We also
the future and made an investment for the long term.
renewed our three-year commitment to 66 arts and
We’re committed to expanding opportunity so Detroit’s culture-related institutions and organizations.
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This will also be known as the year we began to ensure that
formed the downtown and Midtown areas. We’ve refreshed
children are not left out of the turnaround. Kresge Early
our strategies to double down on the building blocks of
Years for Success: Detroit (KEYS: Detroit) reimagines the
neighborhood revitalization by strengthening systems
city’s neighborhoods by putting building blocks in place to
that galvanize early childhood development, support
support the development of young children and prepare
arts and culture and empower community development
them for educational success. Most important was the
in neighborhoods across the city. We are unwavering
listening that shaped these initiatives. Community meetings
in our belief that residents across the city, their block
arranged by partners across the city gave us new insight
clubs and their community organizations, are the key to
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shaping what comes next. It is imperative that renewal
of existing initiatives and guiding efforts still coming.
in city neighborhoods be robust, far-reaching, equita-
ble and inclusive of residents’ visions and aspirations. We’re passionate about supporting Detroiters and
the places they live. Our past experiences have
In this report, you will learn more about our deepened
informed us and will inspire us into the future.
commitment to neighborhoods through the advance-
ment of key initiatives such as Kresge Innovative Projects: 2016annualreport.kresge.org.
Detroit, our three-year, $5 million pilot to invest in the
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28 C R A I N ’ S D E T R O I T B U S I N E S S // S E P T E M B E R 1 1 , 2 0 1 7
Q&A: NIKOLAI VITTI
MARKETING & EVENTS “What could be better than being home and the challenge of transforming what is
perceived to be one of the lowest-performing districts in the country?,” new Detroit
WITH A PURPOSE
schools Superintendent Nikolai Vitti said.
Nikolai Vitti loves a
4219 Woodward Ave. | Ste 304 | Detroit | MI 48201 | jrturnbull.com
challenge; he has one
at Detroit schools
By Chastity Pratt Dawsey
Bridge Magazine
Last Tuesday was Nikolai Vitti’s
first “first day of school” as superin-
tendent of the Detroit Public Schools
Community District. In May, when
he left a job leading Duval County
schools in Florida, a district nearly
three times the size of Detroit’s, ques-
tions abounded.
PURE BRAINPOWER There are plenty for the prob-
lem-plagued district that has cycled
through state oversight and adminis-
trators repeatedly in the past 15
years. But most questions revolve
around one issue: What specifically
will he do to make a real difference
for families and students?
Vitti, who grew up in Dearborn
Heights, has spent months discuss-
ing his vision in broad terms. But De-
troiters say they want specifics. Will
test scores improve? Why is there
such a lag in technology? What’s up
with a contractor paying for a party
for one of Vitti’s top administrators?
Bridge Magazine readers posed
more than 100 questions to Vitti on
Facebook. He sat down with Bridge
last week to answer some of them.
The conversation was edited for
brevity and clarity.
Bridge: Detroit has seen two-thirds of
its schools close since 2005. Will you
close any schools?
It could happen, but not in 2017-18
or 2018-19. We can’t run a district
where 50 percent of the buildings are
Home to the largest concentration of engineering and industrial design talent in the nation, being utilized. A request for propos-
PlanetM conducts more than 75% of all U.S. automotive R&D. And those efforts als is going out (in September) to do a
have resulted in three times the number of automotive patents and more naviga- facility review so we can start making
tion and smart mobility patents than any other state. When it comes to leading the decisions on what schools we can
way in innovation, only one state is perfectly positioned in mobility. Michigan. consolidate or close. Hard decisions
To learn more, go to michiganbusiness.org/planetm will have to be made, but what we
can’t do any longer is make knee-jerk
decisions in isolation. In 2018-19,
we’re going to start to engage the
community to make some decisions.
Bridge: Parents in Detroit want benefits
that suburban parents have to help
CHASTITY PRATT DAWSEY/BRIDGE MAGAZINE
them to be engaged: an app that allows
them to check their students’ grades, a
phone call home when Johnny misses
class. Simple fixes?
It is immoral and criminal that our
parents don’t have this yet. What
were 10 years of emergency manag-
ers doing? There are faulty systems
for everything in the district. You
name it, I’ll tell you a list of inadequa-
cies. I have a sense of urgency to
build new systems and processes.
That’s what I can promise. Those
changes will lead to results.
A major problem is
our curriculum. This
year, we’re going to
engage teachers and
principals to
implement a new
curriculum next
year in 2018-19.
Nikolai Vitti
Bridge: Water at 15 schools tested high
in lead last year. Students had to drink
bottled water as a result. What’s going
to happen to those schools?
Our water is (now) safe to drink. But
we don’t want to take a risk that
something didn’t change since the
last test. We’re going to move to using
water coolers at those schools.
Bridge: Test scores released in August
show students are performing worse
across Michigan and in Detroit. What
are parents and teachers going to see
that’s different to address this?
A major problem is our curriculum.
This year, we’re going to engage
teachers and principals to imple-
ment a new curriculum next year in
2018-19. Something with the highest
alignment to the standards. We’re
going to pick one a majority of the
teachers support.
SEE VITTI, PAGE 29

VITTI
FROM PAGE 28
And we’re going to see more training
for teachers in Common Core stan-
dards this year. This year, there will
be more emphasis on phonics in
kindergarten, first grade, second
grade. In 2017-18, we’re going to use
a better diagnostic test to tell what
skills we need to focus on.
Bridge: An online invitation to an Aug.
29 reception for Iranetta Wright, the
new deputy superintendent who came
to Detroit from your administration in
Jacksonville, shows that a textbook
contractor, McGraw-Hill, was
sponsoring the event. How is that not a
conflict of interest?
I learned it was going to be spon-
sored by McGraw-Hill, and we dis-
continued that. Instead, we (used)
private dollars from The Skillman
Foundation to fund the reception.
On the surface, there’s nothing ille-
gal with (McGraw-Hill) sponsoring
a reception. Vendors often sponsor
events in districts outside of De-
troit.
Bridge: So why turn away McGraw-
Hill’s sponsorship money?
In the context of Detroit, we don’t
need to create the perception that
there’s any wrongdoing and we also
don’t need to give doubt that we’re
moving in a different direction.
There was nothing corrupt about it,
but that doesn’t mean strategically
the sponsorship was the right thing
to do as we’re trying to set a new tone
and culture.
Bridge: Do you agree that you will
need some early wins on issues
people care about to convince them
that your administration signals a
new era for the schools?
I think some quick wins have been
engagement. I’ve sent five emails di-
rectly to teachers. I ask people,
“What do we need to do?” I think
they found that refreshing. We’ve
had more than a dozen meetings
about developing a strategic plan,
some completely done in Spanish.
When has that happened before? Ivy
Bailey (president of the teachers’
union) can pick up the phone and
call me directly, and not have to go
through someone else. I can call her.
I think that’s new.
I think an early win was this collec-
tive bargaining agreement with the
teachers. The district a year ago just
wanted to do $1,000 bonuses. We got
an investment of $8 million (7 per-
cent pay raises over two years). Mov-
New Detroit schools Superintendent Nikolai Vitti talks with the press at an event in May.
C R A I N ’ S D E T R O I T B U S I N E S S // S E P T E M B E R 1 1 , 2 0 1 7 29
ing teachers from central office to
classrooms was a win. A short-term
win will be filling the teacher vacan-
cies. Just not having problems with
paychecks will be a win. Driving a
Brighter Future
Bridge: Vocal grassroots activists such
as Helen Moore with Keep the Vote No
Takeover who have criticized (and
sued) the district for decades wonder
if you are listening to them or to
politicians.
If not for leaders like Helen, I
wouldn’t be here. It’s due to what For more than 65 years, Ford Motor Company Fund has
they did to get rid of the emergency worked to improve people’s lives, investing $1.5 billion
manager and get an elected board to support innovative programs in Community Life,
(restored in 2016). What I commit to
Education, Safe Driving and the Ford Volunteer Corps .
is creating a space to listen or say
when I was wrong, but also to stand
up and say when I disagree. Hopeful-
ly that will lead to trust.
Bridge: Detroit is on the low end of Thanks to you, our community is
per-pupil funding statewide. This year,
it will get $7,670 per pupil while funding a stronger, better place.
in Metro Detroit ranges from $7,631 to
$12,124 per pupil. Does that funding set Ford salutes Crain’s Detroit Business.
up the school district to fail?
I can’t argue that. That is part of the
critique, but not one I am going to
lead with because our own house
needs to be shaped up. I can’t make
the argument (for more money) un-
til we have equity in programs across
the district, until we have a curricu-
lum that’s aligned to the standards, mmm$Yecckd_jo$\ehZ$Yec
š
6\ehZ_dYecckd_j o
š
6\ehZ
until my departments have line-
item budgets. We have to fix every-
thing internally first and then tell
them “If you want to go further, then
you (the state) will have to fix things.”
I can’t ask for more money if I can’t
pay teachers on time. For politicians
who don’t believe in Detroit or pub-
lic education, it gives them an easy
out.
Bridge: You moved your four kids from
Florida to live close to their
GEARING
grandmother, your mother. You have a
five-year contract, longer than any
school leader this system has seen in a
generation. Do you want this job for the
long-term?
Some people have said, “Your next
job is U.S. Secretary of Education,
because you’re going to do great
things in Detroit.” Honestly, what
TOWARDS DETROIT’S FUTURE
could be better than being home and
the challenge of transforming what
is perceived to be one of the low-
est-performing districts in the coun-
try? I’m home connected to family
for the first time in 22 years, I’m in a
city I love with a board that’s sup-
portive. What else could I want? I’m
in it for the long term because in five
years, I don’t think I’ll be at a point of
satisfaction because there’s so much
work to be done here.
LARRY PEPLIN
30
WHEN YOU INVEST IN THE
COMMUNITY, THE RETURNS
ARE GUARANTEED.
At Huntington, we know how important it is to give
back to the community. After all, we do more than just
work here – we live and raise our families here too.
And after everything this community has done for us,
we’re just happy to be able to return the favor.
The Huntington National Bank is an Equal Housing Lender and Member FDIC. ® and Huntington® are federally registered
service marks of Huntington Bancshares Incorporated. Huntington.® Welcome.TM is a service mark of Huntington
Bancshares Incorporated. ©2017 Huntington Bancshares Incorporated.
C R A I N ’ S D E T R O I T B U S I N E S S // S E P T E M B E R 1 1 , 2 0 1 7
CALENDAR
WEDNESDAY, SEPT. 13
September Economic Develop-
ment Forum. 8-9:30 a.m. Troy
Chamber of Commerce. Speaker:
David Johnson, vice president of
Customer Service and Economic De-
velopment, DTE Energy, on econom-
ic development initiatives. Reh-
mann, Troy. Free, Troy chamber
members; $10 nonmembers. Con-
tact: Jessica Hruska, phone: (248)
641-1606; email: jessica@troycham-
ber.com; website: troychamber.com/
events/september-2017-econom-
ic-development-forum/
THURSDAY, SEPT. 14
Dealing with Difficult People. 8-9
a.m. SE Troy Affinity Group. Social
media and millennials within the
GenX/Y/Z work environments are
compounding and complicating an
already-delicate, and age-old,
yet-unsolved issue: dealing with dif-
ficult people. Three techniques are
provided which can give a new per-
spective and help to navigate the cir-
cumstances difficult people place in
the workplace. Speaker: Ruth Davis.
Walsh College Troy Campus. Free.
Contact: Brenda Meller, email:
bmeller@walshcollege.edu
Washtenaw Economic Club Lun-
cheon. 11:30 a.m.-1:30 p.m. Washt-
enaw Economic Club. What will the
world look like in five years? Journal-
ist and innovation speaker Leah
Hunter draws on her research and
background as a corporate innova-
tion consultant for companies like
Apple, Pepsi and Cisco. 4800 E. Hu-
ron River Drive, Ann Arbor $77.50
nonmember. Phone: (765) 677-5060;
email: washtenaweconclub@
wccnet.edu; website: washten-
aweconclub.org
UPCOMING EVENTS
Ford Motor Com-
pany Day. 11:15
a.m.-1 p.m. Sept.
18. Adcraft De-
troit. Featuring
CNN’s Anderson
Cooper. $50 Ad-
craft members;
$75 nonmembers.
Ford Conference
Anderson Cooper & Event Center,
Dearborn. Web-
site: adcraftdetroit.com/events
CEO Breakfast:
Tony Michaels,
President and
CEO, The Parade
Company. 8-9:30
a.m. Sept. 19. Troy
Chamber of Com-
merce. A behind-
the-scenes look at
America’s Thanks-
Tony Michaels giving Parade. Hil-
ton Garden Inn,
Troy. $24 Troy chamber members;
$34 nonmembers. Website: troy-
chamber.com/events/ceo-break-
fast-tony-michaels/
Inside the CEO Mind. 8 a.m. Sept. 19.
Detroit Regional Chamber. American
Jewelry and Loan’s Leslie “Les” Gold
and Seth Gold will share their perspec-
tives as business owners and reality
television stars. The Golds will discuss
how their company separates itself
Les Gold Seth Gold
from competitors. American Jewelry
and Loan, Detroit. $30 members; $50
nonmembers. Contact: Marianne Ala-
bastro, phone: (313) 596-0479; e-mail:
malabast@detroitchamber.com; web-
site: detroitchamber.com/events/
2017 Entrepreneur and Small Busi-
ness Conference: Pathways to Suc-
cess. 8:30 a.m.-4:30 p.m. Sept. 22.
South East Michigan Entrepreneurs
Association. Speakers include: Ryan
Mack, CNN Commentator, Irene
Spanos, director of Economic Devel-
opment and Community Affairs Oak-
land County, and Edward Foxworth,
Foxworth Marketing Group. Event also
includes panel discussions, breakout
sessions, breakfast, lunch and net-
working opportunities. University of
Phoenix Southfield Campus. $49 until
Sept. 8; $59 after Sept. 8 until Sept. 20;
$79 late/onsite registration. Email: ad-
ministrator@semea.info; website: se-
mea.org/
Reinventing...not Retiring. 5:30-7:30
p.m. Sept. 27. Inforum. Many people
spend years anticipating retirement.
But as that time approaches, this ques-
tion arises: What now? A panel of re-
tired high-level executives who have
charted very different paths includes:
Patti Griswold, who retired in March
from Comerica Bank, where she held
several senior leadership roles; Nancy
Hickey, who retired in 2014 as senior
vice president and chief administrative
officer of Steelcase Inc.; Maria Leon-
hauser, who was a journalist for several
publications, including Time and Peo-
ple and later worked in public rela-
tions, retiring as an equity partner and
president of Franco in Detroit; Lisa
Payne, who retired vice chairman and
CFO of Taubman Centers Inc. and now
serves as a director of three NYSE com-
panies. Moderator: Julie Green Top-
ping, who had a 38-year career super-
vising and working with reporters,
editors and production staff at the De-
troit Free Press. $80. Townsend Hotel,
Birmingham. Website: inforummichi-
gan.org
Informational Meeting for Women
Entrepreneurs. 5:30-7 p.m. Sept. 28.
Michigan Association of Female En-
trepreneurs. Learn about the non-
profit’s current and future initiatives,
entrepreneurship training and lead-
ership development programs, busi-
ness resources and support services.
Free. Orion Township Public Library.
Contact: Tonya McNeal-Weary,
phone: (844) 490-6233; email: info@
mafedetroit.org; website: mafedetroit.
org
To submit calendar items visit
crainsdetroit.com and click “Events”
near the top of the home page. Then,
click “Submit Your Events” from the
drop-down menu that will appear. Fill
out the submission form, then click
“Submit event” at the bottom of the
page. More Calendar items can be
found at crainsdetroit.com/events.
32 C R A I N ’ S D E T R O I T B U S I N E S S // S E P T E M B E R 1 1 , 2 0 1 7

NFL players strike

“It
ba
let

30 years ago an odd sm

co

footnote for Lions

Todd

M
bitte
By Bill Shea G
bshea@crain.com qua
As summer wound down in Au- the
gust 1987, Todd Hons found himself wee
selling cars. Fords, specifically, in thre
suburban Phoenix. at C
A little over a month later, he was play
still working for the Ford family — as strik
quarterback of the Detroit Lions. L.A.
This season marks the 30th anni- “Th
versary of the 24-day NFL players egy
strike, a strange odyssey of picketing Uni
Detroit
D eetrroiit Mercy
Merc helps b
build
ild your
o r bo
boundless
ndless ffuture
t r starters replaced by off-the-street
players that’s an important footnote
ness
lost.
through:
th in the league’s history. Hons’ story is
also a fascinating counterpoint to an
unit
sayi
era in which Matthew Stafford just Th
> Exceptional Academics > Vibrant Urban Setting became the highest-paid player in on h
the NFL. “I
> Values–based Education > A Boundless Career and Life Hons was four years removed from
quarterbacking Arizona State over
coll
ums
Oklahoma in the 1983 Fiesta Bowl, Todd Hons spent a month with the Lions, Tho
Visit us. which was followed by winning a starting all three games played by Detroit’s one
Grey Cup a year later as a backup replacement players in October 1987. “I ju
Schedule a campus visit or take our virtual tour at udmercy.edu/visit with the Canadian Football League’s to p
Winnipeg Blue Bombers. That system, forged over negotia- H
University of Detroit Mercy • 4001 W. McNichols Road • Detroit, MI 48221-3038 • 800-635-5020 Then came a phone call in Sep- tions and court fights until a collec- ries
Apply now at udmercy.edu and start building your boundless future today! tember, from Bob Baker, who had tive bargaining agreement was 35,7
been Hons’ offensive coordinator at reached in 1993, combined with “P
Arizona State. Baker in 1987 held that stratospheric growth of the NFL’s TV pret
same job with the Detroit Lions un- contracts to create the financial eco- It wa
der head coach Darryl Rogers. system that led to current Lions tive
The NFL’s players were about to go quarterback Stafford’s recent payday. We
on strike, and the Lions needed a re- Detroit gave Stafford a five-year, Dar
placement quarterback for Chuck $135 million contract extension that citin
Long. Rogers, who had coached Ari- makes him (for now) the NFL’s high- Th
zona State when Hons was there, est-paid player. an e
wanted his old college quarterback. Hons, meanwhile, made $9,000 for over
“They called me and the next day I his month of work as a Lions quarter- 19-1
was on a plane. It was pretty quick. back in 1987. “I
We had maybe a week of practice and “It was plenty of money at the abo
getting acclimated,” Hons said. time,” he said. Most replacement joye
Hons would spend a month with players earned a few thousand dol- H
the Lions, starting all three games lars a game. The striking players in plet
played by Detroit’s replacement 1987 averaged $230,000 in salary for and
players in October 1987. He quarter- the season. Detroit’s regular starting thre

WELCOME HOME
backed a pair of losses in front of tiny quarterback that season, sec- wee
crowds at the Pontiac Silverdome ond-year player Chuck Long, was to with
that were sandwiched around that make about $425,000 that year. for
Holy Grail of Lions phenomena: A This season, NFL players will aver- inte
victory over the Green Bay Packers at age about $2 million a season in salary. ratin
Lambeau Field. For his part, Hons doesn’t resent hit c
Hons is just one of five Lions quar- the stratospheric difference in salary. Th
terbacks — the others are Rusty Hilg- He thinks Stafford deserves the mon- seas
er (1988), Rodney Peete (1990), Erik ey. befo

Why does Honigman believe so deeply in a resurgent Kramer (1991) and Matthew Stafford
(2015) — to beat the Packers at Lam-
beau in the past 30 years.
Detroit? The 1987 players strike saw the
league cancel the season’s third week
of games and then scramble to as-
For nearly 70 years, we have proudly been at the heart of semble a motley collection of ex-col-
lege, USFL, and arena league players,
Detroit’s greatness, resilience and resurgence as our clients turn some with almost no football experi-
ence at all, to fill rosters for three
to us for sound legal and business counsel. They are the deeply games. Fans stayed away, especially
in Detroit, but enough were curious
committed men and women ready to take the creative risks, or diehard enough elsewhere that
some games saw more than 30,000
launch new ventures, and realize the dreams on which a great attendees.
The players struck over several is-
city depends. sues including free agency, drug test-
ing, contract minimums and guaran-
We hope that you will join us and become a part of the shared tees, artificial turf safety and pension
fund contributions by owners. How-
vision for the Detroit of the future. ever, a lack of strategy by the union
led to fractures in the ranks and
eventually more than 15 percent of
the 1,585 players crossed the picket
line.
The strike would prove to be a
short-term failure for the player’s
WWW.HONIGMAN.COM union, but the labor woes eventually
led to the modern system of free
agency and revenue sharing.
“All the power to him. (Players) put
themselves in harm’s way all during
men
star
the season and if the Fords think he is 17-0
worth it, I say ‘congrats, Matthew
Stafford,’” he said.
27 t
fron
Hons knows the physical toll the 4,91
game takes on players like Stafford.
“I was pretty beat up. I had shoul-
der and knee problems. Those offen-
sive lines couldn’t pick anybody up. D
It was a free-for-all.
I was on the injury report every
week,” he said.
All the replacement players were CO
stashed in the Kingsley Inn on Wood-
ward Avenue in Bloomfield Hills, J P
Hons said, and the Lions would bus pub
them to and from practice and games tain
— which kept them from having to
interact physically with striking play-
Kru
spec
ers and their allies on the picket line and
outside the Silverdome. an
“We had no interaction (with the prog
picketing starters). We’d come in on lenc
the bus, and they’d be out there in Pub
their Mercedes protesting,” Hons pub
said. “I think out at a bar, some play- skus
ers got into a scuffle one late night detr
downtown. Other than that, it wasn’t
much.” J E

“It was exciting. I had played major college
ball so I was used to the stadiums. I didn’t
let that part get to me. Those crowds were
d smaller than the ones I played for in
college.”
Todd Hons
Many of the striking players were
bitter by the time the strike ended.
Gary Danielson, who was a Lions
quarterback from 1976-84, crossed
the picket line in the strike’s final
week for the Cleveland Browns and
threw four touchdowns in a 34-0 rout
at Cincinnati. He was critical of the
players’ union in a story about the
strike published Oct. 16, 1987, by the
L.A. Times.
“The timing was bad and the strat-
egy was bad. The atmosphere in the
United States right now is pro-busi-
ness and anti-union. As a result, we
lost. We also lost friendships, team
unity and fans,” he was quoted as
saying.
Thirty years later, Hons reflected
on his month with the Lions fondly.
“It was exciting. I had played major
college ball so I was used to the stadi-
ums. I didn’t let that part get to me.
ns, Those crowds were smaller than the
roit’s ones I played for in college,” he said.
“I just looked at it as an opportunity
to play.”
otia- Hons has especially fond memo-
lec- ries of beating the Packers in front of
was 35,779 fans on the road.
with “Playing at Lambeau Field was
s TV pretty special. It was a nice crisp day.
eco- It was great. It was kind of a conserva-
ions tive game, I guess you could call it.
day. We tied it with a fourth-down pass to
year, Darrell Grymes. That was pretty ex-
that citing,” he said.
igh- That touchdown was followed by
an exchange of field goals that led to
0 for overtime, where the Lions would win
rter- 19-16.
“It was a great experience. I think
the about it now, I wish I would have en-
ment joyed it a little more,” Hons said.
dol- Hons would finish the day com-
s in pleting 19 of 39 passes for 224 yards
y for and the one touchdown. He also ran
ting
sec-
s to
three times for 38 yards. For his three
weeks of work, Hons would finish
with 43 completions on 92 attempts
ver-
lary.
for 552 yards, five touchdowns, five
interceptions and a 61.6 quarterback
rating. He was sacked nine times and
sent hit countless others.
ary. The Lions had started the 1987
mon- season losing their first two games
before the strike, and the replace-
put ment Lions got off to an inauspicious
ring start. Hons and his teammates blew a
he is 17-0 lead in the first game, losing 31-
hew 27 to the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in
front of a nearly invisible crowd of
the 4,919 at the 80,000-seat Silverdome.
d.
oul-
ffen-
up. DEALS & DETAILS
very
were CONTRACTS
ood-
Hills, J PublicCity PR LLC, Southfield, a
bus public relations agency, has been re-
mes tained by Baker College, Flint; Brooks
g to Krushman, Southfield, a law firm that
lay- specializes in intellectual property
line and business matters; Haven, Pontiac,
an Oakland County comprehensive
the program for victims of domestic vio-
n on lence and sexual assault; and Detroit
e in
Hons
Public Theatre, Detroit. Websites:
publiccitypr.net, baker.edu, brook-
lay- skushman.com, haven-oakland.org,
ight detroitpublictheatre.org.
sn’t
J Exlterra Inc., Hazel Park, a water
C R A I N ’ S D E T R O I T B U S I N E S S // S E P T E M B E R 1 1 , 2 0 1 7 33
Detroit, after all, is the most union of
towns — and even moreso then — so
the small crowd wasn’t a surprise.
Neither was the bad football.
“That’ll get you back to selling cars
in a hurry,” CBS analyst and former
Oakland Raiders quarterback Ken
Stabler said during the game broad-
cast after an errant Hons pass missed
an open receiver in the end zone.
After the win at Green Bay, the Li-
ons returned to the Silverdome to
lose 37-14 to the Seattle Seahawks —
a game marked by the picket-line
crossing return of future Hall of Fame
wide receiver Steve Largent for Seat-
tle. He feasted on the replacement
players, catching a team-record 15
passes for 261 yards and three touch-
downs at the Silverdome that day,
witnessed by just 8,310 fans.
When asked why he didn’t dou-
ble-cover Largent, Lions coach Rog-
ers famously said after the game,
“Why embarrass two guys when you
can just embarrass one?”
When the strikes ended after 24
days, Hons and his replacement
teammates were let go. The Lions
would finish 4-11 and last in the NFC ™
Central Division. Hons couldn’t find
another NFL gig, but did land a back-
up role in 1988 with the new Detroit
Drive of the Arena Football League.
He started a couple of games and the
Drive went on that season to win the
Arena Bowl at Joe Louis Arena —
meaning Hons has championship
football rings from a college bowl
game, the CFL’s Grey Cup, and the
AFL.
Just no Super Bowl ring, the same
as every other Lions player.
Hons would bounce around for
another few years, playing in Germa-
ny and elsewhere, before finally go-
ing into the mortgage business.
Today, the 55-year-old Hons is a
loan officer with a mortgage firm in
Peoria, Arizona. Hons doesn’t have
Welcoming You Back to the
much Lions or Detroit Drive para-
phernalia left. An ex-wife pawned his
Arena Bowl ring, he thinks. He’s still a
City That Moves the World
fan, though. As one of the world’s leading automotive suppliers, we know
“I follow football in general. I’ll al-
ways have an interest to the Lions,” the kind of dedication it takes to be successful, whether it’s
Hons said. “I gave my Lions jersey to delivering outstanding seating and electrical systems to the
my oldest son. He’s a big Lions fan. I
hope they get to the Super Bowl global automotive industry or showcasing the future of the city that
someday.” revolutionized the world.
Bill Shea: 313 (446-1626)
Twitter: @Bill_Shea19
Lear Corporation is proud to sponsor the Detroit Homecoming
Event as part of our continuing and demonstrated dedication to
support the communities in which we do business. Detroit has always
been about the power of opportunity and drive unleashing our
combined potential and we welcome you home to even greater avenues
to reconnect, recharge and reinvest.
management technology manufac-
turer, has an agreement with Loc Per-
formance Products Inc., Plymouth, a
manufacturer of large CNC machines
components, fabricated structures
and assemblies. Exlterra will produce
its patented ultra-light drill rig with
Loc. Websites: exlterra.com, locper-
formance.com.
NEW PRODUCTS
J Ziebart International Corp., Troy,
lear.com
has introduced Ceramic Z-Gloss paint
coating, a protective ceramic, layered
coating that includes enhanced gloss
characteristics. Website: ziebart.com.
34 C R A I N ’ S D E T R O I T B U S I N E S S // S E P T E M B E R 1 1 , 2 0 1 7

2017-18 TYLER CLIFFORD/CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS

About 200 people gathered in Clark Park outside of Western International High School in
southwest Detroit Tuesday afternoon to protest President Donald Trump’s decision to

CLUB SEATS end Deferred Action for Childhood Arrivals.

Immigration attorneys:
End of DACA could be
• ENTERTAIN WITH EASE
• ACCESS TO PRIVATE CLUB SPACE

‘disruptive’ to employers
• ALL-INCLUSIVE HOSPITALITY
• VIP PARKING

BECOME A By Lindsay VanHulle

Crain’s Detroit Business/Bridge Magazine
MEMBER TODAY The Donald Trump administra-
tion’s decision to rescind protected
immigration status for people who
PISTONS.COM | 248.377.0110 entered the U.S. illegally as children
could leave companies with the diffi-
cult task of having to fire dedicated
workers when the program ends, De-
troit-area immigration attorneys said
Tuesday.
That’s because there are few ave-
nues for young undocumented im-
migrants who obtained federal work
permits under the Obama-era De-
ferred Action for Childhood Arrivals
program to get legal status, the attor-
neys said, and companies are not al-
lowed to employ anyone who is not
authorized to work in the United
States.
The full ramifications of the White
House decision to phase out the
DACA program within six months ar-
en’t yet known. For now, employers
are encouraged to review their em-
ployees’ I-9 forms and — if they ar-
en’t already — track the expiration
dates of any DACA recipients’ work
permits, said Mike Nowlan, an attor-
ney and co-leader of the immigration
practice group for Clark Hill PLC in
Detroit.
Nowlan said he thinks the Trump
administration’s decision to wind
down the protected status program is
“devastating” for the recipients and
“will be disruptive for certain em-
ployers.”
President Barack Obama created
the program through a 2012 execu-
tive order that shielded undocu-
mented immigrants from deporta-
tion if they came to the United States
before they turned 16. Opponents of
the measure have said Obama over-
stepped his authority by creating the
program without congressional ap-
proval and that it takes jobs away
from American-born workers. Immi-
gration advocates say protection
from deportation is necessary for
people who entered the country not
of their own volition, many of whom
grew up attending American schools
and colleges and now have jobs and
pay taxes.
Close to 800,000 people are be-
lieved to have DACA status nation-
wide. The program prevents recipi-
ents from being considered for
deportation for two years, which can
be renewed. To qualify, an immigrant
may not have felony convictions or
significant or multiple misdemeanor
convictions.
To date, 6,430 initial requests for
DACA status have been approved for
immigrants living in Michigan, ac-
cording to data from U.S. Citizenship
and Immigration Services. More than
7,400 renewal requests have been ap-
proved for the state.
The Trump administration has
said requests received by Tuesday
will be processed, but no new appli-
cations for DACA status will be ac-
cepted. Current recipients will be al-
lowed to work until their
authorization expires.
“What many of our employer cli-
ents have said is that these kids have
been so hardworking, they’ve just
been a great benefit to our economy,
they’re paying taxes, they’re not
committing crimes,” Nowlan said.
“What do they do? Do they wait
around to get deported? (The federal
government) has all their contact in-
formation. ... These are people they
can go and get. I don’t know if they
have the manpower to go collect
800,000 people.”
Aimee Guthat, a senior attorney
focused on corporate immigration
and compliance for Fragomen, Del
Rey, Bernsen & Loewy PLLC in Troy,
SEE DACA, PAGE 35

“What many of our employer

clients have said is that these
kids have been so hardworking,
they’ve just been a great benefit
to our economy, they’re paying
taxes, they’re not committing
crimes.”
Mike Nowlan

DACA
FROM PAGE 34
said she would encourage employers
to begin circulating information to all
employees about recommended ac-
tions — while avoiding running afoul
of anti-discrimination laws by sin-
gling out employees the employer
thinks may be DACA recipients, even
if the intent is to help.
“It’s probably going to be a much
bigger hit than most employers ex-
pect,” Guthat said. “Try to dissemi-
nate as much credible information as
possible. Provide sort of a one-source
location that their employees can go
to anonymously, if they prefer, to get
the most recent updates. We’ll be
sending instructional materials to all
of our clients as everything unfolds.”
Michigan’s economy has benefited
from the contributions of immi-
grants, according to a recent study by
the Michigan Economic Center, an
Ann Arbor-based think tank.
Legal foreign-born residents in
Michigan have increased to about
650,000 over the past 15 years, while
the state’s native-born population
has declined, the report found. And
although immigrants make up just 6
percent of Michigan’s population,
they are 8 percent of all entrepre-
neurs, employing 150,000 people at
31,000 companies.
And it’s not guaranteed that com-
panies will be able to find Ameri-
can-born workers to fill the jobs of
undocumented immigrants once
their DACA status expires, Guthat
said, if there are no candidates with
C R A I N ’ S D E T R O I T B U S I N E S S // S E P T E M B E R 1 1 , 2 0 1 7
specific skills in the local job market.
Other politicians
Politicians from
both parties
weighed in on the
Trump adminis-
tration’s decision
Tuesday.
Gov. Rick Sny-
der, in a state-
ment, said Michi-
gan is best when it
Rick Snyder: is diverse.
Many are working “Many are
toward success. working toward
success under the
existing DACA, and for the certainty
of their future Congress should act
quickly to authorize and clarify their
status,” he said.
Agustin Arbulu, director of the
Michigan Department of Civil Rights,
said in a statement that he is con-
cerned the decision to wind down
DACA could lead to an increase in
incidents of bias and discrimination
on the basis of a person’s legal status,
race or ethnicity. The department is
prepared to investigate any such inci-
dent, his statement said.
University of Michigan President
Mark Schlissel recently told Bridge
Magazine that the Ann Arbor-based
university does not keep a list of stu-
dents who have DACA status.
“Although we follow court orders,
we don’t do work on behalf of law en-
forcement agencies on campus,”
Schlissel told Bridge. “The idea is that
all of our students can pursue their
educational ambitions without out-
side worries.”
Some of Michigan’s representa-
tives in Congress are calling for feder-
al legislative action to protect recipi-
ents, including U.S. Reps. Dan Kildee,
D-Flint Township; Sander Levin,
D-Royal Oak; Debbie Dingell,
D-Dearborn; and Fred Upton, R-St.
Joseph.
“For these young men and wom-
en, the United States is their home,”
Upton said in a statement. “I’ve met
with countless concerned individu-
als impacted by DACA and heard
from local universities, restaurant
and small business owners, as well as
my farmer friends who all agree we
must take care of these folks. This is
“Rather than executive order, it
is the responsibility of Congress
to work together on fair, rigorous
and bipartisan legislation that
addresses the long-term
uncertainty facing these young
people.”
Rep. Fred Upton
why I’ve long-supported using a
compassionate but accountable way
to legislatively address these undoc-
umented minors brought to our
country through no fault of their
own.
“Rather than executive order, it is
the responsibility of Congress to
work together on fair, rigorous and
bipartisan legislation that addresses
the long-term uncertainty facing
these young people,” Upton said.
Having Congress take action is the
best possible outcome, said Nowlan,
of Clark Hill.
Since DACA was authorized via an
executive order outside of the tradi-
tional regulatory process, which is
slower, it could be more difficult to
raise legal challenges, he said.
But, he added: “I’ve been amazed
at the lawsuits that have been suc-
cessful in the last year when I
wouldn’t have thought they’d have
been able to do anything.”
About 200 people gathered Tues-
day afternoon at Clark Park outside
of Detroit’s Western International
High School in southwest Detroit to
protest the order.
State Rep. Stephanie Chang, D-De-
troit, who attended the demonstra-
tion, said, “Not only are we con-
cerned about the potential impact to
the families and to the youth, but also
to our economy. If we are pulling out
potentially thousands of young peo-
ple who are employed right now
what does that mean for their em-
ployers, what does that mean for the
things that they are making and the
things that they are doing?”
— Crain’s reporter Tyler Clifford
contributed to this story.
35
Flagstar to
launch corporate
foundation
By Sherri Welch
swelch@crain.com
Troy-based Flagstar Bancorp Inc.
(NYSE: FBC) is launching a new cor-
porate foundation to formalize its
giving in Southeast Michigan and
other parts of the country where it
operates.
The bank has named Beth Correa,
senior vice president, community af-
fairs and quality for Flagstar, as presi-
dent of the Flagstar Foundation.
The bank plans to contribute an
initial $1 million for 2018 to the new
foundation which was founded as an
independent, 501(c)3 nonprofit, and
to make annual contributions based
on profitability after that, Correa said
in an emailed statement.
Grants will be focused in several
areas:
J Apprenticeship and Workforce
Readiness, supporting training that
prepares people for jobs.
J Arts and Culture, supporting col-
laborations with community organi-
zations.
J Financial Well-Being, supporting
financial literacy.
J Community Reinvestment Activi-
ties, supporting nonprofits providing
affordable housing, community ser-
vice, economic development or reha-
bilitation, and stabilization for low-
to moderate-income individuals,
families and communities.
CEOs often make decisions
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L24 C R A I N ’ S D E T R O I T B U S I N E S S // S E P T E M B E R 1 1 , 2 0 1 7
Kapnick Insurance Group has been named one of INSIDE
FROM PAGE L23
Crain’s Detroit Business’ 2017 Cool Places to Work Plaza living, arena style
TŚŝƐŚŽŶŽƌƌĞĂĸƌŵƐǁŚĂƚŽƵƌƚĞĂŵĂůƌĞĂĚLJŬŶŽǁƐʹǁŽƌŬĐĂŶďĞĨƵŶĂŶĚĨƵůĮůůŝŶŐ͊tŝƚŚϰϭйŽĨŽƵƌĞŵƉůŽLJĞĞƐ Still under construction outside the
arena are a few hundred apartments
ƵŶĚĞƌƚŚĞĂŐĞŽĨϰϬ͕<ĂƉŶŝĐŬŝƐĨƌĞƐŚĨĂĐĞĚĂŶĚĐŽŶƐƚĂŶƚůLJĚĞǀĞůŽƉŝŶŐƚŚĞďĞƐƚĂŶĚďƌŝŐŚƚĞƐƚŝŶƚŚĞďƵƐŝŶĞƐƐ͘ that will face the Chevrolet Plaza, a pub-
tŚĂƚŵĂŬĞƐŽƵƌǁŽƌŬƉůĂĐĞƐŽ͞ĐŽŽů͍͟,ĞƌĞĂƌĞĂĨĞǁĞdžĂŵƉůĞƐ͗ lic space with a massive video board.
The 600- to 800-square-foot apartments
Ͳ&ůĞdžŝďůĞǁŽƌŬƐĐŚĞĚƵůĞƐ are attached to the two parking garages
on the arena site. The ground floors of
ͲŽŵƉĂŶLJͲǁŝĚĞǀŽůƵŶƚĞĞƌŽƉƉŽƌƚƵŶŝƟĞƐ the two residential complexes will be
ͲŽŵƉĂŶLJƚƌŝƉƐƚŽĞƚƌŽŝƚdŝŐĞƌƐŐĂŵĞƐ͕ďŽǁůŝŶŐĂůůĞLJƐ͕ĞƚĐ͘ retail space, including three to four
restaurants, Wilson said.
Ͳ<ĂƉŶŝĐŬ<ůŝŶŬŽƚŽǁŝŶƉƌŝnjĞƐƐƵĐŚĂƐ͗ƉŝnjnjĂƉĂƌƟĞƐ͕ŝĐĞĐƌĞĂŵƚƌƵĐŬƐ͕ĞdžƚƌĂƉĂŝĚƟŵĞŽī͕ĂŶĚŵƵĐŚŵŽƌĞ͙ The plaza is expected to be used
on game days as a gathering space
tĞ͛ǀĞďƵŝůƚĂĐƵůƚƵƌĞƚŚĂƚĞŶũŽLJƐŐŝǀŝŶŐďĂĐŬƚŽƚŚĞĐŽŵŵƵŶŝƚLJ͕ĐĞůĞďƌĂƚĞƐƉĂƐƚĂĐĐŽŵƉůŝƐŚŵĞŶƚƐ͕ƐŚĂƌĞƐ with events for fans without tickets,
ĞdžĐŝƚĞŵĞŶƚĂďŽƵƚĨƵƚƵƌĞŐƌŽǁƚŚĂŶĚŽƉƉŽƌƚƵŶŝƟĞƐʹĂŶĚƚƌĞĂƐƵƌĞƐƚŚĞƌĞůĂƟŽŶƐŚŝƉƐǁĞ͛ǀĞďƵŝůƚǁŝƚŚŽƵƌĐůŝĞŶƚƐ͘ and will be used for other events.
Wilson said companies involved
with the annual North American In-
ternational Auto Show at Cobo Cen-
ter have called to ask about using the
Connect With Us! space during the January event.
One parking garage has an elevat-
ed walkway that connects to the are-
na. Wilson said the players will have
/KapnickInsuranceGroup their own parking in the garage and
enter the building via a special sepa-
@KapnickKIG rate underground tunnel.
Little Caesars goes in big
Kapnick Insurance Group
Wilson is especially proud of the
“Via” concourse that surrounds the
www.kapnick.com arena. Two-thirds of it have a trans-
parent roof to the sky, and it's four
times larger than the narrow con-
course at Joe Louis, Wilson said.
“The days of walking elbow to elbow,
shoulder to shoulder are over,” he said.
Along the concourse are various
restaurants, including the new Kid
Rock eatery, and the 9,500-square-
foot retail store that sells Red Wings
and Pistons merchandise. Also on
the Via are two of four Little Caesars
concessions locations.
The pizza chain, founded in 1959 by
Red Wings owners Mike and Marian Il-
itch, in April 2016 signed a 20-year, $120
million naming rights deal for the arena.
“We expect over time to get a re-
turn on that investment,” said Little
Caesars President Dave Scrivano.
Docking bays on steroids
Large concerts often require a day
each to load in and out, sandwiched
around the event itself. Little Caesars
Arena officials hope they can reduce
that time because it has a massive
loading dock area.
The Palace had three loading
docks for trucks. Joe Louis had one.
Little Caesars Arena has seven bays.
The loading dock area is so large
that a tractor trailer can turn around
inside it, Wilson said.
Pistons tease
While the Pistons locker room and
player area wasn’t available to re-
porters because it remains under
construction, the team did provide a
fact sheet.
The basics are that it’s 1,250 square
feet with 12-foot high ceilings and 18
lockers — all USB capable. A 98-inch
interactive media wall will be used
for game film breakdown and prepa-
ration.
Don’t tread on me
Leaders in Complex Business Lawsuits Many NHL locker rooms have the
home team’s logo on the floor, as part
and Class Action Litigation of the carpet design, and it’s consid-
ered bad luck and poor manners to
walk on the logo.
The Red Wings have eliminated
(248)
950 West University Drive / Suite 300 / Rochester / Michigan / 48307 / (248) 841-2200 www.millerlawpc.com
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that problem by putting the massive
winged wheel logo on the ceiling.
Page 2
A GOAL AND A REBOUND
LITTLE CAESARS ARENA COMMEMORATIVE SECTION
AN
INSIDE
LOOK
Public areas of the new arena feature enormous tributes to the history of two long-standing pro sports teams.
Areas for players, performers
would be at home in upscale hotel
By Bill Shea
bshea@crain.com
Wandering inside new Little Cae-
sars Arena, getting a look at the areas
hidden to the public, it’s easy to think
one is inside an upscale hotel.
A hotel devoted to the history of
two of the most iconic teams in the
history of pro sports, that is.
News media were given tours of
the venue last week, led by execu-
tives and staff from Olympia Enter-
tainment and Palace Sports & Enter-
tainment, the former competitors
that now share the $863 million proj-
ect site that’s home to the Detroit Red
Wings and Pistons.
Backstage rooms are devoted to
entertainer comfort before and after
shows, resplendent in subdued
woods and leathers. The arena has
five such rooms of varying size, which
are served by a full kitchen. They call
it the “artist compound.”
The hockey and basketball players
will get elite comforts, too. Under-
neath the plaza adjacent to the arena
is the Red Wings practice arena, and
overlooking that is a sprawling
5,000-square-foot set of rooms for
players' families. The area includes a
playroom for children, with wooden
toys and miniature lockers.
The Red Wings player area — lock-
er room, changing area, lounge,
kitchen and therapy rooms — is
23,000 square feet. The kitchen would
be the envy of many TV celebrity
chefs. The player area is more than
double what they had at Joe Louis
Arena. Oh, and each of the wooden
lockers has a vent to help dissipate
the strong odors that are unique to
hockey locker rooms.
That’s next to the underground
practice ice rink whose walls are lined
with the Red Wings original champi-
onship banners. The area for the Pis-
tons wasn’t part of Wednesday’s tour
because it’s still under construction.
These are the places the public
won’t get a chance to see.
C R A I N ’ S D E T R O I T CBRAIN
The original Olympia Stadium sign will
grace a public area at the arena.
“I truly think this building is a work
of art,” said Tom Wilson, president of
Olympia Entertainment that runs the
building. His resume now includes
opening two arenas: Little Caesars this
week, and in 1988 he led the $90 mil-
lion Palace of Auburn Hills project for
then-Pistons owner William Davidson.
Honoring history
of 2 franchises
Red Wings fans will notice the dra-
matic bronze sculptures of Gordie
Howe, Ted Lindsay and Alex Delvec-
U S’SI DNETROIT // S E P T E M B E R 1 1 , 2 0 1 7
E S SBUSINESS
LARRY A. PEPLIN FOR CRAIN’S
chio have been relocated from Joe Lou-
is to the new arena’s concourse. They’re
among 1,000-plus objects, pieces or
memorabilia, and other items of his-
toric interest or nostalgia that are dis-
played at Little Caesars Arena.
Both the Red Wings and Pistons,
who only decided to relocate down-
town last November, are equally rep-
resented.
It has taken a specialized staff to
create the displays. Marcel Parent
was hired by Olympia two years ago
as director of curation and content
activation. He has two full-time assis-
tants and shares a third with the rest
of Olympia. With him, their job is
handle what’s displayed in the arena
and catalog what may be up to 10,000
more items still in storage.
“The goal was to have a place that
is dripping with history,” Parent said.
Control room
goes higher tech
A crowded control room filled with
monitors and a dizzying array of
state-of-the-art equipment is where
25-30 staff members will control
what fans see during the game on the
massive LED video and ribbon
boards, and on the arena’s 1,300
monitors.
It’s a major advancement over the
operation at Joe Louis Arena, which
jammed equipment into spaces de-
signed in 1979, the year ESPN
launched. The Palace had more mod-
ern control facilities, but not on the
scale of Little Caesars Arena.
“We went from the Flintstones to the
Jetsons here,” said Pete Skorich, who
was hired in January as Olympia’s vice
president of entertainment services to
handle production at the arena.
The control room can handle up to
69 cameras for an event. For a game,
16 will be typical. A secondary con-
trol room means the venue can pro-
duce two events at once.
SEE INSIDE, PAGE L24
2017
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L22
A GOAL AND A REBOUND
LITTLE CAESARS ARENA COMMEMORATIVE SECTION
HENDERSON
FROM PAGE L18
So after our game, the nonsenti-
mental players headed for the dress-
ing room. A bunch of us waited on
the ice by the boards, some with
cameras in hand, and at the count of
three, we all jumped over the boards
and off the ice at the same time. We
would each of us be the last to ever
skate at Olympia.
Except, soon after, it became clear
the early construction schedule was
optimistic, a new opening date was
announced, and the Wings started
the 1979-80 season at the old build-
ing, playing their first game in Joe
Louis on Dec. 27.
I loved Olympia and especially its
view of the game from the upper tier,
which was spectacular, as if you were
hovering over the ice, though I knew
that even with a capacity that had
been expanded over the years to
15,000, it was too small to support the
growing payroll of a modern hockey
team.
Originally, the Wings planned to
move to Pontiac, to a stadium to be
called Olympia II that was going to be
built next to the Silverdome. But De-
troit Mayor Coleman Young made an
offer the team couldn’t refuse. The
city would build and own a new are-
na, charge the Wings much lower
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For more information or questions regarding advertising in this section, please call Lynn Calcaterra at (313) 446-6086
C R A I N ’ S D E T R O I T B U S I N E S S // S E P T E M B E R 1 1 , 2 0 1 7
rent than they had planned to pay in those ugly tubes that connected to was palatial compared to the new State and Michigan Tech at the 18th
Pontiac, and turn over the running of the stadium or you hopped barriers one, which wasn’t a press box, at all, annual Great Lakes Invitational
Cobo Hall and a bunch of surface and ran across the freeway. but rather a long table at the top of hockey tournament, where the box
parking lots downtown to Bruce Nor- I chose the tubes once and never the arena wedged in behind the last office was shut down 90 minutes be-
ris, the Wings’ owner. again. You went up a long spiral and row of seats. During the action, fans fore the game and 21,347 fans went
I haven’t seen an accounting of then through a tube parallel to the would stand and block your view. nuts all game long, then an atten-
how it was decided which plot of ground, the whole way reeking the Marvin Mews was a member of the dance record for a hockey game in
land Joe Louis would be built on. My gagging reek of urine dried onto con- Red Wings broadcast team, kind of North America.
guess is there’s a Coleman Young sto- crete from the homeless who slept an early coordinator of media out- Said the Freep on March 28:
ry, there, but bias for the old Olympia there; after the game, you didn’t have reach. He had grand plans for the “Tom Henderson wrote for Free
notwithstanding, you could not have the reek of urine to worry about, it was new arena, and told me about meet- Press: ‘The news of this night was the
chosen a worse place to build a the clouds of smoke from hockey fans ings with Lincoln Cavalieri, who ran crowd — the largest ever to see a
sports arena. who lit up the moment they got out of Olympia Stadium for 30 years and hockey game, barring something big-
If they taught arena design at the the building. There was a claustro- was a Red Wings vice president, ger behind the Iron Curtain; the larg-
College for Creative Studies, the phobic jam of people as fans poured where he recommended different est crowd in the young history of Joe
course would include a primer on into the tube, then stood in place places in the new stadium where TV Louis; probably the loudest crowd
site selection. You would want access awhile, jammed shoulder to shoulder cameras or photographers could be around here since most of Michigan
from 360 degrees, first and foremost, until everyone started slowly shuffling stationed. poured downtown to celebrate the
so folks could come and go with as forward through a blue haze. He was dismayed none of his sug- Tigers’ World Series win in 1968.’”
little impediment as possible. From then on, it was running gestions ended up in the final plans, In 1983, the Wings drafted Steve
The Joe was built on the Detroit across the freeway. The first time I did and Marvin told me Cavalieri’s dis- Yzerman, who became the driving
River, immediately reducing access that, I came to those impossibly steep dain for media was the reason for force behind those Stanley Cups.
by half. It abutted Cobo, limiting an- steps at Joe Louis, covered in snow that and the reason for the fourth- A couple of years later, I got hired
other 90 degrees or so of access. And and at about the angle of Mayan rate press box. to write the Red Wings yearbook, a
out front ran the last stretch of the Temples, with steps too narrow to ac- Norris’ long and dismal tenure as gig that lasted several years and al-
Lodge Freeway before its exit ramp commodate my whole foot. owner of the Wings ended when he lowed me access to a young team
dumped traffic out in the middle of How can these meet code? I won- sold the team to Mike Ilitch in 1982, about to become one of the best in
downtown. Which blocked another dered. and under Ilitch’s ownership, the Detroit history.
chunk of access. Well, the architects at SHG had to Wings made fans ignore their medio- Papa would have been proud.
Joe Louis was, incredibly enough, do what they had to do, which was fit cre surroundings. The Wings played I’ve read stories and seen render-
almost impossible to get to by foot, as an arena into a footprint too small, in six Stanley Cup finals in the arena, ings of the Wings new arena. It looks
I discovered the first game I went to and if that meant ridiculously steep winning four of them. fabulous. It’ll make fans forget Joe
as a civilian early in 1980. I parked by and narrow steps, so be it. In a recent series on the top 20 mo- Louis, if not the hockey that was
the Anchor Bar, street parking then My first game at Joe Louis, Al ments in Joe Louis history, a game I played there.
being free downtown at night, and Coates had got me a pass to the press covered as a freelancer for the Free
headed toward the arena. box, which was another shock. Olym- Press made the cut at No. 19, a game Tom Henderson: (231) 499-2817
To get there, you either went into pia’s had been far from grand, but it on Dec. 29, 1982, between Michigan Twitter: @TomHenderson2
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L18 C R A I N ’ S D E T R O I T B U S I N E S S // S E P T E M B E R 1 1 , 2 0 1 7
A GOAL AND A REBOUND
LITTLE CAESARS ARENA COMMEMORATIVE SECTION
OF OLYMPIA,
JOE LOUIS
ARENA AND
A NEAR-MISS
WITH HISTORY
AP PHOTO/HILLERY
Some 15,609 fans packed Detroit’s Olympia Stadium Dec. 17, 1979 for the Red Wings-Quebec Nordiques NHL hockey game. The game ended in a 4-4 tie and marked the last NHL game in the 52-year-old building nicknamed the old Barn.
got off on the wrong foot with Joe Louis Arena. ¶ per for a life of freelancing. had written something he objected
My highlight covering the team to, there was going to be a price to
When construction got behind schedule in the sum- had nothing to do with wins or losses, pay. Slashes across the shins, a ride
mer of 1979 and its opening was delayed, it cost me a it had to do with a hockey game late into the boards, a hip check here and
every Monday afternoon at Olympia. there. I loved it. Growing up almost in
place in history that would have been entirely meaning-
I About 30 of us showed up for a fierce- the shadow of the building and hav-
less in the scheme of things and entirely magical to me. ly contested game matching the ing watched Ted on Papa’s grainy TV,
same teams each week. All of us were there was no greater honor than go-
¶ Olympia Stadium, the grand old building Joe Louis re- either employed by the Wings or con- ing to work the next day with a
placed, opened on Oct. 15, 1927. With a seating capacity TOM HENDERSON nected to them. bruised cheek or cut lip from Ted,
thenderson@crain.com Al Sobotka, the world’s most fa- who was always the best player on
of 11,563, it was reportedly the third-largest indoor are- mous Zamboni driver and twirler of the ice.
na in the world, behind only Madison Square Garden in The team made the playoffs that octopi, played; so did Al Coates, a Ted used to let me skate with the
year, beat Atlanta in the first round former minor leaguer who was then Wings after the formal end of prac-
New York and another Olympia, in London. and gave heavily favored Montreal a the team’s PR guy and would later be- tice, too, when some of the players
The first event was the Internation- that was televised in the early and tussle before losing in the next round. come general manager of the Calgary would keep at it another half-hour or
al Stampede and Rodeo, and on Nov. mid-1950s. I couldn’t follow the puck One night in Montreal, I went into a Flames; as did Red Wings on the dis- so. Ted even gave me a black jersey to
22, the first NHL game was played, on our small fuzzy black-and-white bar after the team’s curfew and half of abled list but looking for a good wear at practice on the road, where
between the hometown Cougars, TV, but Papa could, and I yelled and the players were there drinking. Jim- skate; minor leaguers from the area the Canadiens, say, wouldn’t permit
transplanted from Vancouver, and cheered when he did. my Rutherford, one of the team’s who happened to be in town for a media to skate. The black jerseys
the Ottawa Senators, who won 2-1. In In 1975, I inherited the Red Wings goalies, came over to ask if I was go- couple of days; ex-Red Wings; and were worn by players who weren’t
1930, the team was renamed the Fal- beat at the Free Press. ing to write about them being out. I hockey buffs who had, say, the build- going to be in the lineup, and Ted was
cons, and in 1932 renamed again to The team was horrible. was committing enough of my own ing’s Budweiser or Coke account. happy to pretend I was one of those.
the Red Wings. In 1977, Ted Lindsay, a Hall of sins on a regular basis to write about Jim Essian, then a catcher for the So was I. Inordinately.
I was raised by my grandparents in Famer and legendary member of the theirs, and to prove it, I bought two Chicago White Sox and later their Anyway, Al Coates told us one
a neighborhood of Scottish immi- Wings’ Production Line with Sid Abel rounds. (And forgot to get a receipt so manager, played each week, too, in Monday in spring that the next Mon-
grants near Grand River and Joy and Gordie Howe, was named gener- I could expense it as relation- violation of his contract barring such day would be our last skate. Would,
Road, within sight of Olympia, and al manager. His mantra was “aggres- ship-building.) baseball-threatening activities. in fact, be the last skate in the history
my grandfather, who replaced his sive hockey is back in town,” and for a The next year, alas, the team re- It was all-out skating and fierce of the building. They were taking
love of soccer with his love of hockey brief period, it was, ending an era of verted to form, went 23-41-16 and slapshots but no checking. Except for down the boards the day after and
after he migrated to the U.S. in 1920, incompetence that saw the Red missed the playoffs in the last full Ted. It was his rink and, as he said, melting the ice, and the plan was to
and I used to avidly watch the third Wings drawing as few as 3,000 a game season in Olympia, and my last sea- aggressive hockey was back in town. be in Joe Louis come fall.
period of home games, which was all and missing the playoffs every year. son on the beat before I quit the pa- He played opposite me by choice. If I SEE HENDERSON, PAGE L22
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L16 C R A I N ’ S D E T R O I T B U S I N E S S // S E P T E M B E R 1 1 , 2 0 1 7
A GOAL AND A REBOUND
LITTLE CAESARS ARENA COMMEMORATIVE SECTION
What stadiums cost
Construction financing for stadiums in Detroit has been public and private money — or both — since the Detroit the Red Wings until they moved into Joe Louis Arena in 1979. Olympia was razed in 1986.
Tigers built Navin Field (which later became Briggs Stadium and then Tiger Stadium) in 1912 for $300,000. Below is a look at the financing and other facts about metro Detroit’s sports venues. These are the best
The team sold the stadium to the city for $1 in 1978. Detroit paid $400,000 to raze it in 2009. numbers available, based on published data and documents from public agencies and limited information from
In 1926, Detroit businessmen privately financed the $2.2 million cost of Detroit Olympia, the original home of the teams — Bill Shea
Little Caesars Arena Comerica Park Ford Field Joe Louis Arena ment of the riverfront site to be worth.
Cost: $326 million Cost: $57 million The deal requires the Detroit Brownfield
Cost: $863 million Cost: $500 million
Redevelopment Authority to repay the $6
Team: Detroit Red Wings, Detroit Pistons Team: Detroit Tigers Team: Detroit Lions Team: Detroit Red Wings
million from taxes it will collect from
Seats: 20,000 Seats: 41,299 Seats: 64,500 Seats: 20,066 whatever is eventually built on the site.
Opened: 2000 Opened: 2002 Opened: 1979
Opens: September 2017
Owner: Detroit-Wayne County Stadium Owner: Detroit-Wayne County Stadium Owner: Detroit Building Authority/ Palace of Auburn Hills
Owner: Detroit Downtown Development
Authority Authority Municipal Parking Department
Authority Cost: $90 million
Naming rights: Dallas-based Comerica Naming rights: Ford Motor Co. paid the Naming rights: None
Naming rights: The Little Caesars pizza Team: Detroit Pistons
Bank is paying the team $2.2 million a year team $50 million in three lump sums in How it was built: Municipal bonds paid
chain, founded by Red Wings owners Mike off mostly with federal funds Seats: 22,076
until 2028 as part of a 30-year, $66 million 2002 for 25-year rights. The automaker
and Marian Ilitch in 1959, is paying $120 deal inked in 1998. Opened: 1988
agreed in 2005 to pay another $6.6 million How it operated:
million over 20 years. J Red Wings kept all under lease Owner: Pistons owner Tom Gores
How it was funded: through 2015 to add its name to the
How it was funded: $250 million in J Stadium authority bonds, paid off by stadium roof and elsewhere on the exterior. approved in March 2014. Under previous Naming rights: None
tax-exempt municipal bonds issued by rental car and hotel room taxes: $86 million lease, city collected taxes on tickets,
How it was funded: How it was built: Original owner
the DDA, followed by $34.5 million in J Downtown Development Authority: concessions and suites sales that William Davidson and partners privately
J DDA: $70 million
additional bonds to accommodate chang- generated $2 million and $3 million financed the entire project.
$40 million J City: $15 million
es for the Detroit Pistons moving into the annually.
J Michigan Strategic Fund: $55 million How it operates:
building. The remaining nearly $580 J Stadium authority: $20 million
Maintenance: Red Wings paid
J Ilitch family financing: $145 million Revenue: Pistons and Palace Sports &
million is privately financed in bonds and J Wayne County: $20 million Lease: Retroactive to 2010 through 2015
How it operates: Entertainment keep all
lending by Olympia Development of J Corporate contributions: $50 million Rent: Old lease required $25,000
Michigan. Revenue: Tigers keep all Maintenance: Handled internally
J Lions: $325 million monthly and $252,000 annual use tax.
Maintenance: Funded by annual Last deal was $1 million annually from Lease: None
How it will operate: How it operates:
deposits of $300,000 from the Tigers and 2010 through 2015, minus credit for Rent: None.
Revenue: Olympia keeps all. $250,000 from the DDA Revenue: Lions keep all
property taxes. Five one-year options. Fate: Events are still scheduled for the
Maintenance: Reserve fund funded by Lease: 35 years. Six 10-year options. Maintenance: Funded by a $300,000
Fate: The Michigan Strategic Fund in 2014 facility but will not compete with the new
the state bonds. annual contribution by the Lions
Rent: The Tigers pay $1 a year for the approved up to $6 million for its arena. It may be razed for commercial
Lease: 35 years; 12 five-year options. 35-year lease, then $1 million annually for Lease: 35 years. Six 10-year options demolition. The $6 million represents a development of the site.
Rent: $11.5 million concession fee paid to each of the six 10-year lease extension Rent: $250,000 split between the DDA quarter of the estimated $24 million the Sources: DDA, Detroit-Wayne County
DDA, for bond retirement. options exercised. and Wayne County state expects any commercial redevelop- Development Authority, Olympia, Crain’s research
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L6 C R A I N ’ S D E T R O I T B U S I N E S S // S E P T E M B E R 1 1 , 2 0 1 7
A GOAL AND A REBOUND
LITTLE CAESARS ARENA COMMEMORATIVE SECTION
Broader vision
The other Ilitch strategy to gain
EXPERIENCE THE BENEFITS support was to make the project
OF PRIVATE AVIATION. much more than just an arena.
Instead, they unveiled a bold pitch
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UHTXLUHPHQWVDQGLW·VPRUHDIIRUGDEOHWKDQ\RXWKLQN Shortly before the arena bill vote
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book employed by arena and stadi-
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and increased economic activity that
Stay in the know with fills tax coffers and pocketbooks.
With the Olympia project, it would
Crain’s Email Newsletters be on an even larger scale in a city
Subscribe for FREE by visiting starved for new development. And
crainsdetroit.com/crainsemails they promised jobs and contracts
would go to city residents and locally
based companies, pledges they say
they have stuck to with some excep-
tions. Job training and internships
are part of the construction effort,
too.
In July 2014, the Ilitches made
public their far wider District Detroit
plan of 50 city blocks remade with
new investment. They paid Universi-
ty of Michigan professor Mark
Rosentraub for a report that estimat-
You know. ed the mammoth arena project
would create 8,300 construction jobs
The Motor City has both fueled and felt the power and 1,100 permanent jobs, along
with $1.8 billion in economic impact
of the Laker Effect. Many of our students not only for the city, region and state.
hail from the Detroit area, but they also return there: Decades of academic study na-
tionally, however, cast doubt on the
as analysts and engineers, biochemists and health economic sense of public subsidies
for sports stadiums.
professionals, as leaders in business and leaders Such caution didn’t affect the po-
litical will to give Olympia the money
of communities. Support them. Support us. it sought. The promise of developing
a blighted section of the city was ir-
And see the power of what can be. resistible.
“Over the years (the Ilitches) were
able to assemble enough land to
think about where significant infill
developments could occur,” Larson
said. “Little Caesars Arena is filling a
Timeline: Where they played, continued
June 1, 2011: Tom
Gores, the
California private
equity billionaire
and Flint native,
buys the Pistons
and Palace of
Auburn Hills for
$325 million in 2011
from Davidson’s Gores
widow and group of 27 minority owners.
The deal includes DTE Energy Music
Theatre and the contract to manage
Meadow Brook Amphitheatre for Oakland
University.
Dec. 4, 2012: Ending years of specula-
tion, the Ilitch family formally announces a
plan to build an arena as part of a $650
gvsu.edu/SupportLakerEffect million mixed-use development that
would be both publicly and privately
financed. Details such as location aren’t
yet disclosed.
The total up-front public cost of the arena so far is $324.1 million. Olympia is financing
$538.8 million. The project was estimated to create a $1.8 billion impact for the city.
void that was going to take a very
long time, tens of years, to infill with
traditional development. There was
this void and nothing was going to
link (downtown and Midtown) as
impactfully and quickly as the are-
na.”
Stitching together two parts of the
central business district with a
sprawling mixed-use project helped
sell political and civic leaders on the
project, Larson said.
“The return on investment, I think,
ultimately, is much more significant
and will be realized much faster than
if it were just a standalone sport fa-
cility,” Larson said.
The family’s business reputation
also helped their quest for public
subsidies. The Ilitches have been
long praised for relocating their Lit-
tle Caesars pizza chain headquarters
downtown in 1989 while other busi-
nesses were leaving the city.
The reality is mixed: They put a lot
of money into downtown invest-
ments, but also garnered criticism
for their stewardship of some blight-
ed properties. Plans for some new
developments fell through, too, fuel-
ing boos from some.
But overall, they’ve been heralded
for their accomplishments, which
include renovation of the Fox The-
atre and construction of Comerica
Park and MotorCity Casino and Ho-
tel. They’re currently building a $150
Dec. 19, 2012: Gov. Rick Snyder signs a
bill that authorizes the Detroit Downtown
Development Authority to redirect tax
captures to pay off $250 million in
tax-exempt municipal bonds issued by
the DDA to finance arena construction.
The remainder of the construction costs
are privately financed.
June 19, 2013: Detroit’s Downtown
Development Authority approves a plan in
which the DDA owns the arena while
Olympia Development of Michigan
operates the facility under a 35-year
concession agreement with 12 five-year
renewal options. Olympia keeps all
revenue from the building, from which it
will pay about $13 million annually on the
arena’s bond debt.
March 25, 2014: The Michigan Strategic
Fund approves up to $6 million for the
demolition of Joe Louis Arena. The $6
million represents a quarter of the
OLYMPIA DEVELOPMENT
million new headquarters for Little
Caesars next to the Fox.
The Ilitches also were able to rely
on the Red Wings’ history for sup-
port. Mike Ilitch bought the club for
$8 million in 1982. It would go on to
win four Stanley Cups during a play-
off streak that lasted 25 years. Win-
ning fuels goodwill.
The arena strategy has worked so
well for the Ilitches that they suc-
cessfully got city approval for anoth-
er $34.5 million worth of DDA bonds
to pay for retrofitting the arena to
accommodate the Detroit Pistons,
who announced in November they’d
relocate to Little Caesars Arena to be
a tenant alongside the Red Wings.
The Ilitches haven’t faced the sort
of resistance Dan Gilbert is facing in
Cleveland, where he’s seeking $70
million in local aid for a $140-million
upgrade to Quicken Loans Arena,
where his Cleveland Cavaliers play
home games.
Public and political opposition to
Gilbert’s plan reached the Ohio Su-
preme Court, which ruled last month
that the issue must go to a public ref-
erendum.
“Community-based push back
has been really muted here. It hasn’t
had the same resonance you’d find
in other places,” Boyle said.
Bill Shea: (313) 446-1626
Twitter: @Bill_Shea19
estimated $24 million the state expects
any commercial redevelopment of the
riverfront site to be worth. The deal
requires the Detroit Brownfield Redevel-
opment Authority to repay the $6 million
from taxes it will collect from whatever is
eventually built on the site.
July 2014: The Ilitches unveil their plan
for The District Detroit, a sprawling
mixed-used project of apartments,
restaurants, office buildings, parks and
shops over 45 blocks in five planned
neighborhoods. It’s anchored by the
650,000-square-foot, $450 million
hockey and events center, with $200
million in ancillary development. The
expected investment is currently $2.1
billion for the entire project. The
investment for the 12-acre arena site,
which includes the bowl, parking garage
and nearby buildings, has grown to $863
million.
SEE PAGE L8
 SPONSORED CONTENT
WE UNDERSTAND; WE ADVISE AND SOLVE; WE DELIVER: FIRST IN A 5-PART SERIES
ENT
ure
ed,
a
set
po-
us-
ral
ars
sh-
ity.
Westborn Market CFO Kenneth Lundberg,
si-
a’s left, meets with Kevin Szachta, Huntington
on Commercial Relationship Manager at the
u- company’s Livonia store.
roit
ity,
Photo by D. Ashley Photography
ent
nd
ho-
ws
ap-
off
ion
ose

In the market for change

ew It turns out the right bank knows a lot about where to keep your company’s money
nd
ngs
t of Story by Marcia Lerner | Crain Content Studio
rge
as
rt’s Westborn Market, a specialty food seller with
four locations in Southeast Michigan, was
L6 started in 1963 by brothers George and Andy
Anusbigian. As the next generation took over
the business and opened additional locations, it
did so while making do with a banking
relationship that was decidedly uninspiring.
Soon, the family recognized it was time to ‘move
in into the new millennium.’
e Huntington Bank came to meet the
ers.
Anusbigians after the bank was recommended to
ne
the company by a trusted advisor. The bank’s first
goal? To help Westborn modernize. “They had
treasury services,” said Kevin Szachta, the
relationship manager at Huntington who works
with Westborn, “but they were antiquated. They
had not even had a treasury review for over a
year prior to us getting involved. So in addition
to a better loan structure, with the ability to grow,
they also wanted to streamline their process and
work with existing technology, something they
hat weren’t currently doing with their former bank.”
nd Huntington got to work not only on
L6
HuntingtonWestborn.indd 1
providing financing, but also on analyzing with a wide offering of solutions, including cash
Westborn’s systems and processes. In the course “They’re banking for their management, banking services and insurance.
of its analysis, Huntington learned that 45 As for the safes, they’ve been in place for
percent of Westborn’s sales were in cash, and the
customers, which is what I about five years with no maintenance issues.
process of counting that cash at night was had lost with my previous Westborn continues to rely on them, paying a
wasting both time and money. reasonable monthly fee.
“We learned it was very much a manual
bank. They actually heard All in all, the new banking relationship has
process for depositing of checks and for what we were saying.” changed how Westborn works. “They changed
processing their cash,” Szachta said. He turned to banking in our opinion,” Anusbigian says.
Erica Roots, a treasury management sales Mark Anusbigian, “They’re banking for their customers, which is
advisor at Huntington, who recommended that President, Westborn Market what I had lost with my previous bank. They
Westborn consider a safe-cash manager, also actually heard what we were saying. I’m a big
known as a smart safe. fan.”
their drawers,” said Mark Anusbigian, president
“The safes themselves accept cash—some The admiration is mutual.
of Westborn. “It’s saved us literally thousands of
people think of it as the reverse of an ATM,” “At Westborn, they don’t look at us as
dollars annually because it’s cut down the need
Roots said. “The cash is safe and secured. The transactional providers, but as a relationship that
for a second person to be there for the checkout
machines themselves transmit funds, which are goes both ways,” Szachta says. “They are already
period. Then it’s also cut down time we take
then sent electronically into the bank account set up for that next generation of succession. You
when we clear out the entire day. The process is a
daily.” see about how they were basically raised the
lot easier when we balance our books, because it’s
For Westborn, which was already pleased right way, they’re all hard workers and a pleasure
all there in the safe.”
with the new banking relationship, the safe-cash to work with. We consider them friends of
The new cash management system helped the
manager was a game-changer. Huntington.”
Westborn-Huntington partnership flourish.
“The safe not only works as a security For more information about Huntington
Anusbigian thinks the success of their interac-
mechanism, it also works as a system that helps Bank, contact Brian Marshall at 248-244-
tion has to do with Huntington’s willingness to
check out each individual cashier and balance 3607 or at brian.marshall@huntington.com.
understand his business’s needs, and provide it
SPONSORED BY: POWERED BY:
9/7/17 5:19 PM
L4 C R A I N ’ S D E T R O I T B U S I N E S S // S E P T E M B E R 1 1 , 2 0 1 7 S
A GOAL AND A REBOUND
LITTLE CAESARS ARENA COMMEMORATIVE SECTION
MEET
chris —Class of 2018
QUIZ BOWL CAPTAIN.
LANDSCAPE ARTIST.
EAGLE SCOUT CANDIDATE.
THE FUTURE OF SCIENCE.
An extraordinary
student preparing for
an extraordinary future.
OLYMPIA DEVELOPMENT
Olympia Development’s vision for not just improving the image, but remaking a whole neighborhood, helped sell officials on public
investment and approvals to build Little Caesars Arena.
through Lansing began in earnest general fund
about six months before the vote. dollars from the
Also hired to shepherd the legisla- ca s h -st rap p e d
tion were Lansing-based lobbying city.
where extraordinary
traordinary
nary firm Muchmore Harrington Smalley The public
happens & Associates and Detroit law firm subsidy for the
Miller, Canfield, Paddock and Stone arena’s con-
every day PLC. struction comes
248.646.7717 | www.dcds.edu
These allies helped make the case in the form of
to politicians and the public for giv- Mike Ilitch: Started Marian Ilitch: Eric Larson: tax-exempt mu-
ing a billionaire public money to to buy land for arena Family’s reputation Assembled nicipal bonds
JOIN US FOR OUR open house ON SUNDAY, OCTOBER 22 | 1-3 P.M. build a hockey arena — and also to in early ‘90s helped make case. political support. sold by the De-
LOWE
OWERRSSCHOOL
OOL JUNI
U OR SCHOO
CHOOLOOL MIDDLE SCHOO
MI
MID S OL UPPER
UPPE R SCHOOLOOL anticipate and tamp down public troit Downtown
Grades PK-2
Grad Grad
ra es 3-5
5 Grad
rad
des 6-8
68 Grad
addes 9-12
9-12
2
outcry. ers were concerned about financing Development Authority, the city’s
Such pushback had become com- his stadium. economic development agency that
mon in the decade before as taxpay- Now, with Little Caesars churning has its own budget and taxing au-
ers questioned the need to help pay out billions in sales, the family’s fi- thority.
for sports stadiums that ul- nancial standing has improved to That’s what the legislation autho-
tra-wealthy owners wanted. the point where lenders are happy to rized — changing the law that allows
But even the Ilitch family had pre- finance the arena. the DDA to use an expanded tax cap-
viously encountered difficulties in The total up-front public cost of ture in downtown Detroit to pay off
stadium financing. the arena, so far, is $324.1 million, the $250 million in construction
In 1996, Mike Ilitch got Wayne while Olympia is financing $538.8 bonds it eventually issued to help
WE’VE ALWAYS WANTED County voters to OK a 2 percent rent- million. pay for the arena.
TO HAVE A NEIGHBOR al car tax and 1 percent hotel room Political decision-makers have Those dollars are legally obligated
tax to finance construction of Co- come to view public financing as a for new economic development It
JUST LIKE YOU. merica Park for his Detroit Tigers, practical matter — a benefit in ex- projects and cannot be diverted to
but banks balked at his portion of change for a subsidy. And develop- pay for things like city services or
private financing. ers of large projects know that’s how schools. Sto
Our new office at 1001 Woodward isn’t He was forced to assemble a con- business is done. Most of the taxes captured come
arena-sized news, but we are just as happy to sortium of lenders, including finan- Quite simply, politicians are will- from large downtown corporations
be a part of the neighborhood. ciers in Japan and Europe, to get the ing to hand the money over. such as General Motors and Dan Gil-
cash. To make sure that happened, bert’s Bedrock, which owns more fou
Ilitch’s pizza business wasn’t as Olympia had a strategy to offset po- than 90 downtown buildings. sta
healthy then as it is today, and bank- tential opposition: Avoid using any SEE PAGE L6
An
the
Timeline: Where they played, continued did
rel
<< June 7, 1997: A 42-year Stanley Cup So
title drought ends when the Red Wings win int
Game 4 of the championship series at Joe
Louis Arena to sweep the Philadelphia Flyers.
An
Nov. 19, 2004: The NBA suspends nine the
players after the
“Malice at the go
Palace,” an tre
end-of-game brawl rel
between the wit
Pistons and
ha
Indiana Pacers —
and several fans. yea
to
March 13, 2009:
William Davidson the
FISHBECK, THOMPSON, CARR & HUBER dies at age 86. Davidson wo
e n g i n e e r s | s c i e n t i s t s | a r ch i t e c t s | c o n s t r u c t o r s
Aug. 9, 2010: Mike Ilitch announces that we
March 26, 1997: Detroit’s Darren the Red Wings bench like a big-game he’s in talks to buy the Detroit Pistons and

FTCH.COM
McCarty beats the Colorado Ava- trophy, in retribution for Lemieux’s move them downtown. A deal never
lanche’s Claude Lemieux into bloody crippling hit on Detroit’s Kris Draper materializes.
submission, dragging him in front of the season prior. SEE PAGE L6
HuntingtonW
 C R A I N ’ S D E T R O I T B U S I N E S S // S E P T E M B E R 1 1 , 2 0 1 7 L1
A GOAL AND A REBOUND
LITTLE CAESARS ARENA COMMEMORATIVE SECTION
www.crainsdetroit.com
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eventeen years ago, Comerica Park opened and brought baseball to downtown How to build an arena
Christina Fabugais-Dimovska
Senior Art Director Sylvia Kolaski
Detroit. It joined the Fox Theatre, renovated to glowing reviews by the Ilitch Detroit’s bankruptcy wasn’t an obstacle.
Special Projects Coordinator Keenan Covington family, as the core of a new entertainment district. ¶ At the same time, Crain’s The chaos was key. Page L2
Sales Support Suzanne Janik
Media Services Manager Hussein Abdallah published a special issue commemorating the stadium’s opening with the optimistic The history
S
title of “Turning the Corner.” A timeline of where Detroit’s beloved
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Economic impact
To find a date a story was published (313) 446-0406 football back into the city. Now, the Red Wings and Pis- city that needs the renaissance to keep spreading out- Direct spending on arena, District Detroit
or e-mail infocenter@crain.com tons will join in, just up the street from Comerica. ward. hits $1 billion. Page L12
Now that the four major teams are all within walking Michael Lee
Crain’s Detroit Business is published by distance of each other (and perhaps a new one on the Managing Editor Future for old friends
Crain Communications Inc
Chairman Keith E. Crain
The Palace, Joe Louis Arena sites still face
Vice Chairman Mary Kay Crain uncertain futures. Page L14
President KC Crain
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 SEPTEMBER 11-17, 2017
SPECIAL REPORT:
A GOAL
AND A
REBOUND
HOW LITTLE CAESARS
ARENA CAME TO BE,
WHAT ITS IMPACT WILL BE —
AND WHAT IT COULD MEAN
TO A CITY ON THE RISE.
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