Editorial Viewpoint: The Mikhail Brothers On The Outside Looking In

editorial viewpoint Mikhail Developers Don’t Get No Respect By Alan Halberstadt *If you have a comment on this topic, please post it under my column in the CITY section of BizXmagazine.com

“Everybody hates me,” chortles Joe Mikhail as I prepare to leave his seventh floor office in the middle of the CIBC building, 100 Ouellette Avenue, in the heart of downtown Windsor.

Joe, owner of Mikhail Holdings Limited along with his brothers Lou and John, is only half joking.

The Windsor establishment, notably the higher ups at City Hall, are adept at giving him the Rodney Dangerfield treatment. They clearly don’t appreciate his blunt opinions on how they conduct business and dole out tax money.

In one recent example, Mayor Drew Dilkens torpedoed Joe’s letter to City Council suggesting a panel of prominent local business leaders be convened to respond to the COVID-19 crisis and plan financial strategies to stave off the recession and looming Depression.

Dilkens inferred that a monstrous task force established by the WindsorEssex Economic Development Corporation (WE EDC) is better suited to address pandemic issues.

“Too many voices offering advice would perhaps lower the chances of success,” Dilkens told the Windsor Star.

Dozens of meetings, involving well over 100 “voices” representing various sectors in the regional economy, have taken place since the task force was formed in the early days of the pandemic.

An impressive list to be sure, but Mikhail is not wrong when he observes that many of the same names keep cropping up on the WE EDC website.

“In this city, they all have their own circles,” he says.

Indeed, nine of the 11 WE EDC voting board members are white men, including Dilkens and Lakeshore Mayor Tom Bain.

That board, and several other boards including the four paying EnWin Utilities boards, have been dominated by privileged white men and laden with cronies for several years.

“EnWin is the worst,” says Mikhail, who came to Leamington from Lebanon as a child and quickly had the family work ethic embedded into him, picking vegetables.

“I grew up in the fields,” he relates proudly, noting he sees things differently than many of the people populating today’s city boards and agencies who “never had a (real) job.” Ouch!

Mikhail and his brothers are a long way from the tomato fields today, having evolved into an astute business and development partnership.

Mikhail Holdings Ltd. owns one million square feet of commercial and industrial space across the region, including the CIBC, which they acquired 15 years ago. They collect rent from 19 tenant restaurants, in addition to operating a high-end restaurant, Fourteen Restaurant & Sky Lounge, within the CIBC tower.

“We’ve done well in business,” understates Joe, 58, who claims matter-of-factly that he has always been good with money.

The brothers have been in an expansionary mode. They recently purchased a multi-million dollar plaza on Walker Road near Silver City Cinemas.

A sample of what the municipality did as a tonic to assist businesses struggling through the early days of the pandemic was somewhat laughable to Mikhail.

“They deferred tax payments of $200,000 for three months applied in the middle of April, May and June,” he reveals. Come July 1, the city sent him a bill for $800,000.

He had to scramble to make the payment, prompting him to conclude that the tax relief measure helped him not at all.

According to Mikhail, the city treats fellow real estate magnate Shmuel Farhi differently.

That is why he spoke up when City Council moved to waive $363,642 in property taxes on Farhi’s Holiday Inn Express Hotel after he leased the building to Windsor Regional Hospital to house health care workers free of charge to isolate themselves from family members during the pandemic.

Mikhail, who estimates he pays $500,000 a year in commercial taxes on the CIBC building, wrote another letter to Council opposing the tax exemption because other taxpayers would have to pick up the slack.

Council didn’t listen, granting the exemption on August 4. Anecdotal evidence emerged later in August that the hotel beds weren’t being used.

Mikhail says he has nothing against Farhi for pursuing the hospital tax free deal, it’s the city’s approval of the scheme that staggers him.

The Mikhails, who give out free turkeys to the poor during the December holidays, are devoted free enterprisers. Joe shakes his head in bewilderment at the deal the city squeezed out of the federal government on the Paul Martin Building at 185 Ouellette Avenue.

Early construction of the Mikhail brothers’ plant inside at 2679 Howard Avenue in Windsor.

The feds handed the building to Dilkens for $1 and the city spent $1.77 million to convert it into a temporary library.

Mikhail’s counter proposal was rejected. He offered $2.5 million to the city to renovate the bottom floor for a library, and turn over the top floor to him for residential use.

Joe Mikhail and former Mayor Eddie Francis detest each other. The feud was fueled five years ago when Francis crafted a plan to take The Windsor Club out of the CIBC’s top floor and move it to a Hiram Walker building threatened with demolition.

Meanwhile, the Mikhails have been waiting for Prime Minister Justin Trudeau to show up at 2679 Howard Avenue to announce a federal government repayable loan of $3 million, over five years, in support of an exciting conversion of a seven acre, 90,000 square foot property into a pharmaceutical operation that initially promises to create 100 jobs.

“It will be like a hospital room inside an auto lab plant,” enthuses Joe. “It’s a knowledgebased business.”

Brother John, the family’s pharmaceutical operations guru, will be hiring Ph.D.s, scientists and researchers earning six figures a year, and up, forecasts Joe.

Trudeau has twice cancelled out of scheduled Windsor events. Not that the Windsor project is anything special by Trudeau’s standards.

The Mikhails would have preferred a grant, over a loan, from the Federal Development Fund (FedDEV).

The Windsor company will be a second location for Markham-based Pancap Pharma Inc., owned by the Mikhails. They chose Windsor Essex to locate the expansion of a new industry because they live and pay taxes here.

Despite the malevolence between the two parties, Council did approve an application from Mikhail Holdings for a grant under Windsor’s Community Improvement Plan (CIP) for business expansion.

The CIP would pay back any municipal tax increases at the plant for up to 10 years.

Maybe it’s time to mend the fences.