On a chilly March afternoon, Matt Naimi rolls up his sleeve, exposing a tattoo: A series of brightly colored rectangles, like an electron cloud orbiting a nucleus.
It’s a representation of what’s known as the ow of funds, the complex and sometimes mind-bogglingnancing structure for his and Oren Goldenberg’s $30 million Dreamtroit mixed-use housing project in the city’s Elijah McCoy neighborhood.
In all, it’s bringing 76 units of a ordable and work-
Audiences for nonpro t performing arts events in the region are returning in bigger numbers this year but still trailing pre-pandemic turnouts.
Performing arts groups, which rely on the revenue ticket sales produce, continue to see the lingering e ects of COVID and the lure of competing events on audiences, whether that be movies, concerts or even streaming programs on the small screens in their living rooms.
“Coming out of COVID, people are just more comfortable watching things at home,” said Omari
Rush, executive director of Southeast Michigan arts alliance CultureSource.
See ARTS on Page 15
force housing to the area just a couple blocks south of Henry Ford Hospital, plus some 38,000 square feet of entertainment and retail space to be occupied by tenants like Marble Bar, which is opening a nearly 9,000-squarefoot outpost called the Lincoln Factory there, and Michigan & Trumbull, the popular Corktown pizzeria that’s relocating in the coming months.
See DREAMTROIT on Page 16
BY KIRK PINHODowntown Detroit’s rst new-construction hotel in many years has pushed forward to a May opening despite challenges ranging from the death of one of its developers to the COVID-19 pandemic, which sent construction and the hospitality industry into a tailspin and also forced developers to pivot from a previous o ce component.
e $70 million, 154-room hotel at the corner of West Lafayette Boulevard and ird Avenue is a mix of old and new.
Troy-based Koucar Manage-
ment and Detroit-based e Means Group Inc. and Holdwick Land Development LLC refurbished the old WWJ 950 AM studio building — most recently known as the Walker-Roehrig Building — and added pre-fabricated rooms and other features to it.
It’s been a long journey, with construction starting in 2019. e next year, Eric Means, head of the Means Group, died unexpectedly and Means’ widow, Tracy, took the reins of his company.
Ultimately parent company Choice Hotels International is responsible for determining the ofcial opening day, said Dawn Barth, director of sales and marketing for the Cambria.
See HOTEL on Page 17
How the Dreamtroit development put together a funky nancing mix to make an artists’ retreat. | By KIRK PINHO
CONVERSATION: Benji Rosenzweig forged powerful partnership by asking for help.A crowd watches the Step Afrika performance at University Musical Society in Ann Arbor. PETER SMITH PHOTOGRAPHY/UMS Co-owners Matthew Naimi, left, and Oren Goldenberg pose at their Dreamtroit development. | NIC ANTAYA/CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS
largest donations ever from the foundation. It comes as COVID relief increases in Supplemental Nutrition Assistance Program benefits extended to eligible Michigan residents ended in February at a time when higher food costs due to rising inflation are impacting folks.
THE NEWS: Starting this summer, Cadillac will allow buyers of the brand’s upcoming Celestiq ultraluxury electric sedan to personalize their vehicles through a concierge service at General Motors Co.’s Global Technical Center campus in Warren.
WHY IT MATTERS: Cadillac will select buyers for the Celestiq beginning this spring, and the rst personalization concierge visits at Cadillac House will begin in late summer, the brand said. e bespoke Celestiq will be hand-built in limited quantities at GM’s Tech Center.
THE NEWS: DTE Energy Foundation has made a $3 million grant to support emergency food assistance as public bene t increases issued during the pandemic come to an end.
WHY IT MATTERS: This is one of the
THE NEWS: e U.S. gambling industry is adopting a new responsible marketing code that will ban sports books from partnering with colleges to promote sports wagering, bar payments to college and amateur athletes for using their name, image or likeness, and end the use of the terms “free” or “risk-free” to describe promotional bets.
WHY IT MATTERS: ere are ve partnerships between the gambling industry and colleges that promote or advertise sports betting. ey include a deal between Michigan State University and Caesars Entertainment that is reported by the State News as worth $9 million.
THE NEWS: e Michigan Department of Environment, Great Lakes and Energy is preparing to impose a ne of $371,454 against Stellantis NV for air
pollution at the automaker’s Warren Truck Assembly Plant, which produces Jeep Wagoneers and Ram Classic pickups.
WHY IT MATTERS: In addition to the ne to be paid into the state’s general fund, the proposed consent order stipulates that Stellantis must obtain a permit to modify and comply with certain emission limits. e proposed order is up for public comment until April 26.
THE NEWS: Auburn Hills-based BorgWarner Inc. plans to invest $20.6 million and add 186 jobs in metro Detroit as the supplier accelerates its electric vehicle business.
WHY IT MATTERS: BorgWarner is looking to set up new EV labs, scale up manufacturing of its DC fast chargers and increase output of battery packs, according to a brie ng memo from the Michigan Economic Development Corp., whose Michigan Strategic Fund board approved a $1.86 million performance-based grant for it.
Four metro Detroit chefs and a wine shop/restaurant in Ann Arbor were named nalists Wednesday in the prestigious annual James Beard Restaurant and Chef Awards for 2023.
Hajime Sato of Sozai in Clawson was named one of ve nalists in the United States in the overall Outstanding Chef category.
Vying for the title of Best Chef: Great Lakes region are Omar Anani from Sa ron De Twah, Andy Hollyday from Selden Standard and Sarah Welch of Marrow. e Detroit chefs took three of the venalist spots in that category, which recognizes chefs from Michigan, Illinois, Indiana and Ohio.
Spencer made the cut as one of ve nalists in the outstanding wine and beverage program category.
Welch said the James Beard nomination is big for her and Marrow.
“It’s very hard to stay relevant and talked about after almost ve years, so to see us and other Detroit longtimes on the list like (Hollyday) and (Anani) really does our heart good,” Welch said in an email to Crain’s. “It shows that it’s not only the shiny and new things that get attention, but that you can be an establishment that stands the test of time, plugging away (on) what matters, and that’s what warrants a nod from such a reputable institution like James Beard.” e Sa ron De Twah chef said the nomination says more about the people he surrounds himself with than his excellence at his craft.
Spencer wine shop and restaurant in Ann Arbor was named a 2023 James Beard Awards nalist for its wine program.|
Corporations and associations might not yet be hosting in-person events at the scale they once did, but the state’s top meeting and convention venues are optimistic about their recovery in the coming two years.
e Center for Exhibition Industry Research’s CEIR Total Index, a measure of global convention business performance, was about 22.3 percent lower at the end of 2022 than in 2019 but still showed vast improvement over 2020 and 2021. ose COVID-19 pandemic years saw declines of 98.3 percent and 50 percent from 2019
convention business, respectively, according to a December report from Tradeshow Executive.
e report projects 2023 could continue to be a challenging year for the exhibition industry as a possible recession looms, but a full recovery is expected in 2024.
Still, executives at some of Michigan’s largest convention and meeting venues say they are on the road to recovery. How each of these venues is doing, the executives said, stems from factors such as location, venue size, availability of local labor and ability to ll in the gaps in one category with business from another.
Claude Molinari is president and CEO of Visit Detroit, the convention and visitors bureau that’s funded by room assessments from metro Detroit hotels. He said his group is budgeting for business this year to be about 95 percent of what it was in 2019 based on the projected number of hotel stays.
e trade shows and conventions that Huntington Place and Suburban Collection Showplace host are a big driver of those overnight stays, Molinari said.
A decade before Rosa Parks became a civil rights icon for refusing to give up her seat on a segregated bus, Sarah Elizabeth Ray fought to keep her seat on the Bob-Lo Boat. Her court victories set the stage for Supreme Court decisions ending legal segregation, but her name and story faded into obscurity. In recent years, the home where she later created the Action House community center came close to demolition. But Ray may soon get her due. Tuesday, the Detroit Land Bank Authority voted to sell the Sarah Elizabeth Ray House for $1 to a local businessperson who would like to turn it into a house museum.
Shannon Steel said she hadn’t heard of Ray before reading reporting about the plight of her home, but “it didn’t sit right in my spirit that no one would” step up to save the house.
“I just felt bad because the lady sacri ced so much,” she said. “It brought tears to my eyes for me to see that somebody could be so monumental and nobody would preserve the property.”
As a 24-year-old in 1945, Ray was denied a seat on the S.S. Columbia, for which she had a ticket, because she was Black. She sued the Bob-Lo Excursion Co. with the backing of the Detroit NAACP. Her victory at the U.S. Supreme Court, with representation by future Jus-
tice urgood Marshall, is credited with paving the way for the Brown v. Board of Education decision, which ended racial segregation in public schools.
“She was still mad about that day in 1945. It was just degrading to her. e sting just did not go away,” Desiree Cooper, the co-founder of the Sarah E. Ray Project, said last fall. Cooper, who met with Ray months before her death in 2006, said Ray tried to downplay her legacy. “We don’t think of the personal cost. What happens if you’re famous for the worst day of your life for the rest of your life?”
American Axle & Manufacturing Holdings Inc. is considering a $460 million electric vehicle research and supplier park adjacent to its Detroit headquarters in a project that would create 1,110 jobs, according to city documents.
e plan, called Project Orb, involves the redevelopment of the 50acre former manufacturing property near the automotive supplier’s campus at Holbrook Avenue and St. Aubin Street, along the Hamtramck border.
e “o ce/research and supplier park” would support the “concentration of the company’s EV investment in Detroit and Michigan rather than competing international and other domestic locations,” according to a project synopsis included in a city document.
e axle and auto parts manufacturer, whose largest customer is General Motors Co., is seeking $100 million in statutory and discretionary incentives from the state’s Critical Industry Program — part of the Strategic Outreach and Attraction Reserve Fund signed into law in late 2021.
In a statement to Crain’s on Wednesday, American Axle said it had “nothing to announce and no immediate plans for development. If favorable conditions present, AAM would consider investment in Detroit thanks to our positive relationship with the City.”
e Michigan Economic Development Corp., which administers state incentives, declined to provide details.
“Unfortunately, I don’t have any information to share on an American Axle investment,” spokesman Otie McKinley said in an email.
In addition to the SOAR request, Project Orb has received $5 million for site preparation through the city of Detroit Housing and Revitalization Department, which was awarded a $25 million blight elimination grant from the State Land Bank Authority.
“I JUST FELT BAD BECAUSE THE LADY SACRIFICED SO MUCH. IT BROUGHT TEARS TO MY EYES FOR ME TO SEE THAT SOMEBODY COULD BE SO MONUMENTAL AND NOBODY WOULD PRESERVE THE PROPERTY.”
—Shannon Steel, new owner, Sarah Elizabeth Ray house
Expect to see work at the old Michigan state fairgrounds site ramping up as crews start work on the new transit hub planned for the property.
City o cials told me that materials and a construction trailer are slated to be delivered so underground utility installations can begin, with an ultimate goal of converting the 52,000-square-foot former dairy cattle barn into the new hub that is to serve both Detroit Department of Transportation and Suburban Mobility Authority on Regional Transit — DDOT and SMART, for short — buses, but also other transportation forms like MoGo, the bike sharing program.
Selective demolition on the north (where buses will exit) and south (where buses will enter) sides of the dairy cattle barn, which should have 10 new DDOT and SMART bus pullin areas, is to begin in the middle of next month, said Donna Rice, deputy director of the Detroit Building Authority.
e interior is also slated to have a lobby and public waiting area, a ticket o ce, restrooms, and space for security and transit police, Rice said.
“We’re excited that the public will actually see more activity beginning next week,” Rice told me on ursday.
A repurposing of the dairy cattle barn was not always envisioned for this use. Originally, there was to be a newly constructed transit hub that would replace what was at Eight Mile Road and Woodward Avenue.
“But listening to the community, working with the administration and city council members, we decided to do an adaptive reuse looking at the Coliseum and or the dairy cattle barn building to see if we can reuse one of those facilities into a more robust transit, because that’s what ridership really needed,” Tyrone Clifton, director of the DBA, said.
e plan to reuse the dairy cattle building and the portico was announced in November 2021. at
building’s future, plus others on the site, have long been a focal point for preservationists. ey were originally slated to be torn down for the project, although the city did a feasibility study on saving them and ultimately pivoted.
Clifton called it “a more inclusive property that’s not just a bus station, but a transit facility with an outdoor plaza that people can use and activate.”
e overall project is expected to cost $31.5 million, with $7 million of that coming from a joint venture between Detroit-based Sterling Group and Dallas-based Hillwood Enterprises LP, which is developing a massive chunk of the former state fairgrounds site (but not all of it).
at includes not just the transit center, but also community and retail space, partial demolition of the coliseum, demolition of the land under the coliseum into a new public plaza and green space, said John Roach, director of media relations for Mayor Mike Duggan.
At the time the plan was announced, Duggan said the facility would serve some 30,000 DDOT and SMART riders per week.
Contractors on the project are Detroit-based Ideal Group and Detroit-based DLZ Corp., an architecture rm with an o ce in Detroit.
e transit facility is but one component of a broader project at the state fairgrounds site that is anchored by the state’s largest Amazon.com Inc. facility, which is complete but is still ramping up operations. Seattle-based Amazon said earlier this month that it was hiring 1,200 as it sought to fully open the facility this year.
Some operations have begun in the 3.8-million-square-foot property.
e JV is also working on another smaller building already under construction on the site, although its ultimate occupant is not yet known. It’s expected to be about 292,000 square feet, per marketing materials from the South eld o ce of Colliers International Inc., which has the listing.
Sterling Group and Hillwood paid $9 million for the site and no city tax breaks or incentives have been involved. e city paid $7 million for it in April 2020. e lack of tax incentives and the fact that the JV paid the appraised value of the land allowed it to skirt the city’s community bene ts ordinance process, which is triggered at $75 million.
e $400 million facility started construction in late 2020.
Contact:
While Huntington Place o cials did not respond to requests for revenue gures and event numbers, Molinari said the 923,000-square-foot venue nished 2022 well below 2019 revenue levels because the North American International Auto Show did not meet its performance goals with fewer manufacturers participating.
But Molinari sees an opportunity for Huntington Place to lean into and repeat the successes it did have in 2022. ese included three conventions that broke pro tability records for non-automotive shows: a 3D printing conference called RAPID + TCT hosted by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, the Automate show by A3 and KubeCon, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation’s annual conference.
“In 2022, coming out of the pandemic, we had the three most pro table (non-auto) shows in the history of the convention center, so there was some real great progress from that standpoint, and then certainly those shows are scheduled to come back (in future years),” he said.
Molinari said attendance at many of the Suburban Collection Showplace events in Novi last year outpaced 2019 numbers, such as the Michigan State Fair, which saw a 26 percent attendance spike over 2019. Similarly, e Battery Show, Foam Expo, Adhesives & Bonding Expo and Ceramics Expo all outpaced 2019 attendance, he said.
“I think they’re only going to grow,” he said. “Certainly, e Battery Show is picking up every square inch of the Suburban Collection Showplace (and) they have to put tents outside to feed people because they do not have enough space to accommodate everything that show brings to the table.”
Molinari said 2023 event numbers at the 392,000-square-foot venue are expected to be on par with 2019.
“ ey’re coming out of the pandemic strong,” he said.
Experience Grand Rapids reported last week that Kent County logged a total of 481 individual meetings, sporting events and group tours that drew 443,024 attendees to the region in 2022, restoring 92 percent of the number of groups convening in Grand Rapids when compared to 2019.
Doug Small, president and CEO of EXGR, said Grand Rapids’ near-recov-
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“ is is a competitive project that requires exibility on uses of $5 million to support site readiness on the site,” the city document said.
Details of the possible project come as American Axle works to reinvent its business for the electric transformation of the auto industry. Rooted in internal combustion engine drivetrains, the company is investing heavily in e-axle technology in e orts to secure a spot in battery-powered vehicles.
Huntington Place, Detroit
The Henry Ford, Dearborn
Suburban Collection Showplace, Novi
UWM Complex, Pontiac Ford Field, Detroit
Hope College Conferences and Events, Holland
DeVos Place, Grand Rapids
GVSU-Pew Grand Rapids Campus
Kalamazoo County Expo Center, Kalamazoo Van Andel Arena, Grand Rapids
ery of conventions and meetings is partly attributable to its size and status as an up-and-coming city.
“Mid-size cities like ourselves, and resorts, have sprung back almost to where we were pre-pandemic,” he said. “… We had a ton of momentum built up prior to the pandemic. Grand Rapids was starting to become more recognized, was really starting to move along, and I think even though we went dark for a couple of years, that momentum was easy for us to pick back up and continue.”
At 234,000 square feet, DeVos Place is Kent County’s largest convention center. Rich MacKeigan is the regional general manager for ASM Global Grand Rapids, which manages DeVos Place.
MacKeigan was not available for an interview but said in an email to Crain’s that DeVos Place hosted 98 conventions and meetings in 2022, down from 178 in 2019, and it is projecting it will host 111 in 2023 based on current bookings.
e venue generated about $6.2 million in revenue last year, including from concerts in the venue’s performance hall, which was down about 16 percent from its 2019 revenue of $7.4 million. He projects 2023 revenue will nish just under $7 million, or about 6 percent less than in 2019.
MacKeigan said scal year 2023, which ends June 30, will probably be the rst typical year following the pandemic.
“We were still dealing with events rescheduling during the rst half of FY2022 and saw more ‘normal’ business in the second half of that scal year,” he said in the email. “Longstanding repeat clients, local and state, really helped to bring us back to a sense of normalcy.”
Small, of EXGR, said that while individual corporate travel might not be driving as many hotel stays as before the pandemic, Grand Rapids is doing well booking state and national professional association conferences and expos. Some of the noteworthy con-
ventions at DeVos Place last year included the American Fisheries Society’s Joint Aquatic Sciences Meeting, the U.S. Travel Association’s Educational Seminar for Tourism Organizations and Encounter Ministries’ 2022 conference.
Derek Emerson is director of events, conferences and the Haworth Hotel on the campus of Hope College in Holland. Hope has about 300,000 square feet of convention and meeting space spread across the DeVos Fieldhouse, Haworth Hotel, concert halls, theaters and other meeting rooms.
Emerson said it’s di cult to compare 2019 to 2022 because the Haworth Hotel was closed for a major renovation that year and was set to reopen right when the pandemic hit but didn’t. Now that it’s open, the college is seeing more bookings from corporate and association groups than it did in 2019.
Many of the events held on campus are summer camps. For this summer, camp attendance is expected to be about 80 percent of a typical pre-pandemic year. But the conference business is expected to match pre-pandemic levels, Emerson said, thanks to meeting space that went online at the hotel.
“We’re feeling like we’re back on track,” he said. “We’re still seeing some hesitancy from outside groups who are renting spaces. … A lot of them, their budgets really got hurt over COVID, and they may not have the money to rent space. I know some have cut back on the number of events they’re doing just in general, as people are still easing back in, but it hasn’t been a signi cant decrease.”
Emerson said he expects Hope will generate about $4 million in event revenue this year, surpassing its 2019 event revenue of $3 million, helped by
About 40 percent of American Axle’s sales last year were tied to General Motors, which recently expanded production of Factory Zero a mile or so from the axle supplier’s headquarters. e plant houses production for Hummer EV pickups and SUVs, and was upgraded to also assemble the Silverado and GMC Sierra Denali electric pickups.
American Axle also sells parts to Ford Motor Co. and Stellantis NV. e company purchased Tekfor Group last year in a deal valued at more than $135 million, signaling a serious EV pivot for the company.
CEO David Dauch has been unapologetic about the company’s pursuit to continue growing its gas-powered business, even as competitors such as
academic and church conference bookings and regular meetings of Haworth Corp. and the Holland-based Michigan West Coast Chamber of Commerce.
Grand Traverse Resort and Spa in Acme, just outside Traverse City, books events for many Michigan-based associations in sectors including technology, banking, real estate, education and government. e resort has about 86,500 square feet of meeting space spread across 11 venues.
e venue gets an assist in bookings from having airlift access at Cherry Capital Airport in Traverse City, said Katie Leonard, director of sales.
While Leonard did not disclose revenues, she said that in 2019 the resort booked about 60,000 hotel room nights for a total of 464 groups holding events. In 2022, that number was down to about 50,000 room nights across 349 groups.
So far this year, Grand Traverse Resort has booked 266 groups. Leonard expects the year will close out very close to 2022 numbers. She projects it will book more than 400 groups in 2024 and make a full recovery by 2025.
Leonard said Grand Traverse Resort’s room bookings are hurt when there’s low attendance at events. Attendance is low now partly due to the labor shortage at venues and for customers.
“(For) some of the trade shows and things like that, companies that would send people to be exhibitors, they just don’t have as many employees … to be able to maximize that,” she said.
Fortunately, Leonard said her sales sta uses revenue management systems to help it target areas where it can make up for lost group business. Some of these include social events such as weddings, wine and food tastings, and golf outings.
e Lansing Center is experiencing the slowest recovery of any convention venue Crain’s interviewed. It recovered just more than 70 percent of its pre-pandemic business last year after having record attendance of 220,000 visitors at 255 events that brought in $6.1 million in operating revenues in 2019.
Its operating revenue for 2022, not including $1.7 million in one-time American Rescue Plan Act grants, was $4.5 million after hosting 180 events that brought in 142,000 people, according to Scott Keith, president and CEO of the Lansing Entertainment & Public Facilities Authority, which manages the Lansing Center.
Contact: rachel.watson@crain.com
(989) 533-9685; @RachelWatson86
BorgWarner Inc. say they are shedding ICE business as fast as possible.
Questions about the terminal value of American Axle (NYSE: AXL) have caused skittishness among investors, though the company has reshaped its messaging to center more on EV product development.
American Axle was said to be in the market for an M&A transaction, but Dauch has repeatedly denied talks of a sale.
American Axle’s revenue and pro ts improved in the fourth quarter, but like other automotive suppliers, it continues to struggle with production volatility.
Contact: knagl@crain.com; (313) 446-0337; @kurt_nagl
Michigan entrepreneurs have a long track record of innovation and job creation. As they chase their dreams, opportunity is created for families and the economic base that our state depends upon is built.
Since the depths of the pandemic, Michigan has seen an explosion of entrepreneurship as more people are starting small businesses. If we want this growth to be sustainable, we need real partnership with state departments like the Unemployment Insurance Agency.
Demolitions represent failures of the past. But they also mean hope for the future.
e city of Detroit saw encouraging demolition news on a couple of fronts last week, and both are good news in di erent ways.
Demolition of a long-vacant La Choy food factory on Schoolcraft Road started last Monday and is due to be fully completed in coming weeks. e demolition is clearing the way for the under-construction Joe Louis Greenway that will connect the city’s neighborhoods with the Detroit River.
e greenway, when complete, will result in nearly 30 miles of bike paths and trails that will connect more than 20 neighborhoods with the Detroit Riverwalk, bringing easier access to one of the city’s jewels.
e tale of the La Choy Chinese food empire and its roots in Detroit is quintessential — a brand that grew up in Detroit and then moved elsewhere under new ownership. It’s not entirely clear how long the building has been vacant, but it’s been considered a dangerous building by the city for 13 years.
Another demolition already under way, this one of the controversial Detroit ermal Systems incinerator at I-94 and I-75, is likely to feel more real by June, when a giant smokestack that local residents complained caused odors and fumes comes down.
But even before then, the city has seen some bene t from the demolition. e contractor, Homrich, is making money on the deal by recovering scrap metal at the site and paying some of that money back to the city, so far to the tune of about $549,000, city ocials say.
e incinerator cost about $500 million to build when it opened a little over 30 years ago, and it closed in 2019 after Detroit ermal decided to close rather than upgrade the incinerator to reduce emissions.
Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan has pinned a target on commercial blight from rotting industrial buildings, creating a list of high-priority properties to aim for reuse or demolition, which was the subject of a Crain’s Detroit Forum in February.
To be sure, these demolitions are just two examples of incremental progress on a problem where an enormous amount of work remains to shed Detroit’s reputation as a city of ruins.
But economists sometimes talk about green shoots — the rst signs of new growth when an economy comes out of recession.
e clearing of the way for the Joe Louis Greenway and the elimination of a trash-burning incinerator are, quite literally, green shoots for Detroit’s future. We would do well to celebrate the small victories they are.
Small businesses are our state’s largest job provider, and recently we’ve seen small business growth that outpaced the rest of the country. e pandemic has proven what we knew: when times get tough, Michiganders get creative, get innovative, and get to work.
If we want Michigan to be the best place to do business, our state needs to reward and support grassroots entrepreneurship. ere is a lot of attention paid to attracting new businesses, but it is more important that we focus on establishing a supportive environment for existing Michigan businesses and ensure that our state government is a strong partner in that endeavor.
e Michigan UIA is critical to this mission, yet historically, the organization has not always provided Michiganders the quality services they deserve. Small business owners have noticed a marked change in action and engagement with the appointment of Director Julia Dale. She has made it her mission to support Michigan workers and businesses, ght fraud and come up with real solutions to build a better system.
In addition to the department’s work going after fraud and xing previous overpay-
ments and issues that were aggravated by the pandemic, the UIA’s newly formed Modernization Workgroup is an innovative approach to building real change. e workgroup is made up of voices from Michigan’s business, labor, and jobless advocacy organizations. Among its goals are stabilizing, growing and protecting the UI trust fund during future adverse economic conditions, creating ways to support businesses and their workforce, streamlining communications and interactions to make it easier for Michigan workers and businesses to navigate the UI system and ensuring payments arrive in a timely and e cient manner.
As small business owners know all too well, time is precious. Small business owners wear several hats, work long hours and often are working hard to turn a pro t and be able to support their workforce. By establishing this coalition, it indicates not only the agency’s willingness to listen to some of its toughest critics but allows us to best inform the agency of challenges each group faces, tackle issues proactively and build a stronger system.
As the Small Business Association of Michigan’s own Entrepreneurship Scorecard indicates, in the last two years, annual revenues for small businesses in Michigan grew over 24 percent — and we’re seeing this growth across a wide range of industries. With the expansion of the state’s Earned Income Tax Credit, we are hopeful that Michigan’s labor force participation rate will recover to at least pre-pandemic levels. ese developments are encouraging, but we need responsive, e cient government to make it sustainable.
is new workgroup — and SBAM’s participation in it — shows that the leadership of Michigan’s unemployment agency is dedicated to real engagement with stakeholders. Director Dale has shown interest and empathy through listening and learning from our experiences. at’s a great start and it gives us more con dence that our work together will bear fruit. It is a demonstration of real leadership, and it’s going to result in a transformed system for business owners and unemployed workers alike.
ENORMOUS AMOUNT OF WORK REMAINS TO SHED DETROIT’S REPUTATION AS A CITY OF RUINS.
SHERRI WELCH McBrady said she also sought advice from men.
When it comes to advancing in the workplace, women have a superpower, and they might not even know it.
Staying quiet and not talking about their accomplishments has been normalized for many women, but when they start speaking up, that can change everything, says Byna Elliott, a managing director for JPMorgan Chase & Co.
“You being in the room with a different voice is your super power,” said Elliott, the rm’s global head of advancing Black pathways. “You have to lean in and be comfortable with being uncomfortable.”
Elliot was a panelist at the inaugural Crain’s Power Breakfast alongside Brie Riley, director of innovation at Henry Ford Health, Katy McBrady, president of Atwater Brewery, and Robin Terry, chairwoman and CEO of Motown Museum.
e theme for the rst of the quarterly events was “women who mean business,” and the panelists were clear on what that meant to them.
e panel shared their experiences in the workplace and advice for the women coming behind them during the event sponsored by Delta Dental of Michigan and Henry Ford Health.
e quarterly breakfast series, of which ursday’s was the inaugural edition and attended by about 200 people, aims to connect business decision leaders, policymakers and industry experts.
Other upcoming Power Breakfasts include supply chain on June 28, electric vehicles on Sept. 27 and the business of sports on Dec. 5.
Simply remaining silent can make it seem like you lack con dence, McBrady said. But, the best way to learn is to ask, she said, and typically people who know the answer you seek are happy to help.
“It’s about nding that courage to speak up,” and to do so publicly when the opportunity presents itself to improve the landscape for all women, McBrady said.
Women often know what they’re good at, Terry added. “But we worry our light is going to shine so bright it will make others uncomfortable. We have to get comfortable being bright.
Among other lessons the power panel members said they’ve learned along the way is the importance of surrounding yourself with trusted mentors.
Elliott said she almost didn’t pursue an opportunity at JPMorgan Chase when approached by a supervisor because she lacked con dence.
Her “tribe” of women friends and mentors, who includes retired Neighborhood Services Organization CEO Sheilah Clay, staged an intervention.
ey urged her to write down what it would take to overcome her fear. She did and got the job and several promotions over the next four years, she said. “I wouldn’t have taken that leap without that sister tribe,” Elliott said. “I thank them every day.”
In assembling your tribe, gure out what skills you lack and who will be truth tellers, people who will give you real advice and not be in competition with you, Elliott advised. You’ll know some of those people, but others will be new con dantes who have skills and talents that complement yours.
While serving as a Bud Light Girl to pay for law school, she began learning about the business of beer.
“I didn’t know you could sell beer for a living, but I looked around and realized there’s all these executives selling beer,” she said. “And there’s a good pathway for beer, and I like beer, so...”
Terry said she hasn’t actively sought mentors as much as found they are brought into her life.
“Often times, those are people who’ve done what I’m attempting to do,” and can provide knowledge and advice on mistakes to avoid, she said.
While mentors are important, so, too, are sponsors, Elliott said. “Sponsors sell and mentors tell.”
“If that person is not a person you can be vulnerable with, that’s a sponsor,” she said.
Contact: swelch@crain.com; (313) 446-1694; @SherriWelch
$10 million loan program aimed at women, entrepreneurs of color. PAGE 10
In early 2022, Rocket Mortgage had an award-winning Super Bowl commercial with actress Anna Kendrick. e ad poked a bit of fun at the state of the highly competitive housing market, with Barbie beating out Better O er Betty and Cash O er Carl to secure her “dream house.”
Flash forward one year, and the Detroit-based mortgage lender — the agship company within billionaire Dan Gilbert’s Rocket Companies Inc. (NYSE: RKT) — opted against airing a commercial during the Super Bowl, one of the most watched events of the year, as managing expenses has become a priority.
e shift underscores the current beleaguered state of the mortgage industry, as rising interest rates have crimped demand and therefore pro ts for the lenders. As something of a mechanism to ght back against that challenged dynamic, Rocket and other mortgage lenders have been rolling out a host of programs — ranging from faster closings to reduced fees — that experts say could help boost volume in the short term until rates go down, bringing another up-cycle for the residential real estate industry.
Mortgage lenders are rolling out a variety of promotional programs including:
Rocket Mortgage:
RateShield, which allows some buyers to lock in an interest rate for up to 90 days while shopping for a home.
BorrowSmart, a reduced down payment program o ered through Freddie Mac.
In ation Buster, a temporary rate buydown.
Rocket Visa Signature credit card,
“Lenders in times like this are always looking for ways to distinguish themselves from somebody else, and the last thing they want to do is o er lower rates,” said Guy Cecala, the executive chairman of industry publication Inside Mortgage Finance. “It’s all fairly gimmicky … but it’s something to try to publicize that they’re di erent from the guy down
which allows the user to earn 5 percent back, up to $8,000, to use toward closing costs and down payments.
UWM:
Game On pricing, in which the company dropped rates across the board by 50-100 basis points.
UWM also o ers at-rate credit reports and closing fees and no escrow waiver fee on certain loans.
Guaranteed Rate:
Same Day Mortgage, which o ers loan approval to “most” borrowers in less than 24 hours.
the street. And that’s getting to be harder and harder to do, because what one lender can do, another lender can probably do just as well.”
While acknowledging that some programs or products currently being o ered by some lenders may t into the idea of a gimmick mentioned by Cecala, executives at Rocket Mortgage say that building
“trust” between the lender and the customer is paramount.
“A gimmick is a short-term thing,” Rocket Mortgage CEO Bob Walters told Crain’s. “What we sell — and our relationship with our clients — is (built on) trust. Same thing with Realtors. ey have to trust that the client is going to close, and that the things we say that we’re going to do we actually do. And so whether it be programs (built) around speed to close or veri ed underwrite … those things are all very real.”
For Rocket Mortgage, long the nation’s largest lender up until recently being surpassed by rival United Wholesale Mortgage based in Pontiac, recent promotional rollouts have included:
RateShield, which allows some buyers to lock in an interest rate for up to 90 days while shopping for a home.
See LENDERS on Page 9
From Page 8
BorrowSmart, a reduced down payment program o ered through Freddie Mac. To qualify, borrowers must have an income equal to or less than 140 percent of their local area median income. e program is being offered by Rocket in counties within the following metro areas: Atlanta; Chicago; Detroit; El Paso; Houston; McAllen, Texas; Memphis; Miami; Philadelphia, and St. Louis.
In ation Buster, a temporary rate buydown the lender has offered in recent months, allowing borrowers to potentially have a lower interest rate at the beginning point of a mortgage with the hope of re nancing later on when rates come down.
Taken together, the goal is to have a wide mix of products on hand to meet the wide-ranging needs of the home-buying public, according to Walters.
“ ere’s no silver bullet when it comes to nancing a home,” Walters said. “So (we’re) really trying to nd out what challenges people are having and nd products and pricing in di erent situations that we can use to help people get into that home.”
Despite the bevy of o erings for in-
ation-beleaguered consumers, it’s been a tough go the last year or more for the company, which saw its total pro t plummet 88 percent last year from 2021.
And while more products and programs may help on the margins, the company’s closed loan volume last year was still down 62 percent from 2021, a record year for the mortgage industry.
Of course, Rocket is far from alone in rolling out products to dangle in front of buyers who might be reluc-
tant to take on new debt during a time of economic uncertainty.
Chicago-based lender Guaranteed Rate earlier this month began advertising that it would begin o ering loan approval to “most” borrowers in under 24 hours, as Crain’s Chicago Business reported.
With the time saved, buyers “can move on to the fun parts of buying a house,” like choosing paint colors and couches, Guaranteed Rate’s Chief Innovation O cer Paul Anastos told Crain’s Chicago.
Rocket rival UWM, meanwhile, did manage to parlay a cut-rate program into signi cant gains over the last year.
e Pontiac-based wholesale lender — meaning it works exclusively with independent brokers, as opposed as working directly with consumers — last year rolled out its so-called Game On pricing, in which the company dropped rates across the board by 50-100 basis points.
UWM CEO Mat Ishbia has stressed that the initiative helps facilitate the company’s goal of growing the wholesale channel of the mortgage market. e Game On initiative will bring more brokers and loan o cers to the channel, Ishbia has said.
In its most-recent earnings report, UWM reported that it had achieved 54 percent market share in the wholesale channel and had 5.8 percent market share in the overall industry, just two-tenths of a percent behind leader Rocket Mortgage, according to data from Inside Mortgage Finance.
UWM also reported a net loss of $62.5 million for the closing quarter of last year, compared to pro t of $325.6 million for the same time period in 2021. For the full year, UWM reported nearly $932 million in net income compared with about $1.6 billion last year.
e year 2022 and the early part of this year have not been kind to mortgage lenders in general. Lenders
have drastically cut sta and some — including Wells Fargo, once the largest lender in the country — have exited mortgage lending in general amid the contracting and competitive landscape.
So for those that remain, one question is how do you best market yourself in an environment where macroeconomics crimps your overall business model?
It’s a question that Walters with Rocket Mortgage said the company has thought about in recent months, particularly as cutting expenses has been a top priority. All told, total expenses at Rocket’s parent company fell to $986 million last year, a yearover-year decline of more than 43 percent.
While Walters said the company’s marketing budget remains “substantial,” it fell by about one-quarter yearover-year last year to about $945.7 million. Still, the executive says the company remains in a strong position to continue building its brand, largely via direct-to-consumer marketing e orts.
“It’s a market right now where the mortgage industry is transitioning rapidly,” Walters said. “And you’re seeing a lot of folks exit the space. It’s one of those times where it’s good to have the brand we have and it’s good to have the balance sheet that we have, and those are the kinds of assets that really become valuable in tough times.”
Contact: nmanes@crain.com; (313) 446-1626; @nickrmanes
Working alongside our clients, our experienced team creates tailored solutions to meet their unique financing needs.
Our Commercial Banking team facilitated a combination tax exempt and non-tax exempt bond financing for a private university. We were able to deliver on a fixed rate bond, despite the rapidly rising interest rate environment, while simultaneously implementing a full suite of treasury management services for our client.
Let
BY JAY DAVIS
Women entrepreneurs across Michigan are getting a new source of much-needed nancial help from one of the state’s leading women’s groups.
Michigan Women Forward in March announced the launch of a $10 million microbusiness loan program for women and entrepreneurs of color. e program, called the Michigan Economic Opportunity Fund, o ers funds to small business owners who may not qualify for traditional loans through banks or other nancial institutions.
Approved entrepreneurs will receive loans ranging from $5,000 to $50,000, according to Michigan Women Forward President and CEO Carolyn Cassin. e microloan program will o er opportunities to women entrepreneurs who identify as socially and economically disadvantaged due to a lack of access to capital and credit.
“You have a lot of women business owners with great products and services. ey just need a boost that can push them to another level,” Cassin told Crain’s. “Some business owners have to go after alternative ways to get funding to scale up their businesses, and they should not have to do that. Small businesses are the backbone of
our economy. is program will help so many people and communities.
We’re really excited about this.”
Funding for the new program comes from a variety of partners, including:
$1.5 million investment from program launch partner Huntington Bank.
$1.5 million from Ballmer Group, run by Los Angeles Clippers owner and Detroit native Steve Ballmer and his wife Connie.
$1.494 million from a State Small Business Credit Initiative loan.
$1 million from the Michigan Economic Development Corp.
e remaining funds from private partners will be announced later this year.
e SSBCI program provides federal funding to states to aid small businesses in accessing capital to invest in job-creating opportunities as the country emerges from the COVID-19 pandemic. e funding comes as part of the federal government’s SSBCI 2.0 program, for which Michigan received its rst round of funding in August.
Michigan Women Forward will manage the Michigan Economic Opportunity Fund by processing applications through its website, along with referrals made by its banking institu-
tion partners. Huntington Bank will provide an additional pool of applicants through its Lift Local Business program that supports minority-, women- and veteran-owned small businesses.
Sandy Pierce, Huntington Bank senior executive vice president and chair of Michigan, said such programs are important to the nancial institution.
“Programs like the Michigan Economic Opportunity Fund are excellent resources to aid business owners who may not otherwise qualify for traditional loans through banks or other nancial institutions,” Pierce said in a news release. “We are proud to work with Michigan Women Forward, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation, and the Ballmer Group to bring this new lending solution to fruition.”
such as entrepreneurs of color and women, who have been locked out of traditional capital markets,” Wells said in the release. “We are thrilled to support this fund as part of Ballmer Group’s commitment to working with government, nonpro t, and business partners to help strengthen our communities.”
—Carolyn Cassin, president and CEO, Michigan Women Forward
e program can help in cutting o some systemic inequities, Ballmer Group Southeast Michigan Executive Director Kylee Mitchell Wells said.
“CDFIs play a vital role in ensuring that low-cost capital is available to more communities and individuals,
An average loan managed by MWF is $25,000, so the Michigan Economic Opportunity Fund will be able to assist approximately 400 entrepreneurs. Last year, the nonpro t provided 91 loans for a total of $2.6 million for primarily women-owned businesses. Women and entrepreneurs of color can apply for Michigan Economic Opportunity Fund loans by visiting the Michigan Women Forward website. Questions about the program can be emailed to microloan@miwf.org or call (313) 962-1920.
Contact: nmanes@crain.com; (313) 446-1626; @nickrmanes
“YOU HAVE A LOT OF WOMEN BUSINESS OWNERS WITH GREAT PRODUCTS AND SERVICES. THEY JUST NEED A BOOST THAT CAN PUSH THEM TO ANOTHER LEVEL.”
Members of the Detroit City Council approved a raft of tax incentives for $1.53 billion in proposed District Detroit projects spearheaded by the Ilitch family and billionaire developer Stephen Ross.
e late Tuesday afternoon vote on a $616.3 million state transformational brown eld plan sends the incentive package to the Michigan Strategic Fund for approval, tentatively expected to come in late April. e council also approved establishing Neighborhood Enterprise Zone districts for incentives totaling $37 million for four properties and $96 million in Public Act 210 Commercial Rehabilitation Act districts for four properties.
e votes capped o a meeting during which some sometimes testy public negotiations unfolded between council members and representatives of the Ilitch family’s Olympia Development of Michigan and Ross’ Related Cos., the New York City-based mega-developer. Representatives from Mayor Mike Duggan’s administration as well as the Detroit Economic Growth Corp. were also involved.
Two weeks ago the council postponed voting on the measures to further study them and seek additional concessions.
Council President Mary She eld was the lone no vote on the transformational brown eld plan, which is a state incentive package meant to spur large-scale developments under a rarely used Michigan law approved several years ago. She eld had expressed concern over the course of the meeting that there was not a rm enough commitment from Olympia and Related to contract with disadvantaged businesses over the course of the development e ort, the scope of which includes 10 projects with 1.2 million square feet of new o ce space, 695 residential units (nearly 140 of which would be considered affordable), 146,000 square feet of retail and 467 hotel rooms.
“I have supported pretty much every development project in this city after I have negotiated (with developers),” She eld said. “I truly believe this is an opportunity for equity, ownership, for Black businesses to have access to what is going on in our downtown Detroit area, and we can’t get clear language … on disadvantaged businesses.”
Ultimately, the council signed o on a community bene ts agreement previously negotiated and approved by the Neighborhood Advisory Coun-
NICK MANES Rizik
Southeast Michigan venture capital rm Renaissance Venture Capital is again putting on an event this year aimed at supporting diverse founders of startup companies. e Ann Arbor-based Renaissance — a fund of funds, meaning that it invests in other VC funds, as opposed to directly into companies — on May 9 will host a virtual event aimed at highlighting startups from around the Midwest and Central U.S. led by women, people of color and other diverse communities, according to a news release.
Renaissance — which has a stated mission of bringing more VC investment to Michigan — put on a similar event last year. Last year’s DEI UnDemo Day saw more than 400 meetings between diverse founders and prospective investors, according to the release.
companies have historically provided strong overall nancial returns to investors.”
Startups participating in the event can receive consultation on accounting, marketing, public relations, legal and human resources planning for their businesses from event partners Ernst & Young, Foley & Lardner, Robar PR and Amy Cell Talent. Startups will also have the opportunity for one-on-one coaching sessions with Invest Detroit.
cil with two changes. First, there is a new provision saying the development team agrees to comply with a 2014 executive order requiring 30 percent of spending on Detroit businesses, and a 2021 executive order requiring that 51 percent of the work hours performed on publicly funded projects be performed by Detroiters.
Any nes the developers incur for not meeting the provisions of Executive Order 2021-2 will be diverted to the A ordable Housing Development Preservation Fund, rather than the Workforce Training Fund, as would
normally be the case.
Another provision requires the development team to contribute $350,000 per year for 10 years to be contributed to the A ordable Housing Development Preservation Fund. ere was also an agreement to give Detroiters living in the city for 10 years or longer priority for a ordable housing, followed by Detroiters with ve years or longer of residency and then Detroiters with three years of residency.
In a joint statement Tuesday following the votes, Olympia and Related said: “We thank the Detroit City Council, Mayor Duggan, the Neighborhood Advisory Council, and all of the Detroiters who support the future of e District Detroit and the inclusive economic impact that this project will have on our city and state, including thousands of jobs and much needed a ordable housing. We look forward to continuing our work with the Neighborhood Advisory Council, City of Detroit and the State of Michigan.”
Tuesday’s votes, particularly on the transformational brown eld plan, were needed so that Olympia and Related could get MSF approval at its April 25 meeting, thereby allowing the development team to get in the ground on its rst proposed construction project — a new o ce tower — by July or August and not “lose this construction season,” said Nicole Sherard-Freeman, Duggan’s group executive of Jobs, Economy & Detroit at Work.
At times it was a “messy” process on Tuesday, Sherard-Freeman said, with at one point a resolution on disadvantaged business hiring being drafted as the council was meeting only to realize that it would not have been enforceable. At other points, Detroit Corporation Counsel Conrad Mallett was advising members of the council that requests they were making about disadvantaged business hiring and connecting it to those businesses being based in Detroit were at odds with the state constitution and would trigger lawsuits.
“You simply can’t do it,” Mallett said. “‘Disadvantaged’ as a category, standing alone, is one thing; ‘Detroit-based,’ standing alone, is another thing; and ‘Detroit-headquartered’
is a third thing. Connecting them limits the enforceability and it is a constitutionally in rm provision inside the agreement. We would be inviting litigation and it’s not to the advantage of the city of Detroit to continue to ght this particular battle.”
Council members weren’t the only ones who had their say.
More than 110 people signed up for public comment, with over 60 in person. ey ranged from union members saying that the new construction projects would support skilled trades jobs to activists with the Detroit Peoples Platform and other organizations demanding a $25 million contribution to the A ordable Housing Leverage Fund and a 2 percent surcharge on Little Caesars Arena tickets that would go to the city.
Linda Campbell, who said she is a member of the DPP, called for the ticket surcharge, saying “Detroiters deserve a better deal.”
“Olympia, Related and their investors will make millions in pro ts from tax subsidies we give them ... it’s only fair that Detroiters bene t like all the other investors,” Campbell said.
But union member Lance Everson said “construction trades can change lives.”
“ e proposal would do a great deal for our community with the jobs that are promised,” he said.
Public comment lasted more than two hours, with supporters of both sides applauding commenters with whom they agreed.
In all, the total incentive package the Ilitch/Ross team are seeking totals about $797 million, which includes the $616.3 million in transformational brown eld funding the council has sent to the state for its consideration; $48.75 million in Downtown Development Authority funding that has already been approved for more affordable housing at deeper Area Median Income thresholds ($23.75 million) and up to $25 million for road improvements, utilities, security and public space
for the area; and
million in Commercial Rehabilitation Act and Neighborhood Enterprise Zone subsidies.
Contact: kpinho@crain.com; (313) 446-0412; @kirkpinhoCDB
“Our history at Renaissance has been one of successfully attracting the best venture capital funds from around the country to invest in regional startups,” Renaissance founder and CEO Chris Rizik said in the release. “Startups led by women, Black and Latino founders collectively receive less than 10 percent of all venture capital investments, and trends have not dramatically changed over the past decade, even though research shows that these
“
e DEI UnDemo Day meetings are connections that founders would otherwise have trouble getting, and likewise, these are startup companies that the VCs might not otherwise nd,” Rizik said in the release. “Our job is to serve as the conduit for these two important groups.”
e DEI UnDemo Day is an oshoot of Renaissance’s traditional UnDemo Day, during which Michigan startup founders and venture capital investors from around the country meet for a day. at is scheduled for Oct. 11 at Ford Field in Detroit.
Contact: nmanes@crain.com; (313) 446-1626; @nickrmanes
MORE THAN 110 PEOPLE SIGNED UP FOR PUBLIC COMMENT, WITH OVER 60 IN PERSON.
e owners of a Livonia-based family-owned business believe strong relationships and a personal touch help set them apart in a competitive industry: tea.
e proprietors of organic tea manufacturer Fraser Tea — brothers Tom, John and Bernie Fraser — are globetrotters who make up to two trips around the world each year to ensure their more than 120 varieties are produced through safe, sustainable practices.
Fraser Tea works with suppliers certi ed through the USDA National Organic Program. ose suppliers use organic farming practices, cultivating products without pesticides or other chemicals. Fraser Tea has suppliers in South Africa, India, Nepal, Sri, Lanka, Japan, China, Korea, Vietnam, Egypt, Canada and the U.S.
“Tea is never washed until it’s in your cup, so ensuring it’s organic and free of residual pesticides and herbicides is important to us,” Bernie Fraser said.
For Fraser Tea, relationships built with their suppliers make all the difference.
“Going to these other countries is really neat. It’s humbling,” Fraser said. “You realize you’re helping other communities. With a tea farm, it sort of develops into a cooperative in the community. In Nepal, we were walking on a path and saw a stone wall with prayer ags wrapped around a tea bush — the oldest tea bush in the area. at’s an honor because in their custom that bush gives us life.
“We’re passing on life through this product. It gives the people in those countries the ability to sell a product. From that, they can build pharmacies and schools. It’s an amazing thing to see, and to talk to and spend time with the farmers.”
One topic of discussion is fair pay. e Fraser brothers talk with workers, and their bosses, to ensure they’re paid fairly.
“ e tea industry is a prestigious one in China. It’s 5,000 years old,” Tom Fraser said.
GRAND RAPIDS — Developers this month will seek nal rezoning approval for a revised plan to convert a nearly 100-year-old golf course north of Grand Rapids into more than 500 units of housing after neighbors expressed near-unanimous opposition to the prior site plan.
e Alpine Township Planning Commission on March 20 voted to tentatively approve developers Dale Kraker’s and Howie Hehrer’s revised site plan and rezoning request for the Wilder Crossings housing project that’s been in the works for several years at Gracewil Country Club at 2567 Four Mile Road NW.
e Wilder Crossings project is part of a wave of housing plans in various stages of development at current and former Grand Rapids-area golf courses.
Some by-the-numbers facts about Fraser Tea:
Varieties of tea made and sold each year: More than 120.
Tea imported annually: 25,000 pounds.
Tea bags produced each year: 2.5 million.
Number of stores where Fraser Tea is sold: close to 700.
Countries Fraser Tea sources: Canada, China, India, Nepal, South Africa, Japan, Sri Lanka, Egypt, Korea, Vietnam and the U.S.
Visits to each supplier abroad per year: 1-2.
SOURCE: FRASER TEA
ose visits lead to some interesting exchanges.
“We were in China in the middle of nowhere in a tea eld. e workers were talking about our teeth,” Bernie Fraser said. “My brother had Google Translate on, so we were able to understand what they were saying. My brother started talking through Google Translate. at shows how technology bridges a lot of gaps.”
Fraser Tea purchases organic products in bulk and packages the tea blends in non-GMO, compostable sachets. Everything is done in-house at the company’s 7,500-square-foot Livonia warehouse, which the family has owned since 2011. e company has 14 employees.
e city of Livonia earlier this year recognized Fraser Tea with the Livonia Green Leaf Award for its commitment to sustainability and environmental responsibility. e award is given to businesses that work to reduce their carbon footprint and contribute to a healthier planet.
“We’ve worked with a lot of helpful people. We think this is huge in Michigan,” Tom Fraser said. “ ere
are a lot of groups who want to help us do well. We’ve got good control over the quality. It’s very sustainable in that way.
“ e bene ts of the tea are clear. Organic tea helps reduce the risks of prostate cancer, skin cancer. With more people becoming health conscious, drinking organic teas is a way we can help ourselves.”
eir practices seem to be working.
Tom Fraser projects about $1.3 million in revenue for 2023, an increase of about 20 percent from 2022. Fraser expects revenue to increase by 25 percent-30 percent year over year. at comes as the global market for organic tea is expected to more than double to $2.6 billion by 2032.
Fraser Tea, started in 2015 with a $200,000 investment with contributions from all three brothers, has built up a solid group of partners.
Fraser Tea is available in all 353 Biggby co ee locations, according to Biggby co-founder and CEO Bob Fish. It’s also available in 105 Meijer stores, 25 Kroger locations, 15 Busch’s Fresh Food Market stores, four Westborn Market locations and both Zerbo’s Market & Bistro stores. Fraser Tea is also available at Western Market in Ferndale and Horrocks markets in Lansing and Battle Creek.
e tea blends are distributed by Sysco, Cherry Capital Foods in Traverse City, Smart Business Source in Troy and Naperville, Ill.-based KeHE. About 40 percent of the company’s revenue comes from online sales, which can be made directly through the Fraser Tea website.
Biggby, headquartered in East Lansing, is Fraser Tea’s biggest partner. Biggby’s Fish said the collaboration, which began in 2018, is fruitful.
Fish said there are no set terms for Biggby’s partnership with Fraser Tea.
“Tea accounts for about 8 percent of our sales and (Fraser Tea) performs well,” Fish said in an email.
Contact: jason.davis@crain.com (313) 446-1612; @JayDavis_1981
at includes two projects in Walker at Lincoln Country Club and English Hills Country Club totaling over 800 units, as well as a conversion of e Pines golf course in Wyoming into more than 600 condos, apartments and townhomes.
Hehrer is land development manager for JTB Homes and Interra Homes, both based in the Grand Rapids suburb of Wyoming, and Kraker is lead developer on the project and a partner in JTB and Interra.
e developers are requesting to rezone the 206-acre, 36-hole golf course from low-density residential to an “open space neighborhood” planned unit development.
e planning commission is scheduled to meet April 17 to o cially vote on whether to rezone after reviewing an amended site plan submitted to the township in January, according to Planning Director Sue Becker.
e golf course has been owned by the Wilson family since it opened in 1929. e country club has banquet and catering facilities and serves as the home course to the Kenowa Hills High School golf team.
Current owner John Wilson sold one of the two parcels it spans to the developers last June for an undisclosed sum. He is under contract to sell them the second parcel “in the next year or two,” according to Hehrer.
Hehrer said the contract stipulates that the golf course will remain open for all of 2023 and on a year-by-year basis after that as the multiphase
housing project progresses.
e developers expect the project will take at least 20 years to complete, with a target end date of 2045.
Kraker and Hehrer rst presented their plan to rezone the golf course for the Wilder Crossings housing development to the township planning commission in late 2021. e proposal, which then included 592 dwelling units, drew criticism from residents over the large number of units.
By November, the developers had reduced the number of housing units to 567, including 315 single-family lots, 104 detached single-family condos, 84 two-unit attached single-family condos, and 64 four-unit attached single-family townhomes.
Hehrer and Kraker sought rezoning approval for the retooled plan that month, but the planning commission voted to table the request until December to allow for further discussion.
is came after a public comment period that generated 42 responses from residents, 41 of whom opposed the plan. ey cited density and trafc concerns and that it would change the character of the neighborhood. Many also feared it would exacerbate existing stormwater drainage issues in the area.
“Alpine Township is an agricultural and rural area, and this isn’t the way we want to go,” township resident Matt Ginsberg said at the meeting, according to township minutes from November.
e development’s only supporter was the nonpro t Housing Next, which advocates for housing at all price points across Kent and Ottawa counties.
At its December meeting, the planning commission moved to deny the rezoning request and site plan.
Hehrer and Kraker submitted a new plan to the township Jan. 30.
e revised plan subtracts the four-unit attached townhomes to address residents’ concerns about the project’s density and adds senior housing because retirees typically have smaller households with fewer car trips per day.
e new plan comprises 538 units of housing, including 317 single-family lots, 70 villas and 151 units of senior housing.
Contact: rachel.watson@crain.com (989) 533-9685; @RachelWatson86
Ranked by assets under management
planning, portfolio management for individuals and/or small businesses, portfolio management for businesses or institutional clients, pension consulting services
Individuals, High net worth individuals, Pension plans/ pro t sharing plans, Foundations/charities, Government/municipal, Other institutional, Private funds or pools, Financial Planning Services, Selection of Other Advisers/Solicitors
18 Portfolio management for individuals and/or small businesses, portfolio management for investment companies, portfolio management for businesses or institutional clients
planning, portfolio management for individuals and/or small businesses, selection of other advisers
Financial planning, portfolio management for individuals and/or small businesses, portfolio management for investment companies, portfolio management for businesses or institutional clients, selection of other advisers, publication of periodicals or newsletters
management services for individuals, high net worth individuals, pension plans/pro t sharing plans, foundations/charities and government/municipal plans.
management for individuals and/or small businesses, portfolio management for businesses or institutional clients, pension consulting services, selection of other advisers, other
for individuals and/or small businesses, portfolio management for businesses or institutional clients
ResearchedbySonyaD.Hill:shill@crain.com
|ThislistisacompilationofthelargestmoneymanagersinWayne,Oakland,Macomb,WashtenawandLivingstoncounties.Assetsundermanagementwithdiscretiongivesa rmtheauthority tomanageassetsandtodecidewhichsecuritiestopurchaseandsell,anddecidewhichinvestmentadviserstoretain.Assetsundermanagementnon-discretionaryrequiresclientstoapprovetransactionsbeforetheycanoccurandmayinclude advisoryservices,analysisandmonitoringofaccountsandinvestments.InformationprovidedbycompaniesorasreportedfromtheFormADV,whichisusedtoregisteraninvestmentadviserwiththeU.S.SecuritiesandExchangeCommission.Itisnot acompletelistingbutthemostcomprehensiveavailable.HeberFugerWendinInc.whichwasNo.6onlastyear'slistwasacquiredbyMarinerWealthAdvisorsonAug.1,2022.NA=notavailable.NOTES: 1. SageViewAdvisoryGroupacquiredBloom eld Hills Financial, e ective Sept. 20 , 2021. 2. Formerly Yolles, Toal & Post- Diversi ed Portfolios Inc.
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Sales of scrap metal from the demolition of a Detroit trash incinerator have already netted the city more than half a million dollars.
e demolition, which started last spring, is pro table for Detroit because of the amount of steel and other raw materials that can be sold and repurposed, said Tyrone Clifton, the director of the Detroit Building Authority. e city isn’t paying contractor Homrich to demolish the incinerator; in fact, it’s promised at least $1.2 million in proceeds and Clifton expects to get more. e city has so far received about $549,000.
“We’re doing demolition and playing the market at the same time,” Clifton said of uctuating materials prices. “It’s very, very unique.”
e power block is where work is currently ongoing, Clifton said, and it’s a trove of raw materials. On I-94, he said, people will be able to see heavy equipment taking it down. at work is likely to continue through May.
e smokestack, the most visible piece of the incinerator, is likely to come down in June.
e work is slow going, Clifton said, to ensure that everything that can be saved and sold is recovered.
Other portions — namely, a line of
buildings to the north — have already been demolished.
e facility is at 5700 Russell St. near the southeast intersection of I-75 and I-94. Crain’s reported earlier that it was the focus of longtime criticism from community members who reported health and environmental concerns stemming from the odors and emissions released by the facility.
Mayor Mike Duggan said in a statement last year that as a health hazard in a lower-income community of color, it had “been a real pain point” for residents.
e incinerator cost about $500 million to build when it opened in 1989, and it closed in 2019 after Detroit ermal decided to cease operations rather than upgrade the facility to reduce emissions.
Clifton said he expects the smokestack’s removal to be “a day of celebration” in the community.
ere aren’t yet plans for the whole area, but an expanded animal care and control facility is expected to use an old administration building while some space will be devoted to vehicle storage.
“It’s been a good pace,” Clifton said of the progress. “It’s going to be a nice, safe, clean project.”
Contact: arielle.kass@crain.com; (313) 446-6774; @ArielleKassCDB
Pickens said she was ecstatic to see the factory come down.
A long-vacant Chinese food factory along the path of Detroit’s Joe Louis Greenway was torn apart by an excavator last week, the beginning of a week-long demolition process.
e $1.6 million demolition of the La Choy building at 8100 Schoolcraft Road comes as Detroit is stepping up its e orts to eliminate commercial blight. e city’s demolition department has its sights on more than 300 commercial properties it wants to take down, Director LaJuan Counts said.
After the La Choy factory, built in 1937, is fully transformed into rubble, Counts said it will take several more weeks to remove the debris and back ll the land.
e factory demolition is of particular interest to the neighborhood because the under-construction Joe Louis Greenway will go past the site, said Christina Peltier, the greenway’s project manager. She said she was “really happy” to see the building come down and progress continue on the pathway.
Sandra Pickens, a local resident who is president of the Little eld Community Association, said the La Choy’s demolition was “long overdue.”
“It’s going to bring so much of an uplift,” she said of the greenway’s progress. “It’s going to bring a lot of beauti cation to our area.”
e La Choy brand, which was founded in Detroit, started in a basement bathtub, where Ilhan New grew an experimental crop of mung bean sprouts at the request of his friend, Wallace Smith, who was running a corner grocery store. Smith reached out to New, a former University of Michigan classmate and a Korean immigrant, when restaurant customers at the store sought the sprouts as an ingredient in chop suey.
e pair incorporated La Choy Food Products Inc., in 1922, preserving the sprouts in glass jars to sell them. e company soon expanded to sell other packaged Asian foods including chow mein noodles, sauces and a variety of preserved specialty vegetables. At one point, La Choy processed 5,000 tons of Michigan-grown celery annually, making it the largest user in the nation.
New left the company by the time the 1937 o ce and factory had opened, and Smith was killed in a lightning strike shortly after.
Smith’s widow, Miriam, took over his shares of the company and relocated its operations to Ohio during World War II, selling the Detroit plant to the Department of Defense. e city’s Buildings, Safety Engineering and Environmental Department said it had been considered a dangerous building since 2010; it was not clear how long it had been vacant.
“ is is why we do this every day,” Counts said. “We made a promise to the community to address the blight. is is us keeping our word.”
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While some performing arts groups in Southeast Michigan are nearing pre-pandemic attendance numbers, others say it will be another year or more before it’s clear if audiences are fully returning.
Nonpro t performing arts events that have xed start and end times and rigid participation standards (like sitting in a seat for hours) have seen widespread declines, Rush said.
“ ere are so many more things competing for folks’ attention. It is just hard to go back to that kind of rigidity.”
Adding a layer of complications: Patrons who are coming to in-person events are also waiting until the last minute to buy tickets, he said, because they need exibility: “ ey don’t know if they’ll be sick or things will change in their life.”
at means moving forward, it will just get harder for these community institutions to plan ahead and make strategic investments. In a bid to woo back the crowds, the groups are stepping up marketing and collaborations, o ering smaller ticket packages and planning novel programming.
Although many have already put the coronavirus pandemic behind them and returned to public events, not all entertainment venues are seeing the same kind of participation these days.
“ e issue of re-engagement for so many arts groups is one that continues to evolve,” said Detroit Opera President and CEO Wayne Brown.
With COVID still a threat, the company opted for an abbreviated season in 2021-22, with two dance presentations (down from about ve typically), at the Detroit Opera House and four in-community events. It sold just 25,600 tickets last year, compared to 52,600 tickets during the 2018-19 season before the pandemic.
ose ticket sales brought in $1.6 million last year vs. $2.7 million in 2018-19.
For the current 2022-23 season, Detroit Opera had ve dance presentations scheduled.
“It’s a little early to be conclusive; we will know more than we know now in a year,” Brown said.
“ ere are audiences that will come back and others that will cycle. at’s just the nature of life, of breathing, of organizational health.”
e Detroit Symphony Orchestra’s ticket sales during the 2021-22 season also trailed pre-pandemic numbers. It reported $5.17 million in ticket revenue for the 2021-22 season, up from the two prior seasons, but still less than the $7.56 million it earned in 2019, before the pandemic, according to its annual report.
“Audience surveys both at the DSO and at a national level show that COVID-19 concerns were the major contributing factor of why audiences did not return for the rst full season to live, in-person concerts in 202122,” Matt Carlson, senior director of communications and media relations for the DSO, said in an emailed response.
But overall ticket sales have improved signi cantly for the current 2022-23 season compared to last year, with certain DSO programs experiencing high audience demand and ticket revenue exceeding pre-pandemic years, he said.
Like other performing arts groups, the DSO is seeing some of its sub-
scribers return as single-ticket buyers. But ticket sales are trending upwards for remaining shows this season and in 2023-24, Carlson said.
With pandemic relief dollars still available to prop up its nancials, Ann Arbor-based University Musical Society, which is operating on a $9.4 million budget, made a concerted decision to not go overboard in its programming last year with its return to in-person performances, President Matthew VanBesien said. It brought back about 60 percent of its programs last year and sold a reported $1.25 million in tickets.
at was down from $2.8 million during its last full season in 2018-19 with the sale of 76,265 tickets, said Sara Billmann, vice president of marketing and communications.
For the current 2022-23 season, which has only a handful of performances left, it’s projecting it will sell about 70,000 tickets — with six to eight fewer events than pre-pandemic — but bring in $2.75 million-$2.8 million, she said.
“We feel very fortunate because our audiences have actually returned to pre-pandemic levels,” VanBesien said.
While gauging post-pandemic audience preferences, performing arts groups are also facing competition for audiences from other pastimes like ball games and the popular concert circuit, which drew record crowds last year amid pent-up demand.
Live Nation Entertainment Inc.
(NYSE: LYV) reported record concert attendance in 2022, with over 121 million fans buying tickets, up 24 percent from 2019 numbers with massive demand for in-person
events following a COVID-induced hiatus. Every venue, from clubs and theaters to stadiums and festivals had double-digit attendance growth versus 2019, Live Nation said in its earnings release.
Coming into 2023, “we continue to see very strong consumer demand globally, with no sign of any slowdown,” Live Nation said in a statement.
Audiences are also being more selective with their leisure activities, Carlson said.
“Surveys indicate more time spent at home on hobbies and in small social gatherings, including wellness and outdoor activities or time interacting with family.”
e DSO continues to reach out to lapsed fans and prospective new audiences with promotions to entice attendance. Its recent “313 Day” o er of $3.13 tickets generated 8,600 ticket sales in one day, and 65 percent were new ticket buyers, Carlson said.
To appeal to audiences that are being more selective with their leisure activities, the DSO is focusing on “Create Your Own” subscriptions which only require a purchase of four concerts and provide the exibility to mix and match across the Classical, Pops, Family, and Jazz series, he said.
During the 2021-22 season, the DSO o ered pay-per-view DSO Digital Concerts of select Paradise Jazz Series performances. But this year it began o ering those concerts and its classical series for free, again, through its Live from Orchestra Hall webcast series.
Engaging audiences is also about trying di erent platforms and con gurations to keep audiences engaged, Brown said.
Detroit Opera is doing that with the site-speci c work for which Detroit Opera Artistic Director Yuval Sharon is
use its space for other events like conferences and weddings, he said.
“We’re more than an opera company. We’re the only (one) in the U.S. that also presents dance,” while also owning its building and making investments in improving accessibility and in educational programs.
“ ere’s a wide range of steps underway to demonstrate the breadth of what Detroit Opera can be for our community so it’s not just the same old thing,” Brown said.
UMS, the presenting arts organization of the University of Michigan, scheduled fewer programs for the current season than it did pre-pandemic, but this year was much more representative of those past seasons in terms of the major performers it hosted, VanBesien said.
Of eight major shows in Hill Auditorium, ve were close to sold out, if not sold out, he said.
known, like the fall 2020 performance of “Twilight: Gods,” staged in the Detroit Opera House Parking Center, and other shows, he said, like its production of “La bohème” in reverse order.
e opera company is also focused on making more Detroit productions available to national audiences, like its 2022 production of “X: e Life and Times of Malcolm X,” which is now traveling nationally.
“We want to create more work that comes out of Detroit, that has a Detroit avor, a Detroit perspective. at’s another way we talk about reinventing in the work that we do,” Brown said.
At the same time, Detroit Opera is increasingly looking at partnerships that share costs, bring in new audiences and create new earned revenue.
Brown said the company is looking for opportunities to expand its agreements with London-based Ambassador eatre Group, which acquired the Fisher eatre from Nederlander Co. LLC two years ago this month, along with programming operation of the Detroit Opera House and Music Hall.
And in February, Detroit Opera mounted a production of “Swan Lake” with University Musical Society, which brought some 1,500 people from Ann Arbor over for those performances, Brown said. “We had both shared costs. We joined forces and created a greater presence than we could do on our own.”
e opera company is looking to
“ e audience has really felt robust. We have some cause for optimism of what we’re seeing this year. But I also think we have to be careful that we don’t over-program,” he said.
“Before the pandemic, there were (already) shifts in audience around how much people will purchase, how frequently they’d come and certainly when they would make the decision about coming. Fast forward through the pandemic… it accelerated or exacerbated certain trends.”
As a presenting arts organization, UMS doesn’t carry the costs of a fulltime orchestra and other full-time sta that producing performing arts organizations like DSO and Detroit Opera do, VanBesien said. But it’s still scrutinizing costs and audience trends as it plans events.
“We have a greater exibility about how much we present than bigger, producing companies. So it’s easier for me to say maybe we shouldn’t do as much,” he said.
But whether performing arts groups still have COVID relief money or have already gone through the funds, “coming out of this, we have to really be smart and thoughtful about what we do.”
“I don’t sense audience members are any less passionate about the arts, but I think we have to recognize some of the shifts in consumer behavior that are happening everywhere,” said VanBesien. “We need to be responsive.”
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Others will also occupy it, including three nonpro ts, drop-o recycling program Recycle Here, and a grocer called Metro Grocery.
Yet for the heavy focus on housing, apartments weren’t always the plan.
“We didn’t initially want residential here,” Goldenberg said during a recent tour of the project, which is set to start accepting residents in the next couple months. “We were thinking this was industrial space, but modern industry doesn’t t in.”
If Naimi and Goldenberg — an artist behind Recycle Here and a lmmaker, respectively — are perhaps Detroit’s most unlikely pair of developers to successfully pull o a project of this scale, the project itself is also among the funkiest and most ambitious to be completed in years.
“ e tuition they accumulated in this thing is amazing,” said Mike Vieregge, senior vice president of commercial real estate at project lender Invest Detroit, a community development nancial institution, or CDFI.
It all started as a way to keep Recycle Here and the Lincoln Street Art Park, a community staple, thriving in properly maintained buildings.
“When we looked at how we could actually make those programs sustainable and continue to grow them, we needed to make sure that the foundation where they were located, the 1331 Holden property, was stable,” Naimi said. e roof needed serious repairs totaling perhaps as much as $3 million.
“So we entered into where we are now with the mindset of keeping Recycle Here going because where it was, the roof was leaking and was terrible as far as maintenance, and the park is attached to it as well. So we had to make sure that the property was sustainable in order to make those projects and programs sustainable.”
Some residential unit space spills out onto what Naimi calls a “post-apocalyptic patio,” where a train sometimes runs nearby.
ere are no cabinet or drawer handles whatsoever in any of the apartments, some of which rent for as little as $365 per month, including utilities. It saves on the cost of both buying and replacing them when they break, the developers said.
Some units are just four walls and an industrial sink, with residents in them sharing a communal bathroom, cleaned on a daily basis, and communal kitchen space.
e mantra: Live here, create here, sell here.
e units were not scrubbed of grafti and other art already on the walls of the property, the original Lincoln factory, which sits on about 3.8 acres.
Capital Impact Partners: $5.7 million
IFF: $3.8 million
Michigan Community Revitalization Program: $3 million
Invest Detroit historic bridge loan: $2.5 million
Invest Detroit subordinate loan: $720,000
Invest Detroit small business loan: $267,500
Invest Detroit Quali ed Low Income Community Investment bridge loan : $1,157,600
Local Initiatives Support Corp. equity through the A ordable Housing Leverage Fund: $1.52 million
Detroit Economic Growth Corp.: $500,000 loan
LISC through the AHLF: $750,000 loan
Historic tax credit equity through Capital Impact Partners: $3,531,000
New Market Tax Credits - Michigan Community Capital - US Bank
Make Art Work - Non Pro t 168(h) election
Brown eld/TIFF/PA210
Owner Equity Contribution : $3,950,000
One contribution by well known Louisville gra ti artist Diesel — it says “ ank you, O cer Evans” — is a nod to a security guard who, Naimi jokingly said, “didn’t mace or Tase me.”
e space is not for everyone, the developers acknowledge.
It will be loud, sometimes late into the night, with the Marble Bar’s Lincoln Factory parties, people working on art and other creative projects and other noise.
As much as Naimi and Goldenberg have sound-proofed the units, there will be spillover, all but ensuring that this is not a development for those who prize sleep schedules for a 9-5.
“We have no quiet hours,” Golden-
berg said.
But for all its Bohemian quirks geared toward artists and other creatives, the labyrinthine project thrust Naimi and Goldenberg into the depths of commercial real estate nance, debt service coverage ratios, construction, preferred investor returns (there are none) and developer fees (theirs are deferred several years out until the project is cash- ow positive) — all things that Naimi and Goldenberg didn’t think they would be getting into when they started out their careers in far di erent elds.
“ ey call it CMU,” Naimi said, referring to concrete masonry units while walking through the project, donning a hard hat with a label with his nickname, Meatball. “I never did before (I got) into being a developer.”
For Goldenberg, some of the skills he picked up lmmaking — he is the owner of Cass Corridor Films and was a 2013 Kresge Fellow in the Visual Arts — translate over to development.
“You have to have a vision, you have to raise money, you have to manage a lot of people and you have to bring community support to get it done,” he said. “So in simple ways, it’s the same with this, right? But I mean, when we started six years ago, Matt and I didn’t know what a pro forma was. We needed to learn a lot and have had great support along the way.”
Victor Abla, regional preservation director for the Detroit o ce of project lender Local Initiatives Support Corp., more commonly known as LISC, said the complexity of the funding structure is rare, particularly for a project that’s largely made up of a ordable housing.
“We might see that many sources (in a ordable housing projects), but they are not as complex,” Abla said.
“Detroit Housing for the Future Fund and LISC Detroit are especially proud of the coordination of all of the partners on this complex nancial deal,” Camille Walker Banks, executive director of LISC Detroit, said in an emailed statement. “Together, we were able to get Dreamtroit’s amazing
project nanced, while still ensuring that 90 percent of the units are below 80 percent AMI, with 22 percent of the units below 50 percent AMI. at’s a remarkable success, especially in the New Center area, which is seeing a lot of new investment.””
And Vieregge, of Invest Detroit, said in his three decades working on projects, the Dreamtroit capital stack is “the most complex structure I’ve ever seen.”
For rst-time developers like Naimi and Goldenberg, that’s a testament to resiliency and determination, Vieregge said.
“ ey admitted what they didn’t know and were very forthright with us,” Vieregge said, referring to Naimi and Goldenberg. “When you got people like that, trying to work that hard and honestly, they’re not trying to get rich on it. It’s just something they believe in. I think that it, quite honestly, is the secret sauce in this thing because, without that, I don’t think you would have gotten all of us lenders working as hard as we did on this thing.”
Michigan & Trumbull pizzeria announced in January it would be leaving its Corktown location as the cost of rent, labor and ingredients skyrocketed.
e new spot in the Dreamtroit project has space for about 25 to 30 diners, co-owner Kristen Calverley said, noting that the Corktown spot has to be vacated by July and the “goal is to open with as little downtime as possible.”
“We are excited about the vision and it’s more in line with our values,” she said.
Raphael Blake, a co-owner of the Marble Bar, said the new Lincoln Factory outpost “gives us the opportunity to expand our o erings.”
“When people come and want to do weddings or corporate events, it’s hard to nd the space for them, size-wise and schedule-wise,” Blake said.
In a city with an a ordable housing shortage, Dreamtroit lls a niche that needs addressing.
Case in point: ere are no purely market-rate units, at least as they are technically determined at the federal level.
Forty-one are at 80 percent or below of the Area Median Income, while 17 units are at 50 percent or below and the remaining 18 are at 120 percent of AMI — the federal standard for workforce housing.
Of course, it’s not just Naimi and Goldenberg working on a ordable and workforce housing in Detroit.
For example, a trio of Detroit developers — Roderick Hardamon, George N’Namdi and Richard Hosey — are working on a 38-unit building at 60 to 80 percent AMI across three parcels on the south side of West McNichols Road west of Livernois Avenue. Hardamon and N’Namdi are also doing the OSI
Art Apartments @ West End on Grand River Avenue, with an a ordable component. Other developers like Develop Detroit Inc., run by Sonya Mays, and Century Partners, run by David Alade and Andrew Colom, are working on a ordable and workforce housing in Detroit, as well.
While AMI thresholds are a fraught issue in Detroit — because the federal metric used by the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development uses suburban income gures, it skews the what is considered “a ordable” upwards in a historically poor city — coming in at those rates is no easy task.
“When people say they can’t build a ordable housing or things along those lines, we are going to prove you can,” Naimi said. “Are two artists/developers on their rst go the people who should be building this? No. But this is a model on how this can be done and can anchor a community that can be built around it.”
Amin Irving, a developer who runs Novi-based a ordable housing developer and landlord Ginosko Development Corp., said the e ort is admirable.
“It sounds like a really cool project that should be replicated in the city of Detroit,” Irving said. “I do know that the state has programs in place, especially the Missing Middle program, to incentivize developers to do what this project is doing.”
e Missing Middle Housing Program has $100 million, $50 million from federal COVID-19 stimulus funding allocated in March 2022 and another $50 million in federal funds allocated in January, for grants toward a ordable housing projects.
Dreamtroit, a cheeky portmanteau that stuck after Goldenberg came up with it on a whim, has been six years in the making, surviving a host of complications, not the least of which was a serious health scare.
Naimi almost didn’t live to see the project through.
In April 2021, he underwent surgery to x a brain tumor.
“I had a 70 percent chance of never walking or talking again,” Naimi said. “ irty days (after the diagnosis) I went under the knife and they pulled a brain tumor out. It was benign. Caught meningitis, almost died from that. Had double vision and had to walk with a cane for about four months. at was tough.”
If someone asks how the project is going, Goldenberg looks beyond its walls, beyond the day-to-day complications of construction and nancing, beyond ooring and windows.
“I might want to say something, but I’m like, ‘You know, Matt’s alive and we’re still working on this, so things are amazing.’”
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A popular Corktown pizza spot has found a new home at an artist conclave in the Elijah McCoy neighborhood.
Kristen Calverley saw her expenses rising at the Michigan & Trumbull pizzeria she co-owns with her husband.
Ingredients, labor, rent. ey were all increasing. And she didn’t want to sacri ce the quality of the pizza, or
her employees’ wages, to make ends meet in the hip Corktown neighborhood west of downtown. She also didn’t want to raise how much it cost to eat there.
“In order to stay at our current location we would have to make significant changes to our prices and really potentially revisit everything from our labor costs to the quality of ingredients that we use,” Calverley said.
So the pizzeria made the decision
to move, which was made public in January, although the location had not previously been disclosed.
e new spot in the Dreamtroit project has space for about 25 to 30 diners, Calverley said, noting that the Corktown spot has to be vacated by July and the “goal is to open with as little downtime as possible.”
“We are excited about the vision and it’s more in line with our values,” she said.
Matt Naimi and Oren Golden-
berg’s $30 million Dreamtroit mixeduse housing project, their rst development, is bringing 76 units of a ordable and workforce housing to the area just a couple blocks south of Henry Ford Hospital, plus some 38,000 square feet of entertainment and retail space.
Others will also occupy it, including three nonpro ts, drop-o recycling program Recycle Here, and a grocer called Metro Grocery. Another restaurant, Marble Bar, is opening
a nearly 9,000-square-foot outpost called the Lincoln Factory there.
Raphael Blake, a co-owner of the Marble Bar, said the new Lincoln Factory outpost “gives us the opportunity to expand our o erings.”
“When people come and want to do weddings or corporate events, it’s hard to nd the space for them, sizewise and schedule-wise,” Blake said.
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As such, she changed her name to Lizz Haskell after her marriage to Jewish activist Rafael Haskell. Many people who knew her from her Action House work — and even some family members, Cooper said — had no idea about her history, though her e orts there spurred a generation of activists in the city.
Cooper and Project co-founder Aaron Schillinger brought attention to Ray’s legacy and the house at 9308 Woodlawn Ave. in Detroit, telling the land bank about the property’s existence in its inventory. is month, both said it was a relief to know that their e orts to keep the home from being demolished were successful.
“We could never have done it,” Cooper said. “ ere’s nothing but joy.”
Schillinger, who rst identi ed the house, said he had “kind of given up in my heart” when a land bank request for ideas about what to do with the property didn’t elicit any responses.
“ e most important thing is someone has stepped up to save it,” he said.
‘Just in time’
e home’s foundation is solid, Steel said, but its windows and doors have been pulled o , its siding has faded, it needs a new roof and a single brick pillar is all that remains of the front porch. ere are empty lots on either side; one will go to Steel, who is contemplating the creation of a community garden.
On Woodlawn, in an eastside neighborhood near the city airport, there are many empty lots as well as homes in need of similar repairs.
“It’s not the best neighborhood,” Steel said. “We’re going to help it out.”
She intends to do so by turning the home into a museum to honor Ray’s life. Steel said she wants to model it after the Motown Museum, the home that served as the original headquarters and music recording studio for Motown Records.
Steel hasn’t drawn up plans yet for the project; she said she wanted to wait until after the land bank sale has gone through to create anything formal. But she expects it will cost $100,000 or more to upgrade the house — in addition to a new roof, it needs plumbing and electricity. She’s already spent $15,000, she said, to tarp, clean out and secure the home, though on a March afternoon, boards had been pulled o some windows and someone had put stacks of tires in a detached garage.
ough she rst connected with the land bank late last year, it’s taken several months for the project to come to a vote.
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But it’s soon, she said on a Wednesday afternoon tour, as construction crews worked on one of the ballrooms and other nishing touches were being added. Rooms and events like weddings are already being booked with stays available to be booked in May.
Depending on the time of year and what’s going on, daily rates could range from $240 to $600, Barth said.
Among the features: the Beve lobby bar and Detroit Taco Bodega
In its current shape, she said, the house is “pretty much like a canvas.”
“I’m very excited about it,” Steel said. “I’ve been patiently waiting. I think it’s going to be a cool project.”
Steel had temporary access to the space to complete the cleanup and assess the shape of the home because land bank o cials were concerned that a harsh winter would make the house unsalvageable, said Ellie Schneider, the land bank’s program manager in charge of marketing and strategic initiatives.
Schneider said she was “really happy” Steel reached out and planned to turn the home into an asset for the community. Given the state the house was in, Schneider said last year, she wasn’t sure it could be saved.
“It’s kind of miraculous there was any path forward to being able to salvage the structure,” Schneider said.
“We were very fortunate. Shannon showed up just in time.”
Steel, who said she grew up between her grandmother’s house in a nearby neighborhood and MorningSide, now lives in Farmington Hills. She started her career as a stockbroker, but lost “a lot of money” in a $1.9 million Ponzi scheme the state’s Ofce of Financial and Insurance Regulation shut down in 2010.
Steel was sued as part of the scheme, run by Martin Royster, but said she was a victim as well. e Michigan O ce of Licensing and Regulatory A airs said she was ned $10,000 and ordered to pay $40,000 in restitution for her role as an unregistered agent; a spokesperson for the agency said neither had been paid.
Steel said she’s since gotten back on her feet, buying a strip mall and liquor store in Detroit, a South eld hotel and working to start a hedge fund and a private bank. e hotel, the South eld Ramada Plaza by Wyndham, has a message saying, “We are closed until further notice”
restaurant, coming this spring; and the Cibo modern Mediterranean restaurant and Cielo rooftop bar, opening this summer. Also on tap for summer: Five Iron Golf.
e indoor golf simulator wasn’t always part of the plan. e developers — who had planned a signi cant o ce component to the project — shifted during the pandemic, which battered the o ce market as remote work became commonplace and users needed less, or in some cases no, space.
roughout the property are nods to the building’s radio past, ranging from historic photographs to walls in rooms that bring to mind images of
on its outgoing message. Steel and Aaron Morris bought it in 2019 from Hotel Capital LLC under the entity Management Solution Holdings LLC; it had been an Embassy Suites by Hilton Hotel before losing its branding.
In approving the sale Tuesday, the land bank board said Steel intended to turn the property into a home. She “has become wildly successful,” board Chair Erica Ward Gerson said, and had su cient proof of funds to take on the project.
Steel said her interest in Ray’s life stems from her own successes.
“It’s women like that who kind of paved the way for me to be who I am,” she said.
Later, she added that she’s inspired by people who break barriers.
“It’s obstacles, it’s a person who’s a ghter,” she said. “ at resonates with me. I look up to people like that.”
Steel is far from the only person in uenced by Ray’s example. Angela Wilson, the chief operating o cer of the Eastside Community Network, said in the fall that she owed her career, in part, to Ray — who she knew as Haskell, and who she met at 14, through Action House, as she helped organize block clubs in the neighborhood. Action House was a nonpro t community center meant to combat blight and empower area youth.
“As a kid, I was really inspired by what she did,” Wilson said. “She was a very powerful woman. She didn’t mince words; she spoke very strong and very clear. She didn’t su er fools.”
Wilson said she had no idea the woman she admired for her advocacy was the same person whose actions allowed her to ride the Bob-Lo Boat in her childhood. She described her as a precursor to Rosa Parks, whose decision not to give up her seat to white man on a Montgomery, Ala., bus came a decade later.
sound waves. Some of the radio station’s old equipment remains.
e rooms were all built in Pennsylvania, shipped to Detroit and installed with a crane, Barth said.
Among the interesting tidbits: A basement tunnel running under Lafayette connects the Walker-Roehrig Building to the former Detroit News building across the street. e newspaper had owned the radio station, and it rst broadcast more than a century ago in 1920, according to Historic Detroit, which tracks Detroit buildings and architecture.
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In an emailed statement, Neil A. Barclay, president and CEO of the Charles H. Wright Museum of African American History, said the historic homes of African Americans are part of the nation’s history.
“ ose homes, like Sarah Elizabeth Ray’s, are the window into a myriad of stories not just about our past, but they challenge and create opportunities for our future,” he said.
Steel hasn’t yet reached out to the Wright Museum, the Motown Museum or other local institutions, and she hasn’t connected with the Sarah E. Ray Project. She said she intended to take more action after the land bank voted, and hoped to interview family members and others who knew Ray. But she knows what she wants to happen in the home.
“I have an idea, visually, of what I want it to look like,” she said. “I have a vision in my head. In my brain, I know exactly what I want to do.”
at vision includes representing the entirety of Ray’s life in the space — not just her Bob-Lo experience, but Action House as well. Schillinger, with the Sarah E. Ray Project, said he’d like to think if she were still alive, recent conversations in the country around race would have allowed Ray the chance to make peace with her role in history.
He said he thought she would de nitely want to be remembered for her Action House work. She died, he said, not expecting to be remembered at all.
Cooper said she thought Ray would be “thrilled” if the planned museum told a broad story. Ray was outspoken, Cooper said, about people’s responsibilities to their neighborhoods.
“She did not want to make hay of the Bob-Lo Boat,” Cooper said. “Bob-Lo, it’s more important to us than it would’ve been to her.”
If the house museum doesn’t come to pass, Steel said she’ll likely turn the house into a single-family home for someone in the community. Schneider, with the land bank, said she thinks that would be appropriate.
“It’s hard to imagine a better nal use,” she said. “I can’t imagine the way she lived her life, she would want it turned into some kind of museum.”
But Schneider said she thinks Ray would want a community-facing legacy. And Schillinger said he thinks if Ray could have directed what happened to the property after her death, she would have wished the home would be used for the betterment of society.
“She was all about self-improvement,” he said. “As long as there’s education and community involvement in the house, Lizz Haskell will be happy.”
Schillinger and Cooper salvaged some documents and other belongings from the house, but said more had been left behind. Cooper expressed regret that the land bank had allowed Steel to clear out the home’s contents before there could be an accounting of what was left.
Steel said there was trash to the ceiling, though Cooper suggested some treasures may have still been found underneath.
“It’s almost like it would have to be an archaeological dig,” she said. “We’ll never know what’s been lost.”
In recent years, Cooper said, there’s been more attention paid to “what made Detroit Detroit.” She said Ray’s experiences are among those that shaped the city and she’s glad that the woman she met is nally getting some acknowledgment.
“ is is a good end to the story,” Cooper said. “ is is wonderful, wonderful news.”
Contact: arielle.kass@crain.com; (313) 446-6774; @ArielleKassCDB
Benji Rosenzweig, vice president for Colliers International Inc., and his business partner, Ben Hubert, have worked on retail and other deals in Detroit and the suburbs for years. But their bond was forged not just in the high-pressure world of commercial real estate brokerage but also through something more deeply personal. Rosenzweig chatted with Crain’s about the state of the retail and broader commercial real estate market, his special-needs daughter, music and how he and Hubert teamed up to form the “Ben/Benji” team you see on signs around town.
BY | KIRK PINHO Retail has been kind of a mixed bag for awhile now, with some stores struggling and others thriving and expanding. What’s sort of the state of the retail market these days?
Downtown and the suburbs aren't, I think, that far apart from each other in the trends. When it comes to food and beverage, people want to go out and have an experience. If you look at Mad Nice by Jeremy Sassoon opening in Midtown, it's as much an experience as a meal. The reverse of that is people who are literally just grabbing food, and that's where you see a lot of (food and beverage) just doing the drive-thrus. There's a place in the market for both of them, and there's not a right or wrong.
In the non-F&B retail worlds pre-COVID, people were talking about the Internet and how it's the end of brick and mortar. There was this hyper-focus on delivery or curbside pickup or Internet-based shopping in the beginning of the pandemic, and retailers today are seeing the answer is both. You're seeing internet retailers open up brick-and-mortar stores, and you're seeing brick-and-mortar stores, if they didn't get online, most of them didn't survive.
What’s the broader state of the market, across the asset classes, particularly given some of the concerns we are seeing in banking not to mention the lingering e ects of the pandemic?
I think that we are going to see, and we are seeing a little bit of this already, but people who are very conservative and risk-averse are tightening their belts and not doing deals right now. They are going to wait for chips to fall and dust to settle. Then there are people who are waiting on the sidelines waiting for buying opportunities and looking under rocks right now. There are going to be a number of deals that transact in the market this quarter because there are people, when everybody else holds their breath, they start running.
You gave a TED talk last fall with one of your daughters, Ellah, who is communicative but non-verbal. Tell us about her.
Ellah was born with a genetic mutation called Co n-Siris syndrome, which causes structural defects in the body. She has a number of disorders, but one of the main ones is agenesis of the corpus callosum, which is the main bridge that connects the left and right side of the brain. That left her with basically limited verbal skills. Like any parent who has a kid with special needs, we were very concerned about what the future would look like and how things would evolve. When she was probably 2 1/2, I was feeding her and listening to music, and I realized she was air-drumming with my favorite band, Umphrey’s McGee, and that was a huge moment for us. That song sort of became an anthem for her and it was something that we used to pump her up when she was feeling down, often when we were at the hospital. She was sick and you know, we would put on puppet shows with Ernie and Bert and Big Bird dancing along to this to the song (“Triple Wide”). We found music helped her develop a vocabulary of communication skills. First, she was taking Jenga pieces and clicking them with syllables, very like Muppets do. Muppets’ mouths move in syllables. You don’t have face shapes or mouth shapes or tone. So she was using Jenga pieces to click syllables and we developed a language where she was able to communicate just using syllables ... And then that grew into being able to mouth singing along with music, which she is really wonderful at. She loves gospel music. She loves Lizzo and Aretha Franklin and big, bold gestures. And she understands what the person is trying to say with music. That has become a way for her to, you know, use some traditional sign language but really make up her own signs to communicate.
I know you’re pretty big into music, particularly jam bands like Phish,
Umphrey’s McGee, the Grateful Dead and others. What draws you to that genre?
My music tastes vary. When you're talking about those bands, you're talking about people who play a lot of notes and very fast. There is this massive technical skill. I also love traditional Americana folk music. My music taste is really about passion, somebody who has poured their time and energy into it. That's why when my kids are listening to Lizzo or Taylor Swift, that's awesome. Those two modern artists don't lack passion in any way, shape or form. I may not turn Taylor Swift on in the car by myself, but when I'm in the car with my older kid, I've got no problem with that.
What was the genesis of your relationship with Ben Hubert at Colliers and the origin story behind the Ben/ Benji moniker?
Ben and I were both working at a small boutique rm in Birmingham. We were friends and working on a handful of deals together and had a great appreciation for each other’s skill sets. In 2015, Ellah got really sick and she, in a 2 1/2 year period, did about 400 nights in the hospital. It was a really rough time for our family. I would call Ben and say, “Hey, I’ve got a showing tomorrow and I’m stuck at the hospital. Could you cover for me?” He 100 percent of the time said yes. We were getting a cup of co ee one day and looking at deals we were working on, and half of our deals
we were on together. So we thought, why not go 50-50? Let’s just make this o cial. We shook hands and that was the entirety of the conversation. It’s hard to nd a business partner that you trust, that you like and that you can put all your faith into, and we sort of found that with each other. That was brought to light because of what we were going through with Ellah. But we’ve done very well together for the last seven years or so.
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REPORTERS
Colliers International Inc.
A BURGER KING FRANCHISEE is moving to close 26 locations throughout metro Detroit and Flint and lay o 424 employees amid a money dispute with Burger King Corp.
e layo s began March 17 and will be completed by April 15, according to a WARN noticed led with the state Wednesday.
A dozen of the stores are in the city of Detroit. Others are in Livonia, Warren, South eld, Ferndale, Dearborn Heights, Royal Oak, Whitmore Lake, Walled Lake, Highland Park and Ecorse.
e franchisee, EYM King of Michigan LLC, said it will “permanently cease operations in Michigan due to the unforeseen business circumstances and not being able to
Burger King franchisee EYM King of Michigan said it would “permanently cease operations in Michigan due to the unforeseen business circumstances and not being able to reach a resolution with Burger King Corporation.”
reach a resolution with Burger King Corporation.”
Employees are not represented by a union.
It is not clear whether the locations will reopen under a new operator.
“We are aware of the situation, but cannot comment at this time due to pending litigation,” a spokesperson for Miami-based Burger King Corp. said in an email.
A spokesman for the Irving, Texas-based franchisee con rmed the closures and layo s but did not provide further information about its discussions with Burger King corporate.
e corporate company sued the franchisee and its principal Eduardo
Diaz last month in the Southern District of Florida over alleged failure to pay fees for royalties and advertising, according to a copy of the lawsuit. It did not provide a speci c amount for the payment dispute but said it exceeds $75,000.
EYM Group Inc.’s Michigan website appears to have been deleted.
e company also operates Denny’s, Pizza Hut, KFC and Panera Bread restaurants in Texas, Florida, Illinois, Indiana, Georgia, South Carolina and Wisconsin, according to its website.
e company received a federal Paycheck Protection Program loan of $1.53 million in April 2020, which was approved in full, including interest, according to records from the Small Business Administration.
Jason Davis, restaurants, retail and small businesses. (313) 446-1612 or Jason.davis@crain.com
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