PEOPLE ON THE MOVE

To place your listing, visit crainsdetroit.com/people-on-the-move or, for more information, contact Debora Stein at 917.226.5470 / dstein@crain.com

Financial Services

Exchange Capital Management, Inc.

Exchange Capital Management, Inc, a Registered Investment Advisor based in Ann Arbor, Michigan, is pleased to announce that Joseph S. Crowley, CFP® has been admitted as a new equity partner, acknowledging his signi cant ongoing contributions to the rm. As a Senior Lead Investment Advisor, Crowley serves as the primary nancial planner and behavioral coach for over 100 client relationships and helps lead the rm’s nancial planning team.

Financial Services

Hilco Performance Solutions

Hilco Performance Solutions (HPS), a management advisory rm that consists of operational and nancial experts in the areas of Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Sales & Customer Experience, Organizational Design, and M&A has named Associate Director Susan Stanley to the new position of Continuous Improvement and Lean Manufacturing Practice Leader. An operating company of Hilco Global, HPS helps clients simplify and streamline business processes and improve operational ef ciencies.

J.P. Morgan Private Bank

Armen Garry has joined J.P. Morgan Private Bank in Detroit as a Vice President and Banker. Armen partners closely with business owners, C-suite executives, founders and members of the tech community who seek seasoned guidance across their complex nancial pictures. He draws from his commercial lending background to guide them in making strategic wealth management decisions to help grow and protect their legacies. Armen joins the rm from Bank of America.

Telecommunications

Comcast

Sonya Callahan has been promoted to vice president of Comcast Business in the Heartland Region, which includes Michigan, Indiana and Kentucky. In this role, she manages a team of more than 200 employees and is responsible for leading commercial sales, marketing, operations, and new construction and market development across all three states. Callahan has 22 years of experience in the industry. She has held numerous leadership positions in business sales, operations and engineering.

Telecommunications

VERITÀ® Telecommunications VERITÀ® e nancial backers of the petition drive are East Lansing-based Pleasantrees, Royal Oak-based Pontiac Ops Inc., Oak Park-based GreenHouse Farms Pontiac LLC and real estate investor Dennis Jaboro, according to reporting by the Oakland Press. It’s unclear what Jaboro’s link is to the Pontiac market. e entire marijuana licensing regime in Pontiac has been under scrutiny for years. Nearly ve years after Pontiac voters authorized 20 medical marijuana facilities in the city limits, not one has opened. Several lawsuits are playing out over that ordinance. e recreational ordinance is also gaining detractors. e recreational ordinance, created under a di erent mayor and city council than the medical ordinance, uses a similar structure to the medical ordinance in that it creates three speci c overlay districts where dispensaries may be located, but also includes a fourth district that houses ve medical license holder properties that received at-large licenses outside the overlays during the medical licensing processes.

Telecommunications is happy to announce Ken Sundwall as the Vice President of Wireless Operations and Jason E. Palmer as the Vice President of Design & Engineering. Ken’s experience in large scale wireless construction allows us to expand our team’s capabilities to meet evolving customer demand. Jason’s experience will augment the company’s engineering and permit services across wireless and wireline divisions. These additions to our team will reinforce our ability to offer white glove service for telecom deployments in public right-of-way, private property, and large-scale venues. VERITÀ strengthens itself as a true force in the industry providing a complete triple play solution: engineering, construction, and material procurement.

Lisa Dawdy, spokesperson for Sensible Cannabis, told Crain’s the group wants the city’s recreational ordinance scrapped and reworked because it e ectively eliminates some of those dispensaries approved for medical sales to be up for consideration for recreational sales.

Dawdy runs her own consulting rm Mitten Cannasulting as well as works full time for Troy-based Jars Cannabis. Dawdy said Jars, which is owned by the owners of controversial short-term auto insurer L.A. Insurance, is not related to the referendum push.

She took over the group this month. e previous head was lobbyist Vincent Brown, who was indicted by the U.S. Department of Justice and pleaded guilty to conspiracy to commit bribery. Brown was linked to a scheme operated by former House Speaker Rick Johnson, who accepted bribes for allegedly fast-tracking licenses through the since disbanded Michigan Medical Marihuana Licensing Board.

It’s common belief that medical marijuana will continue to decline in sales as recreational overtakes more of the market.

Medical marijuana sales have plummeted nearly 71 percent to a total of $7.84 million in April from $27 million during the same month last year. Meanwhile, recreational sales have increased nearly 42 percent to $283.2 million in April from $168 million in April 2022.

Meaning several current medical marijuana license holders aren’t eligible for a recreational license unless they receive authorization on another property, one located in the recreational overlay zones.

Pleasantrees and the other nancial backers of Sensible Cannabis are those license holders. e city, however, believes it has no obligation to the medical license holders.

“We’re not in any way interfering or preventing them from opening a medical dispensary, which is what they were initially approved for,” Pontiac Mayor Tim Greimel told Crain’s in a sit-down interview this month. “And the medical marijuana zoning ordinance remains in place. at is not being altered. We are making land use and zoning decisions about where recreational dispensaries should be located. Just because a previous city council made a decision regarding medical dispensaries doesn’t mean that the current city council is obligated to mirror those decisions …”

Sensible Cannabis is meeting Wednesday to discuss whether it can submit new recreational ordinance language for the election ballot in November.

As Greimel understands it, the referendum will force city council to either scrap the current ordinance or allow the referendum to go to voters, who will simply vote whether the city should keep the current ordinance or not.

Greimel said the city would like to see a quick resolution to what he believes is a “fair and reasonable” recreational ordinance, but isn’t spending a lot of time pining about it as marijuana is just a small slice of potential tax revenue for the city.

“ e vast majority of people I’ve spoken with don’t believe the city can sustain 20-plus dispensaries,” Greimel said. “I think it’s fair to say that all of the medical dispensaries are not going to survive as recreational dispensaries. Given that market reality and given the fact that all of those conditionally approved as medical facilities have the opportunity to apply for those same locations for recreational dispensaries, the process and the outcome have been very fair … I don’t think marijuana is the economic salvation for Pontiac. So while we would like to see this brought to a conclusion, while we would love to see some stores open, it’s not a decisive moment for Pontiac.”

Contact: dwalsh@crain.com; (313) 446-6042; @dustinpwalsh