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Next steps on EVs — and chips?

The EV boom netted big promises in Michigan as states nationwide competed to lure the once-in-a-generation wave of plant investments. This year, the thing to watch will be how those promises progress toward reality.

GM’s work on its $7 billion investment near Lansing is under way, and Michigan has also lured massive proposed battery plants from Gotion Inc. near Big Rapids and Our Next Energy in Novi.

All the companies received big incentives totaling hundreds of millions of dollars from a newly created state fund — but they’ll have to deliver on their promises. 2022 was the year business got back to something approaching “normal” — with in-person work becoming more common, live events ramping up and masks becoming less and less visible. But normal is only normal for so long. Here’s a look at what to watch (and some of what Crain’s will be watching) in the coming year.

BY MICHAEL LEE

CEO Mujeeb Ijaz at Our Next Energy in Novi; his company now

plans to build a battery plant. | NIC

Huntington Place quest

Detroit’s convention center, Huntington Place, is on the hunt for hotel rooms. Leaders of the authority that runs the center would very much like to see two high-end hotels of 750 or so rooms built on the nearby Joe Louis Arena property, potentially even one connected to the former Cobo Center. HUNTINGTON PLACE That land is owned by Sterling Group, the real estate development rm run by the Torgow family. Currently under construction on the site is an apartment tower, but there’s room for more development.

Bills passed by the state Senate and fast-tracked in late November would expand the borders and o er new funding and exibility to the convention center, moves that would let it enter into public-private partnerships. Could one of those partners be Sterling Group?

A very di erent Lansing

The Legislature will reconvene in January with the Democratic Party fully in control for the rst time in four decades, along with a re-elected Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer.

Potential targets for the new majority could include repealing the right-to-work law passed when Republicans were in charge. That law exempts companies from requiring employees to pay union dues as a condition of employment and has long been a target of unions.

Democrats’ margins of majority are thin, and many of the newly elected members are in politically evenly divided districts, so progressives’ wish list is unlikely to come easily.

From left: Wayne State University President M. Roy Wilson, University of Michigan President Santa Ono and Michigan State University interim

President Teresa Woodru . | PROVIDED BY THE SCHOOLS

New leaders for another ‘Big 3’

Michigan’s three big research universities — the University of Michigan, Michigan State University and Wayne State University — are all getting new management within a short period of time.

Santa Ono took over as president at UM late this year after his hiring following the January ring of Mark Schlissel for an inappropriate relationship with a subordinate. Michigan State University named Theresa Woodru as interim president in November after the resignation of Samuel Stanley amid a massive board dispute. And Wayne State University President M. Roy Wilson plans to retire from the Detroit university in July 2023.

The universities, critical engines for Michigan’s economy, will be looking to new leaders to bring stability.

Auto show next — and a downtown Grand Prix

A pair of automotive events will return in di erent forms to downtown Detroit next year. The auto show made its post-pandemic debut in 2022 of a reimagined show that extended far beyond the con nes of Huntington Place but met with reviews that were mixed at best at being an auto show. (Though the giant duck will be remembered.) The show is likely to evolve further in 2023.

And the Grand Prix in June will hit the streets of downtown Detroit, leaving its previous home on Belle Isle. The last downtown Grand Prix race was in 1992. It promises to bring lots of foot tra c and excitement downtown (as well as pedestrian bridges over Je erson). The race course itself will bear watching — bumpy streets were a complaint of Formula 1 drivers back in the day.

Above, a scene from 2022 auto show. At right, the IndyCar Detroit

Grand Prix auto race on Belle Isle. |

AP IMAGES AND NIC ANTAYA/CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS

The weed conundrum

The legal cannabis business in Michigan has a problem with falling prices. The industry points a nger at the illegal marijuana business. Oversupply generally is also a problem as more grow operations come online.

Trying to x the issue is the state’s Cannabis Regulatory Agency, which promises a crackdown on illegal weed making its way into legal channels. The agency under new interim chief Brian Hanna has already started cracking down on provisioning centers that aren’t properly tracking their cannabis through legal channels.

That promises to ramp up in the new year. In the meantime, pressure for consolidation in the industry is likely to increase as low prices make pro table business more di cult and scale and vertical integration become more important.

Getting used to ‘Corewell’

The Spectrum-Beaumont merger of health care titans continued to play out — including a much-talked-about new name for the system — Corewell Health.

Figuring out how to integrate the two systems continues to play out. The two partners are operating now as Corewell East and Corewell West. The system’s Priority Health insurance subsidiary is looking to use the presence on the east side of the state as a way to gain market share from the dominant Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan.

In the coming year, it will be worth watching for signals on how the systems will consolidate operations and whether that might lead to job cuts in an industry that’s struggling with operating losses from hospitals.

District Detroit and DCI

The development of the Ilitch family’s District Detroit project got a new partner in New York City developer and Detroit native Stephen Ross. They’ve proposed $1.5 billion in new projects and will be seeking transformational brown eld incentives from the state to make them a reality.

The District Detroit’s initial vision has been slow to become a reality, but winning that incentive would be a nancial shot in the arm.

Progress on the move of Ross’ proposed University of Michigan Detroit Center for Innovation to the district will also add another major project to its roster.

The planned Detroit Center for Innovation aimed for the District

Detroit. | DISTRICT DETROIT

Interest rates and in ation, oh my

The business story of 2022 globally was crippling in ation that trended at 40-year highs in the U.S. and central banks’ rapid increase of interest rates in an e ort to tamp it down.

Though those economic headwinds reminded some of the 1970s, there is some evidence that in ation is slowing, and Federal Reserve governors have said as of December that they expect increases to slow down.

Michigan’s mortgage giants, Rocket Mortgage and UWM, have seen the mortgage market slow markedly because few home owners are looking to re nance and the real estate market is also facing di culty. How those companies, critical to the local economy, bear up under the stress and adjust their businesses will bear scrutiny.

Michigan Central Station undergoing renovation in January 2022. | NIC ANTAYA/

CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS

Michigan Central

A long-awaited milestone is set to come before the end of the year — the reopening of Ford’s renovation of the once-decrepit Michigan Central Station in Detroit’s Corktown neighborhood.

Built in 1914 for trains, it is set to become a hub for innovation in electric and automonous technologies for Ford as the automaker reinvents itself for a new era of transportation.

Also to watch: any news of further developments in the Michigan Central district around the station, where the independent Michigan Central nonpro t is working to create an innovation district.