Crain's Detroit Business May 10, 2021, issue by Crain's Detroit Business

A look inside Beaumont COVID ward as spring surge’s remnants reverberate. PAGE 3

THE CONVERSATION: Brian Yessian on how commercial music and Detroit roots have added up for his family’s firm. PAGE 26

CRAINSDETROIT.COM I MAY 10, 2021

Staffing struggles deepen

IN THEIR

TWENTIES They’re young. They’re motivated. They’re making their mark on metro Detroit.

Restaurants strain to keep doors open

MEET THE CLASS OF 2021 STARTING ON PAGE 13

BY CHAD LIVENGOOD

SYLVIA JARRUS

The Wendy’s fast-food restaurant in Hazel Park closes nightly at 8 p.m. now — when it can stay open even that late. In recent weeks, a Taco Bell in St. Clair Shores has shut off its drive-thru screen between 2 p.m. and 4 p.m. during weekdays, turning away midafternoon customers before the evening dinner rush ensues. Jim Brady’s restaurant — a Royal Oak institution — is open only for dinner and is dark at lunchtime. In Waterford Township, the Fork n’ Pint restaurant overlooking Cass Lake is closed on Mondays and Tuesdays. On a daily basis, the labor shortages become more pronounced as the restaurant industry struggles to meet the demands of customers venturing out of pandemic isolation to resume dining in or pulling through a drive-thru on their way to in-person work for the first time in over a year. “We’re definitely short on staff

The sign outside of a Hazel Park Wendy’s lists its new hours. | NIC ANTAYA/ SPECIAL TO CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS

right now,” said Bill Schwab, general manager of Fork n’ Pint. “But everybody’s short on staff right now.” Industry leaders blame the labor shortage on a host of factors, ranging from continued concerns from workers about contracting COVID-19 on the job to child care issues for working parents and uncertainty in hours from potential government restrictions. See LABOR on Page 22

Vaccines give health businesses shot at new customers Customer data, relationships could be long-term prize from COVID campaigns BY JAY GREENE

Retail pharmacies and private hospitals have been primary COVID-19 vaccine providers, along with health departments, since the Pfizer-BioNTech and Moderna vaccines were approved in late December to fight the pandemic.

Encouraged by state and federal health officials to create convenient access and provide education about the relative safety of the newly developed vaccines, many pharmacies and hospitals developed sophisticated and comprehensive marketing and education programs to get the word out to the public —

NEWSPAPER

and to potential customers. But have pharmacies and hospitals crossed a line from purely altruistic and educational purveyors of crucial information to what they have always done as private businesses: sell products and services to enhance revenue and profitability? In a Feb. 16 earnings call, CVS

Health President and CEO Karen Lynch and COO Jon Roberts may have spoken for many private vaccinators when they acknowledged that offering the COVID-19 vaccine in their thousands of stores and clinics could also generate new customers and sales opportunities. Analyst AJ Rice of Credit Suisse

CRAIN’S LIST After a year of IPOs, new names debut among largest publicly traded companies in metro Detroit. PAGE 11

asked: “Should we think of the vaccine for COVID like the vaccine for flu, where there is some added benefit in the front end of the store?” Roberts: “Yes. So we do see an opportunity with the vaccines and building relationships with new customers to convert them to longterm CVS Health customers.” He provided an example. “Our See VACCINE on Page 23

CRAIN'S LIST | SE MICHIGAN PUBLICLY HELD COMPANIES Ranked by 2020 revenue COMPANY; FISCAL YEAR END ADDRESS PHONE; WEBSITE

TOP EXECUTIVE(S)

REVENUE ($000,000) 2020

REVENUE ($000,000) 2019

PERCENT CHANGE

NET INCOME ($000,000) 2020/ 2019

EXCHANGE/ TICKER SYMBOL

STOCK PRICE 52-WEEK HIGH/LOW

TYPE OF

FORD MOTOR CO. (12/31/2020) 1 American Road, Dearborn 48126 313-322-3000; ford.com

James Farley Jr. president, CEO & director

$127,144.0

$155,900.0

-18.4%

($1,279.0) $47.0

NYSE F

$13.62 $4.52

Autom

GENERAL MOTORS CO. (12/31/2020)

Mary Barra chairman & CEO

$122,485.0

$137,237.0

-10.7%

$6,427.0 $6,732.0

NYSE GM

$63.44 $20.12

Autom

PENSKE AUTOMOTIVE GROUP INC. (12/31/2020)

Roger Penske Sr. chairman & CEO

$20,443.9

$23,179.4

-11.8%

$543.6 $435.8

NYSE PAG

$87.68 $28.57

Autom

LEAR CORP. (12/31/2020)

Raymond Scott Jr. president, CEO & director

$17,045.5

$19,810.3

-14.0%

$158.5 $753.6

NYSE LEA

$196.26 $80.15

Autom

ROCKET COMPANIES INC. 1(12/31/2020) 1050 Woodward Ave., Detroit 48226 313-373-7990; rocketcompanies.com

Jay Farner vice chairman & CEO Dan Gilbert chairman and founder

$15,980.7

$5,252.2

204.3%

$198.0 $0.0

NYSE RKT

$43.00 $17.50

Holdin techno and co

APTIV PLC (12/31/2020) 5725 Innovation Drive, Troy 48098 248-813-2000; aptiv.com

Kevin Clark president & CEO

$13,066.0

$14,357.0

-9.0%

$1,804.0 $990.0

NYSE APTV

$160.14 $56.04

Autom

ADIENT PLC (9/30/2020) 49200 Halyard Drive, Plymouth 48170 734-254-5000; adient.com

Douglas Del Grosso president, CEO & director

$12,670.0

$16,526.0

-23.3%

($547.0) ($491.0)

NYSE ADNT

$48.65 $10.36

Autom

300 Renaissance Center , Detroit 48265 313-667-1500; gm.com

2555 Telegraph Road , Bloomfield Hills 48302 248-648-2500; penskeautomotive.com 21557 Telegraph Road , Southfield 48033 248-447-1500; lear.com

NEED TO KNOW

MORT HARRIS, 1920-2021

THE WEEK IN REVIEW, WITH AN EYE ON WHAT’S NEXT  ROCKET’S PROFITS CONTINUE LIFTOFF THE NEWS: Despite rising interest rates, a red-hot housing market continues to pay significant dividends for Detroit-based Rocket Companies Inc., the country’s largest mortgage overall mortgage lender. Dan Gilbert-owned Rocket Companies (NYSE: RKT), which includes Rocket Mortgage, Rocket Auto and a host of other financial firms, on Wednesday reported first quarter total net income of nearly $2.8 billion on revenue of approaching $4.6 billion — a profit margin of approximately 60 percent. WHY IT MATTERS: Fueled by rock-bottom interest rates leading to a refinancing boom, and a restless population stuck at home looking for new housing options during the pandemic, 2020 made for a red-hot year for the mortgage sector. Still, Wall Street didn’t smile on Rocket — its stock price fell after the announcement, nearing its 52-week low on Friday.

 BEAUMONT CHAIRMAN LEWIS TO STEP DOWN THE NEWS: John Lewis, the founding chairman of Southfield-based Beaumont Health, has announced he will step down as chairman in June and will leave the board at the end of the year.

WHY IT MATTERS: The move comes several months after a group of major donors, top doctors and community leaders at eight-hospital Beaumont Health called for the firing of CEO John Fox and for the 19-member board of directors to be overhauled. However, Beaumont said in a statement to Crain’s that Lewis resigning as chair and other board changes have nothing to do with criticism of the board and top management.

 LINEAGE ENTERS SPANISH MARKET WITH DEALS THE NEWS: Novi-based Lineage Logistics LLC on Tuesday announced two acquisitions that mark the world’s largest temperature-controlled warehousing company’s entry into the Spanish market. Lineage acquired Frigorificos de Navarra, a leading operator of refrigerated warehousing and storage facilities headquartered in Milagro, Spain, and a cold storage warehouse facility from Frioastur in Gijón, Spain.

WHY IT MATTERS: The company has made a seemingly endless parade of acquisitions as it works to build a global network of cold storage.

 MASK ORDER LOOSENED AS SURGE RECEDES THE NEWS: Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s administration loosened pandemic restrictions on indoor residential gatherings, allowing fully vaccinated residents to shed their face masks as long as they’re not experiencing COVID-19 symptoms. The new health order took effect Thursday and eliminates mask requirements for indoor and outdoor gatherings on residential properties for individuals who are fully vaccinated against the coronavirus. WHY IT MATTERS: Restrictions are loosening as a surge of virus cases in Michigan eases and more residents of the state get vaccinated. More than half of the state’s residents have received at least a first dose of the vaccine.

Philanthropist, American Axle co-founder dies at 101  Mort Harris — entrepreneur, co-founder of auto industry supplier American Axle & Manufacturing Inc. and longtime philanthropist — died Wednesday, according to a statement from Northwood University. He was 101 years old. No cause of death was given. Harris was a decorated U.S. Army Air Forces pilot during WWII, helped build American Axle after its spin-off from General Motors and donated tens of millions of dollars to countless nonprofits in Southeast Michigan, including Wayne State University and Henry Ford Health System. One of Harris’ more recent donations was $40 million to Henry Ford Health System, half to support cancer care and research and to name the Brigitte Harris Cancer Pavilion at the Henry Ford Cancer Institute, named for his late wife who died of pancreatic cancer. Harris gained recognition early in life, earning the nickname the “Berlin Kid” in recognition of his 33 successful missions over Germany. He also led a mission over Warsaw to drop supplies and ammunition and received three Distinguished Flying Crosses, six air medals, the Polish Medal of Honor and a Presidential Citation, Northwood University said.

Correction The May 3 Conversation on p. 22 incorrectly spelled the names of two Community Foundation of Southeast Michigan trustees, Allan Gilmour and Paul Dimond.

Mort Harris

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HEALTH CARE

Registered nurses Taylor Marsh (left), Jordyn Zapinkski and colleagues take a moment to discuss patient care at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak. | CYDNI ELLEDGE FOR CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS

Nurse Kelsey Hodge treats a COVID-19 patent at Beaumont Hospital in Royal Oak. | CYDNI ELLEDGE FOR CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS

Exhaustion and purpose in the COVID unit A look inside at Beaumont as caregivers, patients work through reverberations of the surge BY JAY GREENE

At its peak, eight-hospital Beaumont Health had 1,217 patients admitted at one time during the first surge in April 2020, the most of any system in the state. The numbers have dropped from 671 in early April to 479 on May 4. But it’s still a heavy load, physically and emotionally, for the system’s 38,000 employees. “The first surge, we didn’t know a lot” about the disease, said Dr. Barbara Ducatman, chief medical officer at Beaumont Royal Oak. “We didn’t know what we were going to get hit with.

The hospital pretty much shut down and a lot of people stayed away, except for real surgical emergencies.” Ducatman, a pathologist by training, was part of a team of doctors and administrators who reorganized the hospital in April 2020 to create specialized COVID-19 units. “We have been testing every patient coming into the hospital to make sure that we put them in the appropriate place,” she said. Crain’s visited Beaumont’s COVID unit and talked with an array of workers and patients who are still in the middle of the most recent surge.

The nurses, doctors, technicians, support staff and all of the others who make the Beaumont system hum have been running on the edge of stress, grief and grit during this surge, as they have for all the others; so have the patients. Here are some of their stories.

Darius Brown, COVID-19 patient Darius Brown thinks he contracted COVID-19 during his weekly Wednesday shopping trip in late April to a store near his Southfield home. He can’t be totally sure, because many people in the building

where he lives contracted the virus and died. A few days later, he started to feel sick, his lungs became congested, breathing became hard and he spit up yellow phlegm. His daily caregiver, who has tested negative, called 911 and emergency medical service providers transported Brown to Beaumont Hospital Royal Oak, where he was admitted on April 28. At the worst of his illness, Brown’s temperature rose to 103 degrees. See BEAUMONT on Page 24

SPORTS BUSINESS

Bayview Yacht Club looks to rescue its business, sport of sailing Clubhouse undergoes $5 million renovation BY KURT NAGL

Bayview Yacht Club incorporated in 1919 during the time of the influenza pandemic. Over the last century, the private club on the east side of Detroit has held steady through its lowest points, which include a devastating fire, the Great Depression, the Great Recession and, so far, another global pandemic. But its greatest existential threat has lurked in plain sight for the last several decades. The number of sailboats on Lake St. Clair and the Detroit River seems to shrink every summer. Once wildly popular in metro Detroit, the nautical pastime has fallen by the wayside. A small but mighty group of

Brad Kimmel, Chuck Stormes and Matthew Prost pose for a photo Thursday in front of the Bayview Yacht Club, where a $5 million renovation project will wrap up next month. | ELEMENT PHOTOGRAPHY

sailing stalwarts is aiming to rescue the sport from extinction and return it to its former glory. As sailing goes, so goes the Bayview Yacht Club. “Sailboat racing in the city of Detroit has dwindled dramatically in the last 20 years,” said Chuck Stormes, commodore of the club, who joined in 1983. “Our major pipeline of membership came from the 300-some boats that raced on Lake St. Clair for years and years. A big turnout these days is less than 100 boats.” Club leadership hopes the completion of more than $5 million of renovations at the 86-year-old clubhouse on Connor Creek will start a resurgence and help the club emerge from a perfect storm. Membership has been shrinking. Its signature Bayview Mackinac Race limped forward last year amid the pandemic and it lost its title sponsor Bell’s Brewery after a de-

cade. In another cruel twist, its century-old Queen City tugboat, being used as a temporary clubhouse during renovations, sank in March, leaving the club with just a tent to bring members together. Stormes said he believes the tide will turn for the organization once the new clubhouse welcomes back members next month. It can’t handle many more blows. “If we can bring the people in and introduce them to the sport, we might be able to grow, and in that way, sort of lead a comeback of sailing in Detroit,” Stormes said. The new 13,000-square-foot clubhouse, expanded by 2,700 square feet, is a shrine to the club’s storied sailing history with new amenities meant to grow its niche and lure outsiders. See BAYVIEW on Page 24 MAY 10, 2021 | CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS | 3

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Plante Moran’s combined new office in the Southfield Town Center is seen as an encouraging sign for the region’s office market, which has been battered during the COVID-19 pandemic. | COSTAR GROUP INC.

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4 | CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS | MAY 10, 2021

Plante Moran’s Southfield roots deepen, and why that matters Plante Moran made waves when it revealed that it was going to become the largest tenant, by far, in one of the Southfield Town Center high-rises. Kirk I reported rePINHO cently that the Southfield-based tax, wealth advisory and real estate firm is merging its two offices — one already in the 32-story 3000 Town Center building and adding staff from another building on Northwestern Highway that has gone up for sale — to create a new 192,600-square-foot office encompassing 12 floors with close to 900 employees. In other words: Work from home, schmerk from home — kind of. “Face-to-face interaction is a strong part of our firm culture — and a part of working at Plante Moran that has been sorely missed by many staff over the past year — so we foresee a return to the office post-pandemic. Work from home will continue to be part of our WorkFlex program to help staff maintain balance of work and family responsibilities,” Teresa Pollock, group managing partner who oversees Plante Moran’s offices, said in an email. Admittedly, the huge new lease was signed at the very beginning of the COVID-19 pandemic. Its true gravity and devastation were perhaps not yet apparent, both in terms of public health as well as the office space sector. The deal would have been in the works for months in advance of the first Michigan coronavirus cases being announced March 10, 2020 — three days before the lease was signed after being brokered by Transwestern and Plante Moran CRESA. Still, the fact that Plante Moran proceeded even with that in mind is a huge bright spot in an otherwise murky office environment where how things shake out will largely be seen on a company-by-company basis, on a landlord-by-landlord basis and cityby-city basis. To be clear: One office lease does

not an office market make, just as one office emptying does not an office market make. But it’s an important vote of confidence in a return to some semblance of pre-pandemic normalcy. Brandon Carnegie, senior associate of advisory and transaction services in the Southfield office of CBRE Inc., called the deal “very encouraging,” saying that Plante Moran “shows confidence in their plans to bring people back to the office.” Still, he said, “Every company is at different stages and will have a different process for determining what the new normal is for their employees inside and outside the office.” “In my experience, companies that

“FACE-TO-FACE INTERACTION IS A STRONG PART OF OUR FIRM CULTURE — AND A PART OF WORKING AT PLANTE MORAN THAT HAS BEEN SORELY MISSED BY MANY STAFF OVER THE PAST YEAR — SO WE FORESEE A RETURN TO THE OFFICE POST-PANDEMIC.” — Teresa Pollock, group managing partner, Plante Moran

are spending significant time evaluating employee needs alongside determining the efficiency and effectiveness of their footprints are moving quicker and taking advantage of favorable office market conditions subject to a number of qualifying factors,” Carnegie said. “I am starting to see an uptick in office activity — more tours, more proposals and more signed leases. This should lead to increased building occupancy and more importantly physical occupancy throughout metro Detroit for property owners. Aggressive and creative landlords are winning the day and I believe this will continue through the balance of this year heading into 2022.” David Miller, senior vice president

and principal for the Southfield-based Signature Associates Inc. brokerage house, likened the work-from-home model many office workers are in to an important backup in an emergency. “It’s like a ‘donut’ spare (tire) on a car,” Miller said. “It will get you down the road, and maybe support you for a limited amount of time. However, sustained use of a donut is dangerous, hard on your car and will eventually leave you in a bad spot if you don’t replace it with a proper tire. Most of us will be back in the office for part or much of the time.” The lease couldn’t come too soon for the Southfield market. First-quarter stats from JLL (formerly Jones Lang LaSalle) show that Southfield’s 13.04 million square feet of office space is a jaw-dropping 32.9 percent vacant, including sublease space, by far the highest rate in the region, minus the downriver market, which registers as barely a blip overall with just about 493,000 square feet, which is 51.4 percent vacant, including sublease space. Newmark Knight Frank’s first-quarter market report shows Southfield with about 17.4 million square feet that’s a comparatively low 20.2 percent vacant — which is still a high vacancy rate, mind you. (Each brokerage house conducts their market analyses slightly differently, which can account for the large disparity between the two firms’ reports, although both do only count buildings 10,000 square feet or more that are not owner-occupied.) Plante Moran’s office combination marks one of the largest office deals during the COVID-19 pandemic. Others include Volkswagen of America renewing its lease for nearly 360,000 square feet in Auburn Hills after seriously exploring a move to Southfield, as well as a corporate headquarters relocation for Marelli North America Inc. into 188,000 square feet of the former Federal-Mogul Corp. building at 26555 Northwestern Highway in Southfield. Contact: kpinho@crain.com; (313) 446-0412; @kirkpinhoCDB

CONGRATS honorees. Thank you for your leadership and dedication to improving the communities in which we do business.

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COMMENTARY

New law ended the warranty on auto insurance

eneral Motors Co. guarantees customers a three-year, 36,000-mile bumper-tobumper warranty on every vehicle the Detroit automaker sells. But what if in the second year of the warranty, the Chad capped the reLIVENGOOD government imbursement payments for GM dealerships by nearly half and forced them out of business? Technically, the customer would still have their warranty. But it’s hard to fulfill that warranty when there’s no mechanic. That’s essentially what the Michigan Legislature and Gov. Gretchen Whitmer did to some 18,000 Michigan residents who were catastrophically injured in auto accidents, often through no fault of their own. Insurance companies literally sold consumers the Cadillac of medical coverage for auto injuries through the Michigan Catastrophic Claims Association, a fund with $23 billion in driver fees sitting in the bank that pays for lifetime care of the most critically injured motorists and pedestrians. After July 1, the billions will still be in the fund. But the MCCA will have to pay certain postacute providers only 55 percent of their average charges from Jan. 1, 2019 — if those providers are actually still in business. “That’s what the MCCA was — a warranty. And now they don’t even want to honor it,” said Paul Semian, owner of Progressions LLC, the operator of five group homes for motorists with brain and spinal cord injuries. Because Semian’s group home rehab isn’t covered by Medicare, its $425-per-day residential care services falls under the 55 percent rate cap. He’s planning to shutter his five group homes that house 52 clients and lay off 180 employees in Oakland and Macomb counties. “There’s so many ways to fix this without blowing it up,” Semian said. Blowing up Michigan’s auto insurance scheme is just what lawmakers set out to do in an effort to get more drivers paying for insurance and rein in the fastest-growing portion of insurance premiums, Personal Injury Protection. From the personal injury attorneys to the flyby-night MRI clinics, there were some bad actors in the system that became easy targets for

Gov. Gretchen Whitmer signs SB 1, the No Fault Auto Insurance reform bill on the porch at the Grand Hotel on May 30, 2019. | DALE G. YOUNG FOR CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan and other politicians to blame for Michigan’s astronomically high car insurance rates. Before the new law took effect in July 2020, every Michigan motorist was required to purchase an auto insurance policy that included lifetime medical coverage for their injuries. These were head-to-toe lifetime warranties, paying for intense rehabilitation and round-theclock in-home care that commercial health insurance and Medicare don’t pay for. The Republican-authored law effectively ended the warranty by capping payments to certain medical providers whose services don’t have a Medicare billing code at 55 percent of what they were charging in January 2019. Other providers, such as hospitals, got their charges capped at 200 percent of Medicare. Many of the medical providers who built up a business around the no-fault auto insurance system say they will close their doors July 1 when payments get slashed by 45 percent. Lawmakers and Whitmer, who signed the legislation, are no longer honoring the warranty people purchased under the assumption that if they were ever hurt, they would get a certain level of care.

Even drivers who have elected to maintain unlimited medical coverage have seen their warranties rewritten by lawmakers (or, more accurately, by insurance industry lobbyists). If your son or daughter were in a horrific accident tomorrow and suffered paralysis, they may still be entitled to unlimited medical care. But that access to care could be greatly diminished after July 1 if there is no longer a network of providers to teach them how to walk again. The new law’s rates have the potential to unleash chaos on the market. This is known as the law of unintended consequences. Ironically, the 2019 law may ultimately reward some of the alleged price-gougers who legislators were targeting. Home health care companies, rehab centers and physical therapists who charged the most in January 2019 will be able to squeeze out the highest payments under the new payment cap, which is nothing more than government price-fixing in the private insurance market. “The organizations that they did want to punish are going to succeed. It makes no sense,” said Bill Buccalo, CEO of Rainbow Rehabilitation Centers, a Livonia-based company that operates 30 adult foster care group homes for cata-

strophically injured motorists. Like any new law, there will be loopholes — and lots of litigation to come over the use of said loopholes to get around the rate cap. Some companies are discussing the possibility of merging with the firms that had the highest charges, in order to survive, Buccalo said. “It’s a lot of unnecessary reorganization of businesses,” Buccalo said. Others are considering starting new companies altogether as the law speaks only to what medical providers charged on Jan. 1, 2019. The law seems silent on what a new home health care agency that wasn’t in business on New Year’s Day in 2019 could charge. The final Senate Bill 1 was rammed through the Legislature on Friday, May 24, 2019, to deliver the legislation to Whitmer at the Mackinac Policy Conference the following week. Before its passage, the Democratic governor had expressed reservations about no-fault reform that heavily favored the insurance carriers. When she ultimately signed the bill on the porch of the Grand Hotel, Whitmer noted the irony of making sweeping changes to auto insurance on and island where cars are banned. It was a good joke to lighten the mood after Republican lawmakers, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan and Quicken Loans Chairman Dan Gilbert backed her into a corner on this issue. A veto would have been politically perilous given that voters have been clamoring about the high cost of auto insurance for years. It may take years to know whether the law ultimately drove down the cost of insurance. But some early data on auto insurance premiums suggests it hasn’t moved the needle yet in Detroit, where drivers pay astronomical rates — or go uninsured. A new study conducted by The Zebra car insurance price comparison website found annual premiums in Detroit for a 30-year-old male driving a 2016 Honda Accord EX hovered around $5,072 in late 2020 after the new law took effect. The medical providers facing a terminal haircut on July 1 argue there are other ways to wring out savings for the insurance carriers, such as adding mandatory medical deductibles. “No organization can sustain a 45 percent cut in revenue when your margins are in the single digits,” Buccalo said. “It’s that simple.” Contact: clivengood@crain.com; (313) 446-1654; @ChadLivengood

FROM THE ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER

May Days of Giving returns as a way to give back Today kicks off Crain’s May Days of Giving, an opportunity for the nonprofits taking part in our annual Giving Guide to tell their stories and raise much-needed funds. We created the May Days event last spring as a timely way to help Michigan nonprofits, who were in triage mode after canceling events and other fundraising efforts because of the pandemic. The inaugural event raised $82,312 from 379 donors for 32 nonprofits. After the campaign, the participating nonprofits told us

Lisa

RUDY

about the first-time donors that had given to their causes — and we know these nonprofits are experts at turning a one-time, new donation into a long-term relationship.

This year, 37 nonprofits are taking part in the May Days of Giving campaign. Their missions range from helping children and families to supporting veterans. Their needs are also diverse: They fund scholarships, counseling services, technology and transportation needs. In annual revenue they range in size from $187,000 to $55 million. Eight of the nonprofits were founded in the past 10 years; two were founded in the mid-1800s. Some of the nonprofits are securing match-

Write us: Crain’s welcomes responses from readers. Letters should be as brief as possible and may be edited for length or clarity. Send letters to Crain’s Detroit Business, 1155 Gratiot Ave, Detroit, MI 48207, or email crainsdetroit@crain.com. Please include your complete name, city from which you are writing and a phone number for fact-checking purposes. 6 | CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS | MAY 10, 2021

ing donations; for many of them, this campaign represents their first online fundraising campaign. During the campaign, Crain’s Detroit Business will pick up the tab for service fees charged by the donation platform, ensuring more money gets directly to the nonprofits. Read all about the nonprofits and give back at MayDaysofGiving.CrainsDetroit.com. For more information about the Giving Guide, contact Associate Publisher Lisa Rudy at lrudy@crain.com.

Sound off: Crain’s considers longer opinion pieces from guest writers on issues of interest to business readers. Email ideas to Managing Editor Michael Lee at malee@crain.com.

COMMENTARY

If you’re looking for diverse talent, look to Detroit

n recent weeks, CEOs from a number of major companies — including some based in metro Detroit — have issued statements confirming their Mary commitment to KRAMER racial equity, commitments underscored in full-page ads in leading newspapers, such as the Wall Street Journal or the New York Times. But so far, I haven’t seen any big companies outside of Metro Detroit announce they were actually expanding in Southeast Michigan to tap diverse talent as part of this equity vision. That’s why Matt Achak’s “experiment” is so intriguing. Achak is president of FCR, a call center company based in Oregon with a track record of creating jobs in small towns in the Pacific Northwest. In March, FCR announced that it had started hiring in Southeast Michigan largely to expand the racial and ethnic diversity of its team. “We’re a white company,” Achak told me in a call last month. “In Oregon and Montana, you can’t find many people of color. The population is 95 percent white.” So the company headquartered in Eugene, decided to change up its model and create new hubs in other parts of the country, starting with metro Detroit, in the hopes of having a more diverse workforce. “We wanted to find places that were ‘underdog-gy,’ he said. “We didn’t want to go to hipster places like Charlotte, N.C. They don’t need us.” FCR stands for “First Call Resolution.” The company boasts an employee-focused culture, described on its web site as “fun and rewarding” with programs that help workers create a career path. For its clients, the company promises a “superior customer experience” and technical expertise — that’s not offshore. Achak founded the company in 2005; it was acquired in 2019 and remains a standalone unit within TTec Holdings Inc., a publicly traded customer experience management company. Today, FCR has nearly 3,000 employees serving 80 clients, offering call center, business process and social networking support to industries ranging from telecom to travel to insurance. Achak said he originally hoped to hire 30 employees in a work-fromhome pilot in Southfield and Romulus, working with the Detroit Regional Economic Partnership and local workforce teams in Wayne and Oakland counties. Hiring stands at 10 times the original goal, and Achak predicted hiring would hit 500 employees by year end. Entry-level jobs pay $12 to $15 an hour, with company-paid health care and dental insurance as well as seven paid holidays. Achak said FCR is “unlocking skill sets” with the more urban recruits. “They understand gaming,” he said, offering an example. “It shortens the (technical) training. Training for technology is the easiest part. Finding people with the patience to walk a confused person through a process, the empathy component, is very hard to train for.” Although the model is WFH now, Achak said the company will have physical space as well. And the foray into Southeast Michigan has been so successful that FCR is looking next to Chattanooga, Tenn., Achak said. The FCR investment in Southeast

Michigan is important, but it’s dwarfed by a string of expansions in cities like Atlanta, where the Wall Street Journal reported in March that Microsoft said it will create 1,500 jobs and invest $75 million to take advantage of the region’s diversity. The article included a map showing cities and states with tech job growth and high percentages of Black, Hispanic and female students pursuing STEM-related degrees. Despite three public research universities in proximity and an auto industry that increasingly is creating computers on wheels, Detroit showed up only on the “low tech-talent diversity score.” (Here’s hoping someone challenges

the data credited to someone in the business school at Tufts University.) Southeast Michigan can and will attract more employers looking for diversity, says Maureen Donahue Krauss, CEO of the Detroit Regional Partnership, which covers 11 counties in Southeast Michigan. And the audience to convince is relatively small — site consultants, who she says are critical in most expansion or relocation deals. A recent example: Last year’s announcement that Chicago-based tech-based auto insurance startup, Clearcover, would hire 300 in Detroit for a new customer service center was a deal involving a site consultant. And Krauss said the

partnership hopes to host two groups of site consultants this summer. Winning a deal is great, but Krauss said you can learn a lot from a losing bid. “We have to identify the road blocks,” she said, citing talent and workforce concerns that have come up in the past. “It’s not that we don’t have the talent,” she said. “It’s how we identified it.” So the partnership plans to hire a “talent concierge” to work with local workforce boards and other community resources to meet prospects’ needs. Tapping resources, whether it’s the nonprofit ACCESS that serves a Middle Eastern population or the group of largely Bangladeshi commercial sewers in Ham-

tramck is critical to meeting specific demands, Krauss said. “I think we can take our diversity for granted,” Krauss said, recounting a recent dinner she hosted for out-oftown business people at the Parc restaurant in Campus Martius Park in downtown Detroit. She said one of her guests remarked on the diversity of the people out-and-about in the park. “Yeah, we are,” Krauss told the guest. “We don’t have to use a stock photo to show it. I can find excellent and diverse talent for you here.” Mary Kramer is director of Detroit Homecoming and special projects at Crain Communications.

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MAY 10, 2021 | CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS | 7

CRAIN’S MICHIGAN BUSINESS: TOURISM

ON THE HORIZON?

Michigan’s signature festivals aim for a rebirth, mostly `BY TOM HENDERSON Tourism officials across the state

are generally breathing a cautious sigh of relief. Though the recent sharp spike in COVID-19 cases fueled by more easily transmitted variants caused them to scale back some events, for the most part, annual festivals are being held again this year after mass cancellations last year. For example, this weekend, May 7-9, saw the return of the Mesick Mushroom Festival, which drew thousands to the small northern Michigan town to celebrate the morel, everyone’s favorite spring mushroom. Saturday’s parade had a theme: “Bringing Back the Fun in 2021,” and in classic small-town fashion the parade grand marshal was the Mesick High School volleyball team. Other events included a black-morel hunting contest; the blessing of the Jeeps; a co-ed softball tournament; Masonic Lodge pastie sale; a carnival; corn-hole tournament; antique car show and cruise and a 5K run.

8 | CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS | MAY 10, 2021

The Holland Tulip Festival, because it is much larger than the mushroom festival, had more of a hybrid feel when it was held this year, from May 1-9. Organizers canceled some of the more popular annual events that drew big crowds, including parades and the Dutch dance performances, and scaled back the scope of the carnival midway. And the annual road races went off as a virtual event, meaning entrants could get bib numbers, finisher medals, T-shirts and hoodies, but they ran a 5K at a time and a place of their own choosing and entered their times online. A Dutch costume event, new this year, was held daily, featuring dancers wearing costumes from eight of the 12 regions of the Netherlands. Accompanying the costume event was a Dutch market, with a variety of Dutch-in-

spired merchandise. Mayor Nathan Bocks led visitors on two-mile walking tours of the city’s main points of interest, and yoga sessions over three days were held amid tulips in full bloom. Sadly, after COVID cases began spiking again in early spring, some event organizers decided the prudent thing was to cancel for a second year in a row, including the Empire Asparagus Festival on May 15 and the Cadillac Freedom Festival and Lake City’s Greatest Fourth in the North, both scheduled for the Fourth of July. But many other festivals remain on the calendar. While not an all-inclusive listing of tourist events and attractions around the state that are back on the calendar this year, here are some highlights:

The Upper Peninsula Mackinac Island: The 73rd annual Lilac Festival, the largest summer event on the island, is scheduled for June 4-13. The annual parade through downtown has been canceled over COVID precautions, but most of the other events are back. Visiting the island will be easier this summer than it was last. Shepler’s Ferry began service to the island on April 21. After operating with sharply reduced capacities last year, company President Chris Shepler said that while masks will be required for all passengers, the boats will be operating at full capacity this season. Events include the coronation of the festival queen, a corn-hole tournament and a 10K run, one of those bucket-list races for state runners. See FESTIVALS on Page 9

BY S

CHRISTY STEMPKY

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Return of many events ‘shot in the arm’ for metro Detroit Several are on for summer, fall, others are holding back before making final decision

CHRISTY STEMPKY

BY SHERRI WELCH

Many of the summertime and fall events that are traditions in metro Detroit are back on the calendar this year. While several plan to return to in-person events, others have yet to make final format decisions as the pandemic continues. “The fact that most of metro Detroit’s marquee events are planning to take place this summer and a few new events are coming is a major shot in the arm for the region,” Claude Molinari, president and CEO of the Detroit Metro Convention & Visitors Bureau, said in an emailed statement. “Those events are going to spur much needed business to hotels, restaurants and other hospitality providers and put us one step closer to normalcy. We are very encouraged that the worst of the pandemic may be behind us very soon.” The Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix presented by Lear will start the summer off when it returns to Belle Isle June 11-13. The nonprofit behind the event is continuing to work with state and local officials to ensure the event follows health and safety protocols, said Merrill Cain, director of public and community relations for Team Penske and the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix presented by Lear. “We hope we are in a position to announce the details for the event in the coming days.” An estimated 95,000 people attended the three-day event in 2019. The Ford Fireworks will return June 28 but not in its traditional location in

The Ford Fireworks will return June 28 but not in its traditional location in downtown Detroit. | THE PARADE CO.

downtown Detroit, Tony Michaels, president and CEO of the Parade Co., said last week, noting an announcement on the fireworks will come this week. At least two events, Detroit River Days, which is organized by the Detroit Riverfront Conservancy and typically takes place around the time of the fireworks, and the Maker Faire Detroit at the Henry Ford Museum of

American Innovation, have been canceled in response to the pandemic. But the Woodward Dream Cruise is a go for now, the organization’s board president Michael Lary said. “We’re proceeding as if we’re returning Aug. 21 with the expectation that normalcy is going to be in a much better place ... (but) priority number one is always going to be public safety,” he said.

Before the pandemic, the classic car cruise drew about 1 million people and 40,000 classic cars to Woodward Avenue, said Lary, director of special events for the city of Ferndale. The Motor City Car Crawl, a fourday outdoor event set for Aug. 5-8, will join the slate of summer events this year, showcasing new vehicles from metro Detroit area dealers throughout six downtown parks.

FESTIVALS

tors are expected to attend, with 800 cars officially registering and three times that many actually showing up.

Most years, Jeff Young, a lilac expert who comes in from Maine, leads walking tours around town to show visitors the wide range of lilacs on the island. Some of them are hundreds of years old and are not the bushes one might expect, but instead towering trees. This year, instead of walking tours, Young will be stationed in Marquette Park and restricting his discussions to the various lilacs there.

On June 24, there will be a drive-in movie theater temporarily set up at the Kewadin Shores Casino. On all four days there will be car cruises around the eastern Upper Peninsula, ranging from 20-75 miles. What is billed as the Muscle on the Mac cruise is scheduled for Friday for muscle cars to flex their stuff across the bridge to Mackinaw City and back.

The island’s other big draw is the Mackinac Policy Conference, which over concerns about COVID has been pushed back from late May to Sept. 20-23 at the Grand Hotel. The conference brings together hundreds of business and government leaders for a range of policy and panel discussions and networking.

Ranville said most motels in the area are already sold out, and most of them will be sold out by the end of the show for the 2022 event. “When people check out of their rooms on Monday, most of them make reservations for next year,” she said.

From Page 8

“It was very cool that both parties were very flexible to make it happen,” said Tim Hygh, executive director of Mackinac Island Tourism, referring to the Detroit Regional Chamber, which hosts the conference annually, and island officials. Hygh said he expects a bit of a slow start to the tourist season but based on reports by hotel owners thinks by July

There will be fireworks Saturday night.

From May 28-30, the city hosts the annual Native American Festival, displaying native traditions and culture at the Museum of Ojibwa Culture. The 73rd annual Lilac Festival, the largest summer event on the island, is scheduled for June 4-13. | MACKINAC ISLAND TOURISM BUREAU

visitor numbers will be back to normal. St. Ignace: The city’s biggest event, the St. Ignace Car Show, is back on for its 46th running (or driving) on June

24-27. Hot rods and show cars come from around the country and Canada. According to Quincy Ranville, director of special events for the St. Ignace Visitors Bureau, about 25,000 specta-

Marquette: The tourist season gets into full swing with Art Week from June 21-26, which includes exhibits, workshops and concerts. The Marquette Trails Festival is June 25-27, with up to 1,000 expected to participate in a variety of moun-

Labor Day Weekend will see the return of the Soaring Eagle Arts, Beats & Eats presented by Flagstar Bank to downtown Royal Oak and the 85th Romeo Peach Festival in northern Macomb County, according to the events’ websites. But another regional attractor over the holiday weekend, the Detroit Jazz Festival, won’t make a final decision on whether the event will take place in person or virtually until June or July. The Dlectricity visual light and art festival is set to light up Detroit’s cultural district Sept. 24-25, marking the first time the event has been held in the city since 2017. The event includes installations featuring video art, 3D video mapping, lasers and interactive design and engineering, showcasing the works of internationally acclaimed and emerging artists from Detroit and around the world. As for America’s Thanksgiving Parade presented by Gardener-White, Michaels said the Parade Co. is “very optimistic.” “We’re working toward a live event on Woodward Avenue.” The region’s events are important to keeping everybody involved and businesses going with the economic impact they bring, Michaels said. “We are so lucky in our region because we have world-class events,” said Michaels, who separately plays a role in organizing the Woodward Dream Cruise, as well as the fireworks and parade. Contact: swelch@crain.com; (313) 446-1694; @SherriWelch tain-bike and running races, with all proceeds going to support the Noquemanon Trail Network trail-building program. For more information, visit marquettetrailsfestival.com. The annual Blueberry Festival — the UP is paradise for fans of wild blueberries, which can be found in the forests, along trails, in every roadside park and lining the Lake Superior lakeshore in July and August — will be downtown on July 30. Stores will have sidewalk sales and you can revel in everything blueberry, from blueberry pizza to blueberry beer and, of course, baskets of fresh blueberries. Pictured Rocks National Lakeshore: The streets of downtown Munising are filled all summer with people coming off or getting ready to board the boats run by Pictured Rocks Cruises LLC, a concessionaire of the National Park Service. For more than 50 years, boats have taken tourists on 2 1/2-hour cruises to the wildly colored cliffs along Lake Superior east of the city. The tour season was delayed last season but began this year on May 8. Boats were at a limited capacity last season but will run at full capacity this year. See FESTIVALS on Page 10 MAY 10, 2021 | CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS | 9

CRAIN’S MICHIGAN BUSINESS | TOURISM

FESTIVALS

Gaylord: The 57th annual Gaylord Alpenfest, which honors the city’s heritage and its partnership with its sister city in Switzerland, Pontresina, will be held July 13-17.

From Page 9

In recent years, kayak tours along the cliffs have also grown hugely popular.

Activities include a craft show with more than 60 participating artists; a parade, kids’ games and contests; carnival rides; 5K and 10K runs; outdoor concerts each night; food booths and something billed as the world’s largest coffee break. Visit gaylordalpenfest.com.

Pictured Rocks is open year-round but its two visitors’ centers, the Munising Falls Visitor Center and the Grand Sable Visitor Center, don’t open until the Friday before Memorial Day, May 28, and are open through the end of September.

Tawas City: More than 130 booths of handmade arts and crafts will be on display at the annual Memorial Day Weekend annual Shoreline Arts & Crafts Show at Tawas City Park on Lake Huron May 23-24.

Keweenaw Peninsula: There are two counties in the peninsula — Houghton and Keweenaw. Brad Barnett, executive director of the Keweenaw Convention & Visitors Bureau, said there are 35,000 residents in Houghton County but just 2,000 in Keweenaw County, and that according to the Michigan Economic Development Corp., 70 percent of all jobs in Keweenaw County and 10 percent of all jobs in Houghton County are tourist-related. Sam Raymond and his partner, Shelby Laubhan, have run the Keweenaw Adventure Co., which is based in Copper Harbor at the tip of the Keweenaw and runs kayak and mountain-bike tours and rents mountain bikes and kayaks, since 1999. When COVID hit last March and the world seemed to come to a halt, he thought he might have to pull the plug on the 2020 season. “I did a cash-flow analysis. I was trying to figure out if we could even open,” he said. “We wound up opening in June at a limited capacity, and it was quickly apparent people wanted to get away. It became our best summer ever. It was off the hook. We ended up 18 percent.” He said some customers told him they’d been planning to go out west or to Europe, and since they couldn’t fly anywhere, they ended up driving to the Keweenaw. “A lot of people had the Keweenaw on their bucket list, and it became time to check it off,” he said. The first big event this year is a three-day Experience the Keweenaw Bike Festival over the Memorial Day weekend. It includes a guided group ride through the Adventure Mine cavern in the village of Greenland; a guided group ride on the Michigan Tech trails in Houghton; a guided ride through the Churning Rapids trails in Hancock; a guided ride through the

The two-day Summerfest will be July 10-11, with a classic car show and car cruse, street dance, 5K run, mayor’s fish boil and sand-castle contest for kids. The annual big Labor Day weekend arts and crafts festival will be Sept. 4-5 in Shoreline Park on the shore of Lake Huron. About 150 exhibitors are expected at this juried show, which draws some 6,000 visitors to town.

The Port Huron-to-Mackinac Island sailboat race will be held July 24-27. | BLUE WATER AREA CONVENTION & VISITORS BUREAU

Swedetown trails in Calumet; and what is billed as Lake Superior Gravity Series Enduro Race at Copper Harbor. About 500 riders from around the U.S. are expected, with the enduro race capped at 100. Copper Harbor is a hotbed for mountain biking, with trails ranging from not too crazy to insane, especially some of those coming down off the top of Brockway Mountain at the edge of town. There is also a three-day series of mountain-bike races in Copper Harbor over the Labor Day weekend, Sept. 3-6, the Bells Brewery Copper Harbor Trails Fest. The eastern face of Brockway Mountain, whose road to the top snakes along the edge with places to stop, is a great place to see what locals say is the best Fourth of July fireworks any small town ever put on. On Brockway, you can see the fireworks at eye level while looking down at Copper Harbor. Another big tourist draw are tours of the Quincy Mine in Hancock, which once was one of the most productive copper

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mines in the world, with operations from 1846-1945. “Quincy had its biggest season ever last year and we expect another busy season this year,” said Barnett.

The Lower Peninsula Traverse City: The biggest draw of the annual National Cherry Festival, the air show by the U.S. Air Force Thunderbirds flight team, has been canceled. Its show annually draws a crowd of 500,000 and parks and beaches around East and West Grand Traverse Bays would too packed to allow for any social distancing, said Kat Paye,the festival’s executive director. The Bay Side Music Festival on the water downtown has also been canceled. She said the last economic-impact study done, in 2016, showed the festival generated about $24 million in economic activity. Paye still expects 500,000 to attend one or more of the events for this 95th annual festival, scheduled for July 3-10, which includes a classic car cruise; a porch parade, where residents of the old stately homes adjacent to downtown decorate their porches, yards or windows; a pancake breakfast in the park called the Open Space on the west bay; an art-and-crafts show; a carnival midway; a sand-sculpture contest; a beer tent; the Ultimate Air Dogs docking diving contest for man’s best friends; and the Great American Duck Race, which features trained ducks swimming in lanes against each other faster than you’d ever imagine. The Festival of Races will be held on July 10, and options for runners and walkers include a 5K, 10K, 15K and half-marathon (13.1 miles). For information, go to cherryfestival. org/events. The other big tourist draw, though, the Traverse City Film Festival, which draws tens of thousands to town annually for a week in late July and early August, has been canceled for the second straight year. Michael Moore, the filmmaker who is the festival’s founder and president, announced on April 30 that he had decided to cancel this summer’s festival,

though he said there is a possibility some film festival might be staged late in the year. The Northwestern Michigan Fair, the largest in northern Michigan, and its 4-H competition, is planned for Aug. 8-14. The Great Lakes Equestrian Festival will offer 12 weeks of competition, from June 9-Sept. 19, though spectators will have to watch via live streaming and not in person. Cheboygan: The Cheboygan County Fair draws 25,000 annually and is back on the calendar again this year, from Aug. 7-14. There is a carnival with rides and games of skill, a horse show, livestock auction, dirt-track racing, a 4-by-4 mud-truck run; lawnmower racing and a petting zoo. Times and dates for events have yet to be determined but will be posted on cheboyganfair.com. Every Thursday night from June 10 through mid-September there will be a free concert in Washington Park downtown. In conjunction with the weekly concert, merchants will stay open late, many of them with street displays of their wares, and there will be a farmer’s market. Charlevoix: The Charlevoix Venetian Festival will be July 17-24, with a street parade; 5K and 10K runs; boat parade; farmers market; fireworks; a beach and boat party billed as AquaPalooza; a three-on-three basketball tournament; bingo; corn-toss tournament; disc golf doubles; croquet; pickleball and a sailing regatta. For details, go to venetianfestival.com. Elk Rapids: Elk Rapids’ big annual tourist event, Harbor Days, will be held downtown on Aug. 4-7. Elk Rapids, a small harbor town north of Traverse City on Lake Michigan, has a big marina and a long beach. Events include a carnival, concerts, food booths, 5K and 10K runs, a big fireworks display Saturday night that fills the beach and brings boaters in from miles around, an arts and crafts show and parade. Another big draw is the Wooden Boat Show June 11-12, which includes ticketed full dinners, beverage tents, a boat show and awards and a wooden-kayak display.

Ludington: The 40th annual Ludington Lakestride half-marathon, 10K and 5K are back to being an in-person series of races this year, on June 12. Last year, they were held as virtual events, with runners getting race numbers but racing at a time and place of their own choosing. The half-marathon, which includes running down a sand dune in Ludington State Park and then for miles along Lake Michigan back into town, is one of the most popular destination races on the state’s running circuit. Go to ludingtonlakestride.com for entry information. An event that had been held in recent years in conjunction with the marathon will not be held for the second straight year. That is the effort organized by Barry Neal, the owner of the iconic House of Flavors restaurant and ice cream shop in downtown Ludington, to set various Guinness world records. Past records have included getting tourists and townspeople to eat the world’s longest ice cream sundae, with ice cream filling more than half a mile of rain gutters joined together; and getting 1,387 folks to make sand angels on the beach at the same time. The city’s annual Suds on the Shore Craft Beer & Wine Tasting Festival is back on again this year for Aug. 21. The Thumb: Last year was the first year since 1925 that the Bayview Yacht Club didn’t put on the Port Huron-to-Mackinac Island sailboat race. This year’s race will be held July 24-27 and will bring a sellout crowd to area motels and hotels (see Page 3). The city will also host the Art on the River Festival June 11-13, with dozens of artists displaying their paintings, glass work or jewelry with the blue of the St. Clair River as a backdrop. Heading north is the annual Blue Water Sturgeon Festival in Fort Gratiot on June 5, honoring the Great Lakes’ oldest and largest fish species, growing to more than six feet long and weighing up to 200 pounds. There will be a live sturgeon available for a hands-on experience, food, music and more.. For information in these and other Thumb events this spring, summer and fall, go to bluewater.org/events

Contact: thenderson@crain.com (231) 499-2817; @TomHenderson2

CRAIN'S LIST | SE MICHIGAN PUBLICLY HELD COMPANIES Ranked by 2020 revenue COMPANY; FISCAL YEAR END ADDRESS PHONE; WEBSITE

TOP EXECUTIVE(S)

REVENUE ($000,000) 2020/2019

PERCENT CHANGE

NET INCOME ($000,000) 2020/2019

EXCHANGE/ TICKER SYMBOL

STOCK PRICE 52-WEEK HIGH/LOW

TYPE OF INDUSTRY

FORD MOTOR CO. (12/31/2020) 1 American Road, Dearborn 48126 313-322-3000; ford.com

James Farley Jr. president, CEO & director

$127,144.0

-18.4%

($1,279.0) $47.0

NYSE F

$13.62 $4.52

Automobile manufacturer

GENERAL MOTORS CO. (12/31/2020)

Mary Barra chairman & CEO

$122,485.0

-10.7%

$6,427.0 $6,732.0

NYSE GM

$63.44 $20.12

Automobile manufacturer

PENSKE AUTOMOTIVE GROUP INC. (12/31/2020)

Roger Penske Sr. chairman & CEO

$20,443.9

-11.8%

$543.6 $435.8

NYSE PAG

$87.68 $28.57

Automotive retail

LEAR CORP. (12/31/2020)

Raymond Scott Jr. president, CEO & director

$17,045.5

-14.0%

$158.5 $753.6

NYSE LEA

$196.26 $80.15

Automotive supplier

ROCKET COMPANIES INC. 1 (12/31/2020) 1050 Woodward Ave., Detroit 48226 313-373-7990; rocketcompanies.com

Jay Farner vice chairman & CEO Dan Gilbert chairman & founder

$15,980.7

204.3%

$198.0 NA

NYSE RKT

$43.00 $17.50

Holding company consisting of technology, personal finance and consumer service brands

APTIV PLC (12/31/2020) 5725 Innovation Drive, Troy 48098 248-813-2000; aptiv.com

Kevin Clark president & CEO

$13,066.0

-9.0%

$1,804.0 $990.0

NYSE APTV

$160.14 $56.04

Automotive supplier

ADIENT PLC (9/30/2020) 49200 Halyard Drive, Plymouth 48170 734-254-5000; adient.com

Douglas Del Grosso president, CEO & director

$12,670.0

-23.3%

($547.0) ($491.0)

NYSE ADNT

$48.65 $10.36

Automotive seating supplier

DTE ENERGY CO. (12/31/2020)

Jerry Norcia president, CEO & director

$12,177.0

-3.9%

$1,368.0 $1,169.0

NYSE DTE

$141.49 $92.39

Energy company

ALLY FINANCIAL INC. (12/31/2020)

Jeffrey Brown CEO & director

$10,780.0

-7.2%

$1,085.0 $1,715.0

NYSE ALLY

$49.49 $13.29

Digital financial services company

BORGWARNER INC. (12/31/2020)

Frederic Lissalde president, CEO & director

$10,165.0

-0.0%

$500.0 $746.0

NYSE BWA

$50.60 $24.27

Manufactures components and systems for propulsion systems for combustion engine, hybrid and electric vehicles

MASCO CORP. (12/31/2020)

Keith Allman CEO, president & director

$7,188.0

7.2%

$1,224.0 $935.0

NYSE MAS

$65.29 $38.04

Manufactures products for the home improvement and new home construction markets

UWM HOLDINGS CORP. (UNITED WHOLESALE MORTGAGE) 2 (12/31/2020)

Mathew Ishbia chairman, president & CEO

$4,938.6

286.3%

$3,382.5 $415.1

NYSE UWMC

$12.45 $7.24

Mortgage lender

AMERICAN AXLE AND MANUFACTURING HOLDINGS INC. (12/31/2020)

David Dauch chairman & CEO

$4,710.8

-27.9%

($561.3) ($484.5)

NYSE AXL

$12.92 $3.23

Automotive supplier

KELLY SERVICES INC. (1/3/2021)

Peter Quigley president, CEO & director

$4,516.0

-15.7%

($72.0) $112.4

NasdaqGS KELY.A

$24.10 $11.01

Staffing, employment, workforce solutions

DOMINO'S PIZZA INC. (1/3/2021)

Richard Allison Jr. president, CEO & director

$4,117.4

13.8%

$491.3 $400.7

NYSE DPZ

$435.58 $319.71

Restaurant franchisor

TI FLUID SYSTEMS PLC (12/31/2020) 2020 Taylor Road, Auburn Hills 48326 248-296-8000; tifluidsystems.com

William Kozyra CEO, president & executive director

$3,385.7

-17.5%

($305.7) $170.3

LSE TIFS

$4.38 $1.80

Supplier of automotive fluid systems technology

MERITOR INC. (9/30/2020) 2135 West Maple Road, Troy 48084 248-435-1000; meritor.com

Chris Villavarayan CEO, president & director Jeffrey Craig executive chairman

$3,044.0

-30.6%

$245.0 $291.0

NYSE MTOR

$33.56 $14.61

Supplier of axle, brake and suspension solutions to original equipment manufacturers and the aftermarket for the transportation and industrial sectors

VISTEON CORP. (12/31/2020)

Sachin Lawande president, CEO & director

$2,548.0

-13.5%

($56.0) $70.0

NasdaqGS VC

$147.55 $46.32

Automotive supplier

COOPER-STANDARD HOLDINGS INC. (12/31/2020)

Jeffrey Edwards chairman & CEO

$2,375.4

-23.6%

($267.6) $67.5

NYSE CPS

$47.85 $8.25

Fluid-handling systems, noise- and vibration-control products, body-sealing systems

TCF FINANCIAL CORP. (12/31/2020) 333 West Fort St., Suite 1800, Detroit 48226 866-258-1807; ir.tcfbank.com

David Provost CEO & director

$2,281.7

11.1%

$222.8 $295.5

NasdaqGS TCF

$50.13 $20.85

Financial institution

FLAGSTAR BANCORP INC. (12/31/2020) 5151 Corporate Drive, Troy 48098 248-312-2000; flagstar.com

Alessandro DiNello president, CEO & director

$2,144.0

52.7%

$538.0 $218.0

NYSE FBC

$51.58 $19.91

Financial institution

CREDIT ACCEPTANCE CORP. (12/31/2020)

Kenneth Booth 3 CEO

$1,669.3

12.1%

$421.0 $656.1

NasdaqGS CACC

$539.00 $241.54

Financial institution

HOME POINT CAPITAL INC. 2 (12/31/2020)

William Newman president, CEO & director

$1,446.9

602.8%

$607.0 ($29.2)

NasdaqGS HMPT

$13.15 $9.05

Wholesale mortgage lender

SUN COMMUNITIES INC. (12/31/2020)

Gary Shiffman chairman & CEO

$1,398.3

10.6%

$131.6 $161.6

NYSE SUI

$159.02 $115.77

Real estate operations

UNIVERSAL LOGISTICS HOLDINGS INC. (12/31/2020)

Tim Phillips CEO & director

$1,391.1

-8.0%

$48.1 $37.6

NasdaqGS ULH

$27.95 $11.70

Transportation and logistics

300 Renaissance Center, Detroit 48265 313-667-1500; gm.com

2555 Telegraph Road, Bloomfield Hills 48302 248-648-2500; penskeautomotive.com 21557 Telegraph Road, Southfield 48033 248-447-1500; lear.com

One Energy Plaza, Detroit 48226 313-235-4000; newlook.dteenergy.com

Ally Detroit Center, Floor 10, 500 Woodward Avenue, Detroit 48226 866-710-4623; ally.com 3850 Hamlin Road, Auburn Hills 48326 248-754-9200; borgwarner.com 17450 College Parkway, Livonia 48152 313-274-7400; masco.com

585 South Blvd. E, Pontiac 48341 800-981-8898; uwm.com

One Dauch Drive, Detroit 48211 313-758-2000; aam.com

999 West Big Beaver Road, Troy 48084 248-362-4444; kellyservices.com 30 Frank Lloyd Wright Drive, Ann Arbor 48105 734-930-3030; dominos.com/index.intl.html

One Village Center Drive, Van Buren 48111 800-847-8366; visteon.com

40300 Traditions Drive, Northville 48168 248-596-5900; cooperstandard.com

25505 W. 12 Mile Road, Southfield 48034 248-353-2700; creditacceptance.com

2211 Old Earhart Road, Suite 250, Ann Arbor 48105 888-616-6866; homepointfinancial.com

27777 Franklin Road, Suite 200, Southfield 48034 248-208-2500; suncommunities.com

12755 East Nine Mile Road, Warren 48089 586-920-0100; universallogistics.com

$155,900.0

$137,237.0

$23,179.4

$19,810.3

$5,252.2

$14,357.0

$16,526.0

$12,669.0

$11,618.0

$10,168.0

$6,707.0

$1,278.4

$6,530.9

$5,355.6

$3,618.8

$4,103.3

$4,388.0

$2,945.0

$3,108.4

$2,052.9

$1,404.0

$1,489.0

$205.9

$1,264.0

$1,512.0

SOURCES: S&P Global Market Intelligence, (Marketintelligence.spglobal.com) and SEC filings. | This list of publicly held companies is a compilation of the largest companies in Wayne, Oakland, Macomb, Washtenaw and Livingston counties that have stock traded on a public exchange. For companies not on a calendar fiscal year, revenue and net income figures are for the most recently completed fiscal year. 52-week highs and lows are for period ending April 19, 2021. NOTES: 1. Became a publicly traded company on Aug. 5, 2020. 2. Became a publicly traded company in January. 3. Succeeded Brett Roberts as CEO, effective May 3.

Want the full Excel version of this list — and every list? Become a Data Member: CrainsDetroit.com/data MAY 10, 2021 | CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS | 11

INNOVATION IS REWARDED. EXECUTION IS WORSHIPPED. Congratulations, Allen Largin, for being named one of Crain’s 20 in their Twenties. More than 31,000 innovative, creative team members are proud to call you one of our own and celebrate you for this special honor. Thanks for your continued commitment to Detroit and for sharing your success with all of us.

IN THEIR

TWENTIES

Let’s face it: 2020 was rough. To reflect our hope for better things in 2021, we’re honoring 21 stellar awardees. Because we could use some extra joy. | Photography by Sylvia Jarrus.

rie Riley knew from an early age she wanted to be involved at some point in technology and health care. She just didn’t know how. Growing up, family members going back four generations were business people. But health care and technology were always on her mind. Two months after she was born in 1996, her father, John, died of leukemia. “I never had the chance to know him, but growing up in a small town (Grosse Ile) ... people would always tell me about him,” Riley said. “It definitely gave me an interest in the human body. Health is so fundamental. If you don’t have your health, you can’t do anything. My father, unfortunately, was a good example of that. The community was so supportive of my family. I wanted to devote my life to paying it forward.” A conversation with a former health care executive helped put Riley, a graduate of the University of Michigan Ross School of Business, on her path. “I was at a networking event in 2016 that was on technology and health care. The keynote speaker was (former Henry Ford Health System CEO) Nancy Schlichting,” Riley said. “Afterwards, Nancy was kind enough to take a few minutes to talk to me about my interest. ... It was because of Nancy that I got introduced to the health care technology space at Henry Ford.” An internship at the hospital in the summer of 2017 led to a job offer after graduation as project manager at Henry Ford’s Innovation Institute. “My personal goal is to help create technologies that will provide patients at Henry Ford and across the globe an outcome that is more fortunate than the one my family and I experienced,” said Riley, now Henry Ford’s innovations manager. She works with a 10-member team of clinicians and administrators to co-develop and commercialize rising health technologies. Interestingly, Riley’s current role began just as the COVID-19 pandemic started in March 2020. The pandemic shifted her job responsibilities temporarily and Riley was tasked with launching a systemwide initiative to source personal protective equipment and collect and implement safety ideas from employees to keep delivering high-quality care. Riley said she was especially proud that Henry Ford’s front-line employees never ran out of PPE.

BRIE RILEY 24 | Innovations Manager | Henry Ford Health System

Jay Greene

LUKE JACOBI 27 | Executive Vice President, Revenue | Benzinga

s a self-proclaimed “stock market nerd” since his early teenage years, Luke Jacobi was positive growing up that he’d have to do exactly what he didn’t want to do: move to New York City and become an investment banker. Flash forward to today and Jacobi, 27, has the job he wants: He’s executive vice president of revenue at Benzinga, a Detroit-based financial media startup covering all things stock market-related, but without the stuffy tone many associate with traditional financial media. “Our biggest demographic is 25 to 34. If you compare that to a Bloomberg or CNBC, it’s 55-plus,” said Jacobi. “And the way that we’ve been differentiated is that we have content that’s designed to be read on mobile. It’s mobile-first … It’s designed to be consumed in a push notification.” Housed within the portfolio of companies controlled by Detroit billionaire Dan Gilbert, Benzinga now has more than 15 million readers per month, said Jacobi. The largest revenue stream for Benzinga comes from licensing its content to stock brokerages.

The upheaval that began last spring as the COVID-19 pandemic took hold made for a watershed moment for financial markets, and in turn, Benzinga, said Jacobi. People in quarantine suddenly turned to stock trading as a way of passing the time, he said. Many were first-time traders needing some rudimentary education on financial markets. Then came the GameStop craze earlier this year when retail investors pushed up the price of the video game retailer, much to the chagrin of seasoned hedge fund investors. Such actions speak to the role of Benzinga, according to Jacobi. “So, it’s how do we show the world that the stock market and investing is still interesting when there’s not a GameStop-type story going on,” said Jacobi. “It’s a good thing for people, and especially that younger (demographic) that we target … to care about their personal finances and to care about investing.” Nick Manes MAY 10, 2021 | CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS | 13

IN THEIR

TWENTIES

CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS 2020

JASNIK PARMAR FORTY UNDER

CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS 2020

29 | CFO, Board Member | LawnGuru Jasnik Parmar was only a semester shy of earning a Bachelor’s of Finance at Michigan State University when he dropped out of college to co-found a family of wealth management businesses. Brighton-based Entry Point Advisor Network grew to more than $1 billion in assets under management between 2012 and 2017 and helped over 1,000 investor advisers set up their own firms nationally, Parmar said. At the age of 25, he sold his share in the company to the co-founder and moved into private commercial real estate investment, purchasing and leasing apartments, while continuing to advise high net worth families on their taxes and estate planning. Later that same year, he joined Ann Arbor-based LawnGuru as CFO after serving on its board for two years. The “Uber for lawn care” technology platform, as Parmar calls it, enables customers to log on to order and/or subscribe to yard services like lawn care and snow removal, talk with service provid“WE’RE UNLOCKING ers, rate them and ALL THE VALUE pay through the site rather than leaving POTENTIAL WE SAW cash under the WHEN THE COMPANY doormat. It was still a startWAS BORN.” up when Parmar joined the company but was preparing to expand to seven other cities around the country. “My job was to get us profitability and bring us to bankability” where traditional banks would lend to the company, he said. While other marketplace startups focus on growing users before profitability, Parmar said he focused on perfecting the business before scaling up. “We wanted to make sure the business could stand on its own two feet and we were never in a position where we had to raise money ... and were beholden to investors,” he said. Parmar led development and execution of a 30-month growth plan for LawnGuru, focusing on unit economics, measuring profitability on a per unit basis. He identified the company’s highest value customers and focused marketing efforts on them. The company hit its growth objectives at the end of 2020, and revenue increased from $900,000 in 2017 to over $5 million with sustained profitability every year, Parmar said. LawnGuru has the ability to secure capital through traditional lenders at lower costs rather than having to sell shares of the company to venture capitalists. “We’re unlocking all the value potential we saw when the company was born,” Parmar said, with lower prices for customers, higher density business for service providers and increasing revenue potential for LawnGuru. Sherri Welch

14 | CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS | MAY 10, 2021

DAMARQIO ‘DK’ WILLIAMS 28 | CEO | Detroit Father LLC

MONIQUE BECKER & ELYSE WOLF 27 | Co-founders | Mona Lisa Development They grew up together and went to college together. Now they live together and have a development, general contracting and consulting firm together. Not much can separate Monique Becker and Elyse Wolf, who have been best friends since they were 4 years old. Even the name of their company, Detroit-based Mona Lisa Development, is a combination of their first names, a testament to their lifelong bond. The two University of Michigan graduates have also accumulated a small portfolio of rental housing, eight units so far. Five are done and occupied, referred to as naturally occurring affordable housing, in the Virginia Park neighborhood, and three are under construction and expected to be completed in the coming months. In the two or so years since starting the company and leaving their full-time jobs, Becker, who was born in Detroit, and Wolf have invested over $500,000 in the neighborhood. “We really always have been kind of attached at the hip,” Becker said. “We always wanted to start a business together, but really didn’t know how that would manifest.”

By the time the pair moved to the city, they became interested in real estate development. Becker has spent time as a teacher as well as working for Detroit-based development firms The Platform LLC and Shelborne Development. Wolf was with Eastern Market Corp. and then Meridian Health Plan. They have since shed those jobs, instead running Mona Lisa full time after Becker went through a Peter Allen real estate class at UM and Chase Cantrell’s Building Community Value development training program. “Her term project was on the house we live in today,” Wolf said. “That was the first house that we bought. We were just renovating it and putting our salaries into the house, renovating after hours and on weekends, and then we bought our second house and did the same thing there. And it was after that second project where we said, ‘OK, I think we are really onto something. We are going to make that jump and pursue this business full time, or it’s never gonna be something that is going to amount to a fullscale business.’” All that laid the foundation for a growing company, which grew its revenue by

more than 250 percent between 2019 and 2020 and has hired a full-time employee and two part-time workers. The two are also active in the community in which they live, advocating for a fresh approach to neighborhood development in Virginia Park, where New York-based developer Ron Castellano’s Herman Kiefer hospital complex and neighborhood improvement project has yet to materialize as promised. “We really kind of started to organize the summer of 2020 around this kind of reckoning that this isn’t just an isolated issue or a neighborhood grievance against the developer,” Becker said. “This is a systemic problem where we’re seeing who’s given the opportunity to purchase land, who’s being given the green light in terms of having capacity to impact change in the neighborhoods, this difference between kind of one sole savior of a community who is very well resourced versus many different folks chipping away at one house or three houses or something like that at a time. It’s really a more grassroots way of approaching neighborhood development.” Kirk Pinho

hat started as an initiative to support other young fathers has turned into a fast-growing side hustle for Damarqio “DK” Williams. Williams, 28, is the founder of Detroit Father, an entity that started as a nonprofit to promote fatherhood and has evolved into a brand marketing company aimed boosting the image of dads and Detroit. “Those are my two pillars I’m always looking for an alignment with,” Williams said. His clients include Mountain Dew and Pampers, which hired Williams to organize the installation of baby changing tables in men’s rooms in recreation centers and other public places in Detroit. Williams’ day job is as a business program manager with the talent development team at Rock Central, the human resources, accounting and back office support arm of businessman Dan Gilbert’s Rocket Companies. Williams previously worked at Gilbert’s Bedrock LLC and got his start in the company’s human resources and talent development departments five years ago at Quicken Loans. He launched Detroit Father as a capstone project for the New Leaders Council Detroit leadership training program for progressive millennials. Williams grew up fatherless in Detroit; he’s now the dad of a 4-year-old. “It started as this nonprofit idea, I thought I was just going to be under the radar, bringing dads together and getting them out into the community,” Williams said. “And what we saw was that there were already a lot of organizations in Detroit doing that work.” Williams then pivoted into building a small consultancy business that creates content for existing father-support organizations as well as corporate clients that want to market to dads. His latest initiative is called Dad Influencers, a network of more than 100 content-creating fathers and bloggers from around the world. During the pandemic, Williams has been a working stay-at-home dad with his daughter while his wife goes through the Detroit police academy. “Being able to tell that story and telling it through brand marketing as well as community support and really elevating things happening here in Detroit, that’s been what I think has really gravitated brands toward me because they see how authentic I can tell those stories,” Williams said. “But even more, how I’m trying to pull together father-creators and influencers along with me.”

SILVER MOORE 29 | Founder | Classroom Clapback Lesson planning isn’t every teacher’s idea of a good time, but Silver Moore has adored it since she started. The Detroit native, 29, took that niche and made it a business: Classroom Clapback. It’s not business as usual, though. Moore’s passion is making curricula that are culturally relevant to Black students, anti-racist, affirming and work to “clap back” at the systems that have oppressed Black, Brown and low-income youth. “So this was my best attempt to clap back at some things that I had seen,” Moore said. “The erasure that I see in the classroom, some representation that isn’t there, the fact that you don’t always find resources that are both academically rigorous, but at the same time ... are able to center the identities of the students that are receiving it in their learning.” The lifelong Detroit resident — other than during college years — is a humanities instructional coach at the charter University Prep Art & Design High School in Detroit. Moore has been in education eight years, starting with the nonprofit Teach For America.

She’s also an entrepreneur, founding Classroom Clapback in 2018. Its resources are aimed at eighth to 12th grade, mostly in the humanities. She said she’d like to eventually expand to STEM education. The business started offering 10 educational units and now has 65 available. It went from an initial $300 investment to $3,000 in 2019 revenue and ballooned to $17,000 in 2020 — a year in which social unrest drew more attention to long-held forms of discrimination and racism. Products are offered in a large range of pricing from $2 to $100. Most of her clients are individual educators. Last year, Moore created professional development for educators as a “jump-off point.” She is also speaking professionally more often, working to create equity in virtual learning and hosted a Classroom Clapback Summit in December. “I want to do more of that direct connection and work with teachers leading into the new school year,” she said. Annalise Frank

Chad Livengood

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nho MAY 10, 2021 | CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS | 15

IN THEIR

TWENTIES

CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS 2020

DANIEL WASHINGTON FORTY UNDER

DETROIT BUSINESS 2020 27 |CRAIN’S Executive Director | Northwest Goldberg Cares

Growing up in Detroit’s Northwest Goldberg neighborhood, Daniel Washington would watch the way his dad cared for and beautified homes the family owned before renting them to Black and Brown families. Modeling after his dad, Washington would cut corner lots and pick up trash to do his part. He grew up and went on to earn a Bachelor’s of Arts in Journalism from Wayne State University, but he never forgot the neighborhood he’d called home. He was active in the neighborhood block club while working for a year as senior web editor and reporter at the Michigan Chronicle and then holding marketing positions at the Detroit Regional Chamber in 2016-2017. He founded Detroit Dough, an edible cookie dough business, in June 2017, landing concession contracts with organizations like MJR Digital Cinemas, Little Caesars Arena and Sodexo, among others. Around the same time, he founded the Northwest Goldberg Cares community development organization. “I felt like I could leave Detroit and the state as a whole or do something about it,” he said, noting the neighborhood’s decline. After growing revenue to about $400,000 by 2019, Detroit Dough’s business plummeted as the pandemic settled in, Washington said. It operated in the red in 2020 and is now winding down as it prepares to close for good. That’s allowing him to lean into Northwest Goldberg Cares and efforts to reinvigorate the neighborhood that is home to 1,800 residents, the Motown Museum and Henry Ford Health System. Washington has increased the CDO’s annual budget to over $500,000 this year, up from $98,000 in 2020, largely through foundation grants and crowdfunding. He and the CDO’s director of programming will begin taking a salary for their work at the nonprofit for the first time in fiscal 2022, which begins July 1. Under his direction, the CDO recently led a planning study for the Ferry Park commercial corridor and is now hosting community meetings to discuss a redevelopment plan with new business, public spaces and streetscaping. Over the past year, it’s also developed three pocket parks as part of a plan to complete 20 by 2025. The parks have facilitated more than $600,000 in private residential investment on parcels directly surrounding them, Washington said. He is now leading efforts to raise $175,000 to provide business assistance and financial support to the legacy businesses in the West Grand Boulevard business corridor. And once again modeling after his dad, Washington is developing a single-family housing strategy to rehab homes in the neighborhood and sell them to Black and Brown families. Sherri Welch

ALEXIS ‘LEXI’ HARRISON 26 | Co-founder and CEO | Crowded Kitchen

CORY MOUTON

A B

29 | Vice President, Application Development | United Wholesale Mortgage

29 Acq

In his roughly 10 years working at United Wholesale Mortgage, Cory Mouton has seen firsthand how technology has reshaped an industry once stuck in old ways of doing business. UWM President and CEO Mat Ishbia has long touted that his mortgage lender’s proprietary technology, made freely available to independent brokers around the country who work with the lender, is a core reason his company has and will continue to gain market share. Mouton, 29, as the Pontiac-based UWM’s vice president for application development, said he has played a key role in creating that competitive advantage. “I’m just grateful that we’re able to help out small mom and pop (brokerage) shops that maybe can’t afford technology, and we give it to them for free, and it just helps them grow their businesses exponentially,” said Mouton, adding that the company’s IT professionals and program developers are 16 | CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS | MAY 10, 2021

given the ability to be “artists” with the technology they’re building. The mortgage industry, Mouton notes, was long practiced with “pen and paper,” so he takes great pride in developing technology that’s changing the sector. A 2012 graduate of Davenport University with a bachelor’s degree in computer science, Mouton started work at UWM as a developer in 2012 and has grown in the company — now publicly traded and worth over $12 billion — since then. Looking forward, Mouton said he sees his future at UWM. His passion is teaching others at the company about technology

design and development, and he sees himself eventually growing into a chief technology officer-type role. Mouton’s current CTO, Jason Bressler, said Mouton is well positioned at the company. “The best way I could … explain Cory’s value is this: I wouldn’t trade him for another 200 team members or leaders because he’s irreplaceable to me as a CTO,” Bressler said in a statement. “He is exactly what you want out of a team member, a leader, and a friend.” Nick Manes

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year after graduating college, Alexis “Lexi” Harrison co-founded Crowded Kitchen, a food media and photography business. The business grew from an Instagram account she’d started with her mother to share her vegan lifestyle and the experience she’d gained at food media startup Feedfeed, a company that worked with food influencers and national food brands to promote their products on social media. As one of only a few staff at the New York City-based Feedfeed, Harrison quickly turned from editor to content developer, photographer and videographer. She moved back to Michigan in the fall 2017 and co-founded Crowded Kitchen with her mother, Beth Sinclair. The Royal Oak-based business shares the non-sponsored vegan recipes that first attracted followers, along with sponsored recipes, like oatmeal raisin cookies made with Bob’s Red Mill gluten-free flour blend, through its website which attracts 200,000-500,000 followers, depending on the month, Harrison said. The site also attracts paid advertisers. Crowded Kitchen promotes the recipes on its Instagram page, which has more than 190,000 followers, putting it among the top plant-based social media accounts nationwide. The company publishes four to six new recipes and blog posts per week on its website and photos of its recipes — sponsored and non-sponsored — on social media to link people back to its website. While Sinclair does most of the recipe development, Harrison has jumped in to do all photography, videography, copywriting, search engine and website optimization, contract negotiation and email marketing. You’ll also find her in a kitchen or on site at a restaurant, shooting videos and taking pictures of products for local and national food brands to promote on their own social media sites. Clients include Detroit businesses like Meijer’s Woodward Corner Market and Drench Dressing and global brands including Vitamix, Le Creuset, Bob’s Red Mill, Nespresso, Dole, Calphalon and Del Monte. The company took on its third employee, Harrison’s husband Brent, a former senior financial analyst with Meritor, last year to serve as head of website development and to lend a hand on back-office needs and business development. With Harrison at the helm, Crowded Kitchen has seen 50 percent growth in its revenue every year since it began. She’s projecting this year will be no different, with 2020 revenue of about $210,000 expected to increase to $300,000-$400,000 this year. Harrison said she and her mother plan to write their first cookbook within the next two years featuring vegan recipes they’ve developed. Sherri Welch

ANDREW BELL 29 | Senior Director of Acquisitions | Agree Realty At the start of the COVID-19 pandemic, Bloomfield Hills-based Agree Realty Corp. sensed blood in the water. In no small part because of Andrew Bell did the shopping center REIT continue to thrive, even as online shopping continued to batter unprepared and vulnerable retailers shuttered under public health orders. “With everyone kind of shutting down in the beginning of the pandemic, there was a lot of uncertainty in the market and I think what we decided to do was kind of go full-court press on everything when everyone sat on the sidelines, and we decided to jump right in and take advantage of the situation,” said Bell, a Michigan State University graduate who is now senior director of acquisitions for the firm, where he started in 2015 as an analyst. That press included Agree Realty, run by CEO Joey Agree, upping its acquisition guidance in the early stages of the pandemic by $100 million to $800 million. Ultimately, the company (NYSE: ADC) bought a record $1.36 billion in net-leased retail

properties last year with 47 tenants across 20 sectors in 40 states. Over 315 properties were involved in those transactions. Of that, Bell was responsible for some $300 million, primarily spaces leased to Walmart Inc. and TJX Cos. Inc. (T.J. Maxx), Bell said. This year may be even stronger. At the outset of 2021, the company projected buying between $800 million and $1 billion in property, compared to the $600 million it anticipated at the beginning of 2020, before the full weight of the COVID-19 pandemic was known domestically. Bell’s optimism about where the retail

market is heading is obvious. “Retail’s coming back,” he said. “It’s tried and true and proven. The trends are there to support bricks and mortar. Will retail be forever changed after the pandemic? Absolutely. But our retailers are opening up new sites. I just looked at one stat from one of the market reports and the net addition of stores is going to far surpass how many stores are going to close this year.” During his time with Agree Realty, Bell has closed over $800 million in acquisitions across more than 250 properties. Kirk Pinho

AUTUMN GILLARD 29 | Advocacy and Government Relations Manager | Trinity Health Autumn Gillard became passionate about health care at an early age growing up in Muskegon: Her grandfather was a doctor, her mother works as a technician at Mercy Health and her older brother is a doctor. But going to college in East Lansing and graduating from Michigan State University in 2014 exposed her to the challenging world of politics, lobbying, and community and human service issues. She liked it all and decided to pursue health care advocacy as a profession. After two years as a lobbyist with Acuitas and one year with the Small Business Association of Michigan, Gillard joined Trinity Health Michigan in 2017 and now is the eight-hospital system’s advocacy “I REALLY LOVE THAT and government reWE CAN TRULY MAKE lations manager. “I love that I get to CHANGES, MAKE A work with people. I absolutely love being DIFFERENCE AND social. I love to net- IMPACT THROUGH work, at least pre-pandemic,” said Gillard, THE WORK WE DO.” 29. “I really love that we can truly make changes, make a difference and impact through the work we do, whether it’s helping our community partnerships that may not have the ability or education around advocacy or the ability to advocate on their behalf.” Some of Gillard’s accomplishments with state government include protecting Medicaid expansion, the private health insurance marketplace and rural health financing, expanding telehealth access, strengthening the health care workforce and creating new entry points for immigrants. Partnering with outside organizations, Gillard has worked closely on issues that involve human trafficking and services for victims, mental health and substance abuse treatment, and food and housing insecurities. Gillard has worked with a number of such community organizations as Growth Works, Sanctum House and the Michigan Coalition Against Homelessness. She volunteers with the Junior League of Lansing, Haven House and Weekend Survival Kits. Looking toward the future, Gillard said she wants to continue her advocacy on behavioral health and mental health issues, telemedicine and helping people access safe and affordable housing and food insecurity. “I have been working on my master’s degree (in health and risk communication at MSU),” she said. “Eventually I’d like to do something more in a leadership role as it pertains to government relations and advocacy. I would anticipate myself to always sort of work in this political realm. As I advance, educationally, I hope to eventually get into a leadership position within Trinity.” Jay Greene MAY 10, 2021 | CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS | 17

IN THEIR

TWENTIES

CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS 2020

FREDERICK PAUL II FORTY UNDER

DETROIT BUSINESS 2020 29 |CRAIN’S Owner | Fahrenheit 313

Frederick Paul II is a true sneakerhead. “Even as a kid I loved sneakers,” said Paul, 29. “It’s always the first topic of discussion amongst my family and friends.” While a student at Western Michigan University, Paul had the idea to sell parts of his large sneaker collection on eBay. The shoes sold quickly. That’s what led Paul, a graduate of Detroit Renaissance High, to establish what is now known as Fahrenheit 313. Established in 2016, Fahrenheit 313 began as an online market. The brick and mortar shop, located at 20114 Livernois in Detroit, opened on March 13, 2020, three days before stay-at-home orders “AS AN went into effect at the outset of the coronavirus pandemENTREPRENEUR, ic. Paul spent $50,000 to YOU NEVER GIVE open the store, with $25,000 coming from a Motor City UP. YOU FIND Match cash grant and WAYS TO STILL $15,000 from small business aid company BizLoans. The MAKE IT WORK.” rest came from Paul’s savings. “It was crazy — to spend a year to get to the point of opening. It took us a year to get to March 13, 2020,” Paul said. “For there to be so much uncertainty, it was crazy. It was a big moment for me to open the store, but then everything shut down. But as an entrepreneur, you never give up. You find ways to still make it work.” While the store was closed during last spring’s shutdown, Paul worked to upgrade the Fahrenheit 313 website for online sales and introduced curbside pickup. In its first year, Fahrenheit 313 sold more than 300 pairs and generated more than $60,000 in revenue. That’s without making a sale for all of April 2020, according to Paul. “The beauty of our store is that customers can find old pairs, things that are a part of the culture. It’s not predictable where we only have Jordans and Yeezys.” Paul, who has five employees at Fahrenheit 313, does all of this while working full time at Royal Oak software company Dassault Systemes 3DExcite Corp., as a developer of software for 3D product design, simulation and manufacturing. Paul works at his shop each Friday-Sunday. He’s looking to hire four more associates, with the goal of extended hours this summer. Another goal of Paul’s is to aid Detroit Public Schools students. Since establishing his business, Paul has donated 120 fully stocked backpacks to DPS students and has pitched in with scholarships worth at least $500. “This is my hometown. I was born and raised in Detroit,” Paul said. “A big thing for me is working to make Detroit a better place to live.” Jay Davis

DARBY JEAN BARBER 27 | Creative Designer | General Motors Co. Darby Jean Barber doesn’t work with oil paints — auto design is now done mostly digitally — but she’s not done with crude. The creative designer at General Motors’ Chevrolet performance division is a gear head. She’s currently building a Nissan S13 240X, specifically equipped for drift racing — an event where drivers are judged by the quality of their drifts, skidding sideways around turns. Barber also races a fully caged 360 horsepower Mazda Miata in “time attack” races, where drivers compete on the best lap times. Her garage is completed by another near-stock Miata and Chevrolet Silverado truck. 18 | CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS | MAY 10, 2021

“I love cars and have always wanted to be in a career with cars,” Barber said. “I was just never sure how I would do that.” But her artistic skill and a helpful high school art teacher pointed Barber toward Detroit’s College for Creative Studies, well known for its direct pipeline of car designers to the Detroit 3. “I’ve used art to pursue my passion in cars,” Barber said. “I learned I could use that ability to design the cars of the future. I have an impact on how they might look and feel in the future.” Barber’s job involves using rough ideas and engineering specs to de-

sign performance cars — think Corvette and Camaro — in concept form for future production products as far as five years out. Some of her designs have passed muster and have made it into full-scale clay models, one of the last steps of design before executives and marketing make the decisions on future production. Barber wouldn’t provide any detail on the cars or their design. Future products are a hotly kept commodity in the industry. “I’m really proud of the work ... we create some really cool stuff,” she said. Dustin Walsh

AMMAR ALKHAFAJI

NATHAN HAMOOD

27 | Principal | The W Investors Group LLC

25 | President and Director of Coffee | Dessert Oasis Coffee Roasters

athan Hamood sees coffee as his calling. The 25-year-old Ferndale resident serves as owner, president and director of coffee of Rochester-based Dessert Oasis Coffee Roasters. Hamood, who dropped out of Wayne State University’s Irvin D. Reid Honors College to grow his business, began working at the coffee shop in 2009 — the year his parents, Jamal and Charlene, opened the first location on Main Street in downtown Rochester. Hamood has been involved in the family business ever since, working as a barista in 2009 and 2010 before taking on the director of coffee role, which he held from 2010 to 2014. Hamood took over ownership duties from his parents in 2014, just as expansion became a possibility. “I think I just honestly fell in love with all of it,” said Hamood, a graduate of Rochester Adams High. “I fell in love with coffee, craft coffee especially, even though when we started we weren’t as focused on that.” Since taking the reins, Hamood has expanded the business to two new locations in Detroit and Royal Oak in 2015 and 2018, respectively. The company’s revenue, Hamood said, has increased by 30 percent each year. In 2020, despite closures and capacity limits, Dessert Oasis ended the year within 20 percent of its 2019 numbers. The business last year introduced curbside pickup and online sales and began shipping its coffee and brew-at-home tools nationwide. Hamood is also co-owner of Ace High, a craft hair care product line established in 2016 that ships worldwide. He said Dessert Oasis has been able to thrive at every turn. He said attention to detail plays a big role in that. “I think that’s something a lot of people might say, but we take it very seriously,” said Hamood, who has earned a number of honors, including a 2019 city of Rochester Downtown Business Recognition award. Hamood’s vision for the future of Dessert Oasis includes adding locations, increasing the brand’s online presence nationally and more wholesaling. All of the effort he puts into the business, including spending 80 to 100 hours a week working, comes from his passion for coffee. “We’re working really hard to create an atmosphere and experiences that customers enjoy,” Hamood said. “There’s an opportunity to impact a customer’s day through coffee.” Jay Davis

SHANNON LONG 28 | Founder and CEO | Brew Export LLC Shannon Long is a globe-trotting, beer drinking, cosmopolitan woman of industry. At 28, she works with roughly 150 craft breweries in the U.S. to navigate international alcohol laws, supply chain channels, label requirements and exchange rates to get their product to events or pubs or shelves in 30 countries. Local clients include Griffin Claw, Ferndale Project, Eastern Market Brewing Co. and others. Long’s Brew Export LLC was born out of an assignment in her international marketing capstone class at Michigan State University in 2014. Long chose to study and create a marketing plan for exporting beer to Singapore. She learned most U.S. craft brewers lacked any meaningful resources to distribute regionally, let alone across international borders. Her import-export niche landed her a $1,000 win at a local pitch competition and Brew Export was willed into existence. “My parents wanted me to go the corporate route right after college and I think I did one job interview,” Long said. “I was bit by that business startup bug and all these breweries were getting interest from foreign markets but had no idea how to get their beer there. I knew I could connect the world through beer.” At he same time she was launching Brew Export, Long founded a production company to co-produce, write and star in a local television show called Pure Brews America, which aired on CBS and ran for 20 episodes featuring 70 craft breweries across the U.S. The show, which was sponsored by Meijer, HopCat, the Michigan Brewers Guild and others, won a Michigan Emmy award in 2017. In 2018, Brew Export fermented into a full-bodied firm, growing revenue from $90,000 to $800,000. Long founded a wholly-owned subsidiary, Brew Export UK Ltd., in Scotland earlier this year and is working on a hard seltzer advent calendar — where for each of the 24 days, a new seltzer from around the U.S. is opened. The company is still growing rapidly with Long predicting revenue to top $4 million in 2021. She’s looking to hire as many as five new employees this year to support that growth. “I’d love to see Brew Export hubs around the world,” Long said. “I’m building out a team to show beer is one of the best representations of the United States. So many of these brewers started as home brewers and are family owned. They, like us, have a real entrepreneurial spirit. The beer is beautiful. The hops from Yakima Valley, the water from the Great Lakes, the yeast from California. It’s a beautiful product.”

Ammar Alkhafaji is something of an Energizer Bunny. In his own version of moonlighting, the internal medicine doctor who works out of Ascension Providence in both Southfield and Novi spends his hours outside the hospital — sometimes 13-hour days starting at 5 a.m. — developing real estate. Namely, he has devoted the last several years to bringing the Four Corners Square project in western Oakland County’s White Lake Township to fruition with a large mixed-use development not generally seen in the community or surrounding areas. “It’s two different careers going at once,” Alkhafaji said. “For me it’s been a blessing that I’m able to do this and find that balance. A lot of sleepless nights, but I wouldn’t give it up for the world.” The $20 million-plus development by his family’s The W Investors Group LLC — which was started by Alkhafaji’s father, Shakir, an immigrant from Iraq who came to the U.S. in the mid-1970s — has 83 market-rate apartments plus "IT’S TWO over 20,000 square feet of DIFFERENT retail. In effect, it creates an CAREERS GOING urban-style apartment AT ONCE. . . . A LOT community in the heart of the county’s lakes area, OF SLEEPLESS taking its name from its NIGHTS, BUT I location at an intersection where White Lake, Water- WOULDN’T GIVE ford, Commerce and West IT UP FOR THE Bloomfield meet. The 6-acre site features things WORLD.” like underground parking, a yoga facility, dog wash and an outdoor patio with barbecues and a firepit. Alkhafaji, who was named principal of W Investors Group in 2018, grew up fascinated by real estate as his father built his company and portfolio to more than 1 million square feet. Now Alkhafaji, who is a graduate of the University of Michigan and American University of the Caribbean School of Medicine, is also bringing his medical training to bear on development. A pair of testing labs, one in Southfield and one in Waterford, that are tenants in Alkhafaji’s buildings have needed large expansions during the COVID-19 pandemic, and his firm is in the planning stages of a skilled care nursing development in Waterford with 150 units. All in, he says W Investors Group has $50 million under construction and another $50 million in design and planning. But, he says, his days on the hospital floor help put things into perspective. “Being at the hospital and seeing what’s happening with COVID and things like that, working with these patients and helping them, there is no better feeling I get than helping my community in any way,” Alkhafaji said. Kirk Pinho

Dustin Walsh MAY 10, 2021 | CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS | 19

IN THEIR

TWENTIES

CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS 2020

MIKE SULLIVAN

“I’VE NEVER REALLY BEEN ATTRACTED TO THE CHALLENGE OF SOLVING ONE PROBLEM. THE THREAD THAT TIES TOGETHER A LOT OF MY EXPERIENCES IS IDENTIFYING SOLUTIONS THAT HELP EMPOWER PEOPLE TO ACHIEVE THEIR FULL POTENTIAL.”

27 | Founder/CEO | Brand25 Media UNDER LLC and FORTY Metro Detroit Golfers CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS 2020

For a brief time during peak pandemic strangeness a year ago, golf carts were the center of controversy. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer had initially banned the use of carts because of coronavirus concerns. That sent the metro Detroit golf community into a tizzy and scrambling to stay up to speed on the latest golf-related health guidance. Mike Sullivan brought fellow golfers together on Facebook, launching the Metro Detroit Golfers social media community last May. It has since ballooned to nearly 50,000 followers across its channels, where the conversation has evolved from the safety of golf carts to the latest deals and discoveries of golf in Michigan — home to the third largest number of courses in the country. Sullivan, who had been working at 97.1 The Ticket for six years, found he was pretty good at building brands online, and he had always wanted to build his own business. “This all really started as a side thing where I would have so many radio clients ask about social media help,” Sullivan said. “Really, it had just gotten to a point where it was so busy, and we were getting so many clients.” So, Sullivan left sports talk radio in August to be his own boss, focusing full time on Brand25 Media LLC, which he started in 2019. He brought on co-owner Kyle Bogenshutz, who had worked at The Ticket since 2014, to help grow the company. In both name and business model, Brand25 was created on the premise that the average person spends 25 percent of their day on their cellphone. “We help you brand to that!” goes the company catch phrase. It has around 40 clients ranging from country clubs to health care companies. Its largest customers include Hall Financial and NexCare WellBridge Senior Living. With a team of seven employees, including four full time, the company provides digital services, including marketing and running social media accounts. “There’s so many companies we work with who either don’t have the time to be online or don’t want to hire someone full time and pay benefits,” Sullivan said. “They can hire our team to be their marketing arm for the business.” Sullivan said the company is “well within reach” of a seven-figure revenue by the end of the year, and the goal is to keep scaling. “It’s a very, very different feeling when your entire livelihood depends on the success or failure of your business,” he said. “You think about it differently. You think about it more.”

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Kurt Nagl

RACHEL ZUCKERMAN 26 | Program Director | The Coding School, Qubit by Qubit Rachel Zuckerman is oriented toward problem-solving for people. In 2018, the University of Iowa political science graduate went to work at Detroit Employment Solutions Corp. — the workforce development agency of the city of Detroit — where political science meets the everyday reality of trying to help Detroiters climb the economic ladder. At DESC, Zuckerman was part of a team that tackled a major obstacle for Detroiters to get to work: Driver responsibility fees. The past fines amounted to a debt burden that kept thousands of Detroiters from being able to get a driver’s license — an impediment to getting a job. After the Michigan Legislature agreed to forgive more than 300,000 motorists of $630 million in old driver responsibility fees, Zuckerman helped Detroiters go 20 | CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS | MAY 10, 2021

through the process of shedding the debt and regaining their drivers’ licenses. That achievement, Zuckerman said, underscored to her “the importance of listening to community members and really understanding what are the issues impacting their lives and then using creative partnership-based solutions to address those barriers.” Zuckerman’s experience in Detroit motivated her to spend a year in China getting a master’s degree in global affairs at Tsinghua University through a scholarship program underwritten by Stephen Schwarzman, the chairman and CEO of The Blackstone Group. From there, Zuckerman went to work in the policy and planning office of the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services in the fall of 2019. Her initial focus was working on innovation in

the delivery of behavioral health services. By March 2020, the job shifted to entirely focused on the state’s response to the coronavirus pandemic, which ranged from standing up field hospitals to launching a contact tracing operation. Last fall, Zuckerman took on a new challenge, joining a fellow Schwarzman Scholar in helping launch The Coding School, a not-for-profit STEM education startup that teaches virtual quantum computing courses to 7,500 students in 125 countries. “I’ve never really been attracted to the challenge of solving one problem,” Zuckerman said. “The thread that ties together a lot of my experiences is identifying solutions that help empower people to achieve their full potential.” Chad Livengood

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XAVIER JOHNSON 29 | President | Enterprise Offensive Security

DANIELLE BOYER 20 | Founder and CEO | The STEAM Connection Danielle Boyer designed a robot that costs less than $20 to manufacture, and her nonprofit gives it away to students who want to participate in the notoriously costly robotics arena. Boyer founded the STEAM Connection — using an acronym for science, technology, engineering, art and math — in early 2019 when she was 18 years old. It aims to make science and technology learning accessible for youth of various backgrounds, including through connections in national indigenous community organizations. Boyer is an Ojibwe citizen. The nonprofit run by volunteers with an annual budget of around $50,000 has donated more than 15,000 books and 4,500 robotics kits so far. One recent funder is Ulta Beauty Inc., which contributed $5,000. Boyer, 20, created her robot, named EKGAR (Every Kid Gets a Robot), to be easy to fit together and learn from. She sends it to robotics teams, nonprofits and individuals. Boyer doesn’t have a patent for the uniquely designed robot — yet. It could cost more than $10,000 and that’s not

feasible right now. The nonprofit also has an online learning platform and an open-source robot educators can use that’s got a more advanced design than the proprietary EKGAR. Boyer, who grew up mostly in Troy, learned to love science and technology education when, at age 10, she noticed that her home-school group didn’t offer many such classes. She decided to teach an animal science class to kindergarteners. “I thought it was so much fun, but I also learned that there’s a giant accessibility gap in specifically tech education,” she said. “A lot of the resources are way too expensive for many students to afford, and I wanted it to be different.” It can cost more than $500 for a single robot that’s often used on robotics teams, she said, and she has paid $400 to be on a single team. Boyer first garnered support and funding from Dassault Systèmes SE, whose Waltham, Mass.-based subsidiary Solidworks Corp. makes the software she used to design her STEAM Connection robot. She said the compa-

ny “discovered” her at a robotics competition, leading her to give a keynote speech in Boston as part of Solidworks’ User Advocacy Day at age 17. Boyer now mentors 35 robotics teams and partners and fundraises with organizations including the Navajo-owned, New Mexico-based Little Moccasins Education Services LLC and the national nonprofit American Indian Science and Engineering Society, whose work includes assisting indigenous students in STEM. There’s more coming, too. Boyer has a new invention in the works that she’s vague about, but says it “intersects robotics and biodegradability.” Another new project is a “Tech and Tradition” series. “It’s showcasing students who are in engineering, who are in science, in our traditional cultural regalias and the idea is for students with similar cultural backgrounds to be able to look at these images and these posters and resonate with it and feel like they belong in STEAM in general, because most students don’t ever get to feel that way,” Boyer said.

An early interest in technology has led Xavier Johnson from entrepreneurial endeavors to the corporate sector and back. Johnson, 29, founded Enterprise Offensive Security LLC in 2019 after a career that’s involved stints working at General Electric and Dynatrace, as well as exiting a software company he founded in high school. The Detroit-based Enterprise Offensive Security, a cybersecurity firm, focuses on the offensive side of the sector and, as Johnson describes it, seeks to provide “white glove” services within the sector akin to an American Express. Johnson says his movement back and forth between small businesses he founded to large corporate players and back could serve as a lesson for some. “There’s not one traditional route to success. There’s not one traditional path,” he said. “So my path was, I had to take a longer route. And I had to learn a lot of lessons.” Customers of the company operate in the health care, education, finance and public sectors, he said, and recent contracts have reached into the eight figures over several years. The cybersecurity space has been a lucrative one for many founders, including in the metro Detroit region. Ann Arbor-based Duo Security, for instance, was acquired by software giant Cisco for $2.35 billion in 2018. Other cybersecurity companies have hauled in copious amounts of venture capital to help fuel growth. Johnson, however, says he’s taking a more bootstrapped approach to growing his business. Revenue will sustain growth, he said, as opposed to venture backing or acquisitions from large technology conglomerates. “We look at our mission as very early stage, and one of the big things that we would like to do is make … cybersecurity, and specifically offensive cybersecurity, highly available to our customers,” said Johnson. “So in the coming years we’re going be (making all of our products and services) more of a platform as a service. Cybersecurity as a service.” Nick Manes

Annalise Frank

ALLEN LARGIN

26 | Creative & Innovation Director | Rock Ventures As creative and innovation director at Rock Ventures, every day is different for Allen Largin. He might be helping think up the latest sneakerhead drop at StockX before pivoting to an alternate jersey design for the Cleveland Cavaliers or new logos for Bedrock. When the COVID-19 pandemic began, he paused that work to help launch facemask manufacturing with the Industrial Sewing and Innovation Center in Detroit. The projects might seem unrelated, but there’s a common thread: creative problem-solving. “I’m all over the place,” Largin said. “But we’re meant to be tying threads across the hundreds of companies and initiatives of the (Rock) family of companies. I’m not just pigeonholed on one initiative for a year.” Largin’s career took off in high school after winning Nike’s Future Sole competition, which culminated in NBA star Carmelo Anthony wearing his shoe design. He graduated from the College for Creative Studies, where he works as an adjunct professor, before completing internships with Nike and Under Armour. A self-described “creative jack of all trades,” Largin is passionate about fashion design, sports and entrepreneurship,

but most importantly, making a positive impact on the community. That’s all Dan Gilbert needed to hear. In 2017, the Rocket Ventures chairman took Largin out to a Cavs game — an informal tryout for team Gilbert. “I asked him, ‘What am I going to do?’” Largin recalled. “He said, ‘Well, what do you want to do?’” As the creative lead under Dan and Jennifer Gilbert, Largin has a lot of freedom. His long-term vision is building up the footwear and fashion industry in Detroit by leveraging his connections to major athletic brands. Largin worked with Gilbert’s son Grant last year to create the Cavs’ Rock and Roll Hall of Fame-inspired “city edition” uniform. Leading up to the Rocket Mortgage Classic in Detroit this Fourth of July weekend, he is working with Los Angeles-based Malbon Golf on tournament-branded merchandise. Proceeds will go to the tournament’s Connect 313 fund, which aims to provide internet access to Detroiters. “For me, it’s the broad impact our organization has on Detroit,” he said. “To play a very small part in that and see the butterfly effect.” Kurt Nagl MAY 10, 2021 | CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS | 21

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UBS to open downtown Detroit office By Annalise Frank

October 30, 2017 | crainsdetroit.com

• UBS plans to open wealth management office in Detroit in mid-2018 • Office to include 6,000-squarefoot space30,nonprofits and civic October 2017 | crainsdetroit.com

UBS to open downtown Detroit office By Annalise Frank

groups • UBS plans to open wealthcan use free of charge • Bedrock-owned buildings office in Detroit “I’m impacting lives now. management I know undergoing renovations in mid-2018

UBS to open downtown Detroit office

Bedrock LLC

6,000-squarethe effect food insecurity• Office had onto includeUBS plans to open an office in downfoot space nonprofits and civic Detroit in mid-2018, the company Annalise Frank growing groups meByand my peers up, andcan usetown free of charge announced Monday. • Bedrock-ownedUBS buildings Group AG’s U.S. and Canadian UBSan plans to open wealth this•was opportunity toundergoing make a renovations wealth management business, New Jermanagement office in Detroit sey-based Wealth Management change I wish an adult UBScould plans to open an office UBS in downin that mid-2018 Americas, to lease 13,000 square UBS will lease 13,000 feet from Bedrock LLC starting around mid-2018 in two buildings: the Grintown Detroit in mid-2018, theplans company • Office to include 6,000-squarefeet on the connected sixth floors of nell Building (center left) at 1515 Woodward Ave. and the Sanders Building (center right) at 1529 have made for me.” announced Monday. foot space nonprofits and civic buildings at 1515 Wood- Woodward Ave. Group AG’sneighboring U.S. and Canadian groups can use free UBS of charge ward Ave. and Fourteen metro Detroit employees don’t really have adequate resources wealth management business, New 1529 Jer- Woodward Ave. • Bedrock-owned buildings The twoManagement buildings built around 1900 are will move to the downtown office to or adequate office space to host dosey-based UBS Wealth undergoing renovations by Detroit-based will lease LLC 13,000 feet from Bedrock LLC starting around mid-2018 buildings: Grin- meetings or things nor events the or board start, but the office has the capacity toin two Americas, plans toowned lease 13,000 square UBSBedrock nell Building (center at 1515 Woodward andnew the Sanders Buildingalong (centerthose right) at 1529 Bush said. and are undergoing said left) lines,” hold another six toAve. eight staff memon inthe connected sixth floors of renovations, Reprinted with permission from Crain’s Detroit Business. © 2019 Crain Communications Inc. All RightsUBS reserved. plans to open anfeet office downAve. for bers, Bush said. It will act as an extension John Bush, 60, WoodMichiganWoodward market head UBS’s investment in the new ofneighboring buildings at 1515 Further duplication without permission is prohibited. Visit www.crainsdetroit.com. #CD1134 town Detroit in mid-2018, the company UBS Wealth ManagementFourteen Americas.metro of fice will resources be “significant,” he said, as its the other wealth management offices. don’t really have adequate Detroit employees announced Monday. ward Ave. and 1529 Woodward Ave. “The real impetus open atonew The two buildings built around 1900 arefor us “uniqueness Bush is based Birmingham office space to hostcomes do- at a price.” He said willto move the downtown office out to ofortheadequate UBS Group AG’s U.S. and Canadian office inBedrock Detroit is to support what’s owned by Detroit-based LLC he could or not yet provide an estimate but travels to to the will meetings norothers eventsand or board things start, but the goofficeoffice, has the capacity wealth management business, New Jering renovations, on in the city, ” saidhold Bush, a Detroit and are undergoing said on the be spending in thealong Detroit branch. those lines,” Bush said.cost of the build-out, as some another six to eight new stafftime memsey-based UBS Wealth Management nativemarket who grew City. “We John Bush, 60, Michigan headup forin Garden have yet The location have atheless UBS’s investment in the new of- to be finalized. said. will act asDetroit an extension fromBush Bedrock LLCItstarting around mid-2018 in twowill buildings: Grin- contracts Americas, plans to lease 13,000 square UBS will lease 13,000 feetbers, UBS Wealth Management Americas. really felt like we wantedofto have a physfice will be “significant,” hecompany said, as its the other wealth management offices. The plans to start its buildtraditional, more “urban” feelright) than 1515 Woodward Ave. and the Sanders Building (center atthe 1529 feet on the connected sixth floors of nell Building (center left) at “The real impetus for us to open a new ical presence to reinforce “uniqueness comes at saidnext year, depending is based outothers, of the he Birmingham outa price.” processHeearly said. New York-based architecAve. downtownBush neighboring buildings office at 1515 Wood- toWoodward in Detroit is our support go-particular vision what’s for this areatravels and toture he will could not yet an estimate office, but the firm others and will Cale on when renovations on the buildings Verderame design the provide ward Ave. and 1529 ing Woodward don’t really have adequate resources Fourteen metro Detroit employees on in theAve. city,”tosaid Bush, a Detroit reinforce our on Barton the cost of the build-out, as some be spending time inspace; the Detroit branch. are complete. Southfield-based Malow The two buildings builtnative around 1900 areup in adequate office space to have host dowill moveCity. to tothe officelocation to or will who grew Garden “Wedowntown commitment contracts finalized. The Detroit have aon less based in Switzerland, employs Co. has signed as general contractor.yet to beUBS, owned by Detroit-based Bedrock nor events or board or things start, thea physoffice has the capacity really felt likeLLC we wanted tobut The company plans to startacross its buildtraditional, moreto“urban” than the outmeetings the city. ” have 60,000 54 countries. About 34 UBS feel plans to rent about half of the and are undergoing renovations, said along those lines,” Bush said. early next year, depending hold six to eight new he staff memical presence downtown toWealth reinforce others, said. New office York-based architecUBS another — 6,000 square out feetprocess — at no cost percent of them work in the AmeriJohn Bush, 60, Michiganour market head UBS’s investment the renovations new of- on the buildings bers, said. It will act an extension vision for for thisMparticular oninorganizations, when tureasfirm VerderametoCale will design theother a n aBush g e marea e n tand cas, according to a news release. UBS nonprofits and UBS Wealth Management will beMalow “significant,” he said, as its of the other also wealth management offices. ficeBarton to Americas. reinforce our Americas are be complete. space; Southfield-based Bush said. The space will called UBS Wealth Management Americas em“The real impetus for commitment us to open a new “uniqueness comes at a price.” He said is based thehas Birmingham to has Bush based signed on as Woodward general contractor. metro De- out ofCo. ploys 280employs in Michigan, 225 of whom Gallery. Its UBS, design and in artSwitzerland, office in Detroit is to support what’s go- office, but travels to theUBS heabout couldhalf not yet provide an estimate others and the city. ” 60,000 across 54 countries. About 34 Detroit. plans towill rent will out of the troit offices in aim to showcase Detroit’s history are based in metro ing on in the city,” said Bush, on the cost the build-out, asthem somework in the Amerispending Detroit branch. UBS a Detroit Wealth B be percent office — 6,000 square at noofcost irm i n g h a time m , in the The wealth management business andfeet a— hub-and-spoke layout ofwill renative who grew up in Garden contracts have yet tocas, be finalized. M a n a gCity. e m“We e n t Troy, The Detroit locationtowill have a and less other according to a news release. UBS nonprofits organizations, Farmington recorded operating income of $2.13 flect the city’s road system. really felt like we wanted to have a physAmericas also Hills, The plans to startManagement its buildtraditional, more “urban” Wealth Americas em- quarter of 2017 — a Bushfeel said.than The the space will becompany called Plymouth in the third “Some of theUBS organizations that op- billion ical presence downtown reinforce has tometro De- others, he said. New York-based outdesign process early year,280 depending architecploys in Michigan, 225 of whom Woodward Gallery. Its and art next John Bush erate and Dearborn. and provide services in the city 7 percent increase over last year. our vision for this particular area and troit offices in ture firm Verderame Cale when renovations the buildings the onDetroit’s in metro Detroit. willwill aimdesign to showcase history areonbased to reinforce our B i r m i n g h a m , space; Southfield-based complete. Malow arelayout The wealth management business andBarton a hub-and-spoke will reReprinted with permission from Crain’s Detroit Business. © 2019 Crain Communications Inc. All Rights reserved. commitment to Troy, Farmington Co. has signed on as general UBS, basedis prohibited. in Switzerland, employs income recorded operating contractor. flectFurther the city’s road without system. duplication permission Visit www.crainsdetroit.com. #CD936of $2.13 Hills, Plymouth the city.” billion in About the third “Somehalf of the organizations that op60,000 across 54 countries. 34quarter of 2017 — a UBS plans to rent out about of the John Bush and Dearborn. UBS Wealth 7 percent and provide city work percentinofthe them in theincrease Ameri-over last year. office — 6,000 squareerate feet — at no cost services Management to nonprofits and other organizations, cas, according to a news release. UBS Reprinted with permission from Crain’s Crain Communications Inc. All Rights reserved. Americas also Wealth Management Americas emBush said. The space will be Detroit calledBusiness. UBS © 2019 Further duplication without permission is prohibited. Visit www.crainsdetroit.com. #CD936 has metro DeWoodward Gallery. Its design and art ploys 280 in Michigan, 225 of whom troit offices in will aim to showcase Detroit’s history are based in metro Detroit. Birmingham, The wealth management business and a hub-and-spoke layout will reCRAINSDETROIT.COM I MARCH 9, 2020 I Troy, Farmington recorded operating income of $2.13 flect the city’s road system. THE CONVERSATION Hills, Plymouth “Some of the organizations that op- billion in the third quarter of 2017 — a John Bush erate and provide services in the city 7 percent increase over last year. and Dearborn.

Bedrock LLC

hroughout Dandridge Floyd’s careers — whether as a social worker, attorney or assistant superintendent of Oakland Schools — making change has always been a center point. When United Way pitched a framework to Oakland Schools for a countywide breakfast program to address poor nutrition as a way to improve academic achievement, Floyd — who experienced food insecurity growing up — knew firsthand the powerful impact it could have. To secure the needed funds, Floyd led a team that earned support from all 28 local districts to finance the program — despite the fact that a majority of them would see no benefit. “The local districts were phenomenal,” Floyd said. “The biggest surprise was how quickly it happened. Education is a democratic system and democracy can be very slow, but this happened in six to seven months. That showed how committed people were to making sure the students of Oakland County have everything they need to be successful.” In a county where over 7,000 children suffer from hunger, and only two in five eligible students access a school breakfast, Floyd said a common misperception is that “Oakland County is rich.” “That makes this program all the more important, because if that is the bias or the thought process people have about Oakland County, then these kids would have never gotten help.” In a groundbreaking public/nonprofit partnership between the Oakland County Board of Commissioners, Oakland Schools and United Way, Oakland County is Better with Breakfast was born. “I’m impacting lives now,” Floyd said. “I know the effect food insecurity had on me and my peers growing up, and this was an opportunity to make a change that I wish an adult could have made for me.” — Laura Cassar

Albert Berriz talks workforce housing, Ann Arbor and Cuba

Reprinted with permission from Crain’s Detroit Business. © 2019 Crain Communications Inc. All Rights reserved. | BY KIRK PINHO Further duplication without permission is prohibited. Visit www.crainsdetroit.com. #CD936

MCKINLEY INC.: Ann Arbor-based real estate company McKinley Inc. saw the writing on the wall for its retail portfolio a few years ago and cut bait, turning its focus primarily to its large crop of tens of thousands of workforce housing units across the country. One of the people at the helm of that decision was Albert Berriz, CEO and managing member, who came to America as a young boy fleeing Cuba and now steers a large company with a portfolio valued at more than $4 billion. `Crain’s Detroit Business: Can you talk a little bit about how the McKinley portfolio began and where it’s at today? Berriz: McKinley started in 1968 in Ann Arbor, and it was founded by (former U.S.) Ambassador Ron Weiser. It started in the student housing business and eventually transitioned into more traditional multifamily housing, and in addition to that, office and retail, as well. Today, we’re primarily a workforce housing multifamily operator. We have essentially disposed of our retail and office assets in an effort to really focus on multifamily and also focus on an asset class that I think is more in line with our current goal, which is to have a generational multifamily real estate enterprise and a pool of assets that really are long term in nature. ` Explain workforce housing versus affordable housing. We’re not in luxury housing. Our residents are working. They’re going to wake up tomorrow morning and go to work. Our average rents are, for example, in Washtenaw County, about $1,100 to $1,200 or in Orange County, or Seminole County, Florida, $1,400 or $1,500. So these are affordable rents. And the difference between us and affordable housing is our buildings are not subsidized. They’re all market rate, and they’re all privately owned. The owners are not receiving any form of subsidy, nor are the residents. However, if you wanted to sort of assess residents and low-income housing tax credit deals compared to ours, they’re probably not too dissimilar, the median incomes. The McKinley residents in, let’s say, Washtenaw County, when you look at the numbers are probably not going to be too much different than what you would see in a traditional LIHTC deal. But again, our buildings, the primary differences, our buildings are market rate and they’re not subsidized any way.

`I don’t think it’s overblown to use the word “crisis” for Ann Arbor’s affordable housing situation. Give us your perspective on how the city should go about addressing it. I think it’s a supply issue. The reality is that Ann Arbor has not really welcomed solutions from the private sector and has only sought solutions from the public housing side or the community nonprofit side. And both of those groups, while I think they’re very well intentioned, don’t have the capital and the expertise to resolve the problem at the scale it’s needed. To put it in perspective, you know, the Washtenaw County study that came out had a need of about 3,000 units. And if you look at the cost per unit today, and let’s say $250,000 or $300,000 per unit to build a brand new unit today, you know, it’s an $800 million to a $1 billion problem, so I don’t think that’s a problem that gets resolved on the public side or on the community nonprofit side. You know, they have to go to places to seek capital and there just isn’t enough capital, nor do they have enough resources or expertise to resolve the problems. So the city I think, by and large, has attempted to do this in those ways because they really haven’t welcomed the private side. And there is a lot of expertise and there’s a lot of capital that could do this, from the private side perspective. It just hasn’t been the way that Ann Arbor operates, so you see what has happened in Ann Arbor year over year, decade over decade is there’s a lot of conversations about affordable housing, but there’s no solutions. `You were talking a little bit earlier about how McKinley got out of retail and office. What led to that decision and how has that reflected or shaped your business strategy? It was a risk profile that we were just not comfortable with. We are a generational business and so we look at our assets in

a way that we never expect to sell them. We expect to invest in them so they last for long term, and we just couldn’t see that on retail. We saw a significant degradation of our rent rolls. We had buildings that were, let’s say, 70 percent to 80 percent investment-grade credit tenant composition and then we saw that we saw that quickly degrade. We just didn’t see a place where we could really have an asset class retail that would last for the long run. And then office in many ways, the same way. The way people are shopping and the way people are occupying offices today, the risk profile is very different than it was, let’s say, when we were making those investments 20 and 30 years ago, so for us, it was the right move. It’s paid off because, had we held many of the assets today, they would be significantly compromised. I think they would be worth a lot less. We started those sales about six years ago, and we sold a lot of that early on, so we sold them still at a time they were being valued significantly more than they would be worth today, in our opinion. And we sold some big buildings. I mean, these weren’t small buildings. We sold a 1 millionsquare-foot shopping center, for example, in Norfolk, Va., which is one of the largest power centers in the state of Virginia. So these weren’t small assets. So they were important for us to move them out at the right time, and for people that thought that was there was a good upside for them, so we actually sold them at good prices, and certainly we couldn’t have sold them at those prices today.

trajectory was to where you are today in terms of the head of McKinley. I left (Cuba) compliments of Fidel Castro in early 1959 because of the Cuban Revolution. We had to flee. It was survival to leave the country at the time and my parents relocated to Miami. We were fortunate for that. We’re fortunate to have left alive, fortunate to have resettled in what is without question the greatest country on the planet. I was not born here. I was born in Havana and I emigrated as a Cuban refugee just before I was 4 years old with my parents. `What consumes your day outside of the office? My wife and I walk. We like to boat, so those are the two things. In our summers we live at Saugatuck, and it’s a great place to live. We’d live there year-round, but it’s a little too cold in the winter.

`Can you give thumbnail sketch of coming here and what your

Albert Berriz, CEO and managing member, McKinley Inc.

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22 | CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS | MAY 10, 2021

Line cook Marrio Ware of Detroit prepares food at Jim Brady’s Detroit in Royal Oak.

LABOR

From Page 1

But most business owners and managers say it’s hard to compete with Congress’ extension of pandemic-related unemployment benefits and an additional $300-per-week federal benefit that’s in place until Sept. 4. The added benefit has some restaurateurs and fast-food operators bracing for a punishing summer of labor shortages for entry-level positions. Michigan’s maximum unemployment benefit is $362 per week. The additional $300 per week boosts potential benefits to $662, or $16.55 per hour for a 40-hour work week. All 846,960 active unemployment claimants are receiving the $300 additional weekly payment as part of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan that President Joe Biden signed into law in March, according to Michigan’s Unemployment Insurance Agency. Restaurateurs say that added benefit has slowed hiring and recovery, especially since Gov. Gretchen Whitmer’s administration has continued to waive the requirement that workers claiming unemployment benefits actively search for work. “If people are just making $362 a week, I guarantee they’d be coming looking for jobs,” said Tom Brady, owner of the Jim Brady’s Bar & Grill restaurants in Royal Oak and Ann Arbor. “The floor right now is $16 (per hour). Paying dishwashers $16 an hour is hard.”

Supply not meeting demand The scarcity of labor for open positions in the restaurant industry was on full display May 4 during a virtual job fair hosted by the Macomb/St. Clair Michigan Works! Office. There were 570 available jobs advertised from more than 30 bars and restaurants in both counties, ranging from entry level servers and hosts to cooks and supervisors. Just four participants logged online to apply for jobs, according to Michigan Works! web and communication specialist Jordan Geml. “When the search-for-work requirement returns, and additional unemployment benefits end, we expect an increase in traffic for these events,” Geml said. At the end of this month, the state Unemployment Insurance Agency will reinstate the work search re-

| NIC ANTAYA, SPECIAL TO CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS

quirement. Unemployment claimants will have to show proof that they’ve applied for at least one job per week, UIA spokeswoman Lynda Robinson said. The labor shortage comes as restaurants are facing pent-up demand from freshly vaccinated patrons who recently received a $1,400 stimulus check from the U.S. Treasury and are eager to get inside a restaurant again. “People got stimulus checks in April and they’re surging to restaurants,” said Justin Winslow, president and CEO of the Michigan Restaurant and Lodging Association. Over the past 14 months, dine-in service inside bars, breweries, taprooms and restaurants small and large was prohibited for 159 days. Adding to the uncertainty is restaurants and bars may remain limited to 50 percent of indoor capacity and have to close at 11 p.m. until 60 percent individuals over age 16 have been received at least one shot of a COVID-19 vaccine under Whitmer’s latest reopening plan. As of May 6, Michigan was nearly 711,000 individuals short of meeting that 60 percent vaccination threshold, state data show. “We don’t have a clear sense of a timeline of when we’re going to be back (at full capacity),” Winslow said.

New recruitment strategies Restaurants and fast-food chains are getting more creative — and desperate — to find good help. Last week, McShane’s Irish Pub & Whiskey Bar in Detroit’s Corktown neighborhood was offering a $500 hiring bonus for a new line cook. An Applebee’s restaurant at 11 Mile and Van Dyke Avenue in Warren was advertising $200 signing bonuses for all positions. In an effort to weed out bad applicants, Aberrant Brewing Co. in Howell has a banner above its front entrance on Grand River Avenue that reads, “Are you awesome? We’re hiring” with an asterisk that says “if you’re not, maybe try down the street...” At Fork n’ Pint on Cass Lake, Schwab has ads on Craigslist advertising wages of a minimum $200 per shift for servers — an ad that’s aimed at people who already have a serving job and want to make more money. “That’s an advertisement directly at people who are in the business,” Schwab said. “That’s for a server who knows what kind of money they

can make.” The more entry-level positions are proving to be the hardest to fill, particularly in fast food. Brady, the third-generation owner of Jim Brady’s, said he needs 14 people to fill jobs in his two restaurants in order to open for lunch again and be flexible if an employee calls in sick. “It’s that thin,” he said. Brady said he’s spending hundreds of dollars each week advertising jobs on Indeed and Craigslist. In the past, Jim Brady’s has recruited workers based on reputation and word-of-mouth, Brady said. Detroit-based Tayven Food Corp., the owner-operator of 13 Wendy’s franchises in metro Detroit, is hiring 15-year-olds for the first time ever to help fill shifts, even after scaling back hours at some locations such as the Hazel Park restaurant, company president and CEO Steven Taylor said. “I’ve never seen it like this in 26 years of trying to find people to come to work,” said Taylor, who needs 125 workers “today” to fill vacancies in his Wendy’s restaurants. “We have tons of jobs and opportunities for anybody willing to work.” The labor troubles don’t just end with recruitment. Taylor said his managers have lost track of how many people don’t show up for interviews, ghosting his staff and creating more human resources headaches. “You can offer a person a job, they say they’re going to take it and their start date is a few days later, and they don’t show up,” he said. Tayven Food Corp. has Wendy’s restaurants in Detroit, Warren, Highland Park, Southfield, Dearborn, Ferndale, Hazel Park and Madison Heights. Transportation remains a major impediment to filling shifts each day at the suburban restaurants, which rely heavily on workers from Detroit, Taylor said. “But now people are like it’s not worth it to pay for an Uber there and back or take two or three buses to get to your job because you have free money,” said Taylor, referencing the $300-a-week added unemployment benefit. “It was a struggle (to fill jobs) prior to this last payout. But this last payout really did it.” Crain’s Staff Reporter Jay Davis contributed to this report. Contact: clivengood@crain.com; (313) 446-1654; @ChadLivengood

VACCINE

From Page 1

customers, after they get the vaccine, have to wait 15 minutes as we observe them to make sure they don’t have an adverse reaction. So we’re going to give them a series of value-adds to encourage them to engage further.” Pharmacies like CVS contend the data they are collecting from millions of customers is important for efficiently getting people in for vaccinations and that they follow health privacy rules as they tailor marketing to keep in touch with customers. Health care providers say more education is necessary because vaccine hesitancy threatens to halt the effort to get above “herd immunity” of more than 70 percent against COVID-19. As of May 1, 56 percent of U.S. adults had received at least one dose, but 14 percent say they won’t get a vaccine, 21 percent will wait and 10 percent will get vaccinated when they get around to it, according to the Harris Poll. Privacy attorney Debra Geroux with Butzel Long in Bloomfield Hills said the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention has created a checklist and guidelines for providers that want to market vaccines. It focuses on education and doesn’t restrict how they advertise vaccine availability from an ethical standpoint. “The CDC has recognized that the numbers are not up where they thought they would be,” Geroux said. “So marketing the vaccine is now an important goal of the federal government.” Consumer advocates believe there should be stronger limitations beyond existing privacy laws on how pharmacies use COVID-19 vaccination data, as many people had little choice where they get a vaccine because of limited availability. Privacy rights groups also are pressing retailers to promise customers they will keep that information separate from marketing or business databases and collect only the minimum amount of information needed. When a person registers for a vaccination, many times they go on email mailing lists and receive marketing information from retailers about products unrelated to health care or their vaccine appointments. Walmart recently sent out an email with a marketing solicitation for “feelgood foods, for less” after a Crain’s reporter signed up and received a Johnson & Johnson vaccine in March. The email advertisement offered enchilada cheese “20-minute meals for under $10.” Geroux said offering COVID-19 vaccinations has become part of pharmacies’ marketing and sales plan. “If you think about it, that is how most pharmacies are set up and why when you go to your CVS, or Rite Aid, or wherever, to get your prescription, you have to go through the rest of store to get to the the pharmacy,” Geroux said. “If you’re dropping off a prescription or milling around for 10 minutes, that’s going to cause you to shop and kind of impulse buy.” Federal law, under the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) of 1996, regulates the use of patients’ health information. HIPAA prevents pharmacies from sharing customers’ health data for marketing purposes. Pharmacies can use the information to send coupons to customers and promote health services they may already offer, like checkups or flu shots, Geroux said. They are freer to use the collected data once they scrub

Beaumont Health has created marketing materials and advertising campaigns around the health system’s COVID-19 vaccination efforts.

May 10, 2021 Debra Geroux

Matt Friedman

it of identifying details. “The marketing regulation is pretty straightforward,” Geroux said. “They can’t give the information to a third party or market a third party’s services. But that’s not the case here. They’re marketing their own services.” Matt Friedman, a marketing and communications expert with Tanner Friedman Strategic Communications in Farmington Hills, said pharmacies and hospitals are serving urgent public health needs and fulfilling an emotional and public relations aspect with their vaccination programs. “It’s different with the hospitals because especially the nonprofits, they have a mission, a community mission that involves health care. It’s pretty easy to connect vaccinations to their community mission,” Friedman said. “But if you look at the drugstores, vaccinating patients is just a great emotional connection with customers in a really competitive business. They compete for street corners and the grocery stores, and Walmart and Target have entered the pharmacy market and are very competitive.” Vaccination can become a life event that brings a more meaningful and memorable shopping experience than other retail products, Friedman said. “(Pharmacies) bring people into the back of a retail store, which is just the place that retailers want you to go, because if you have to go to the back of the store, chances are you’re going to spend money in the front or the middle of the store,” he said. In a statement to Crain’s about how it uses collected data, CVS Health spokesman Charlie Rice-Minoso said the pharmacy believes it is important for the public to receive both doses of the Pfizer or Moderna vaccine. “That is why we are using the contact information patients provide us when they register for appointments to send them frequent reminders about their appointments, especially for the second dose,” Rice-Minoso said. Kroger Co. of Michigan declined comment about marketing campaigns and use of data. Rite Aid didn’t respond to several requests. Walgreens emailed a statement. “Walgreens plays an important role in COVID-19 vaccine administration in communities across the country, and our goal is to guide people on a safe, personalized path to health and wellness,” said spokesperson Alex

Brown in the statement. Brian Swartz, an independent pharmacist who owns Pharmacy Care and Gifts in Middleville, a suburb of Grand Rapids, said independent pharmacies are much different in how they market and sell products than large retail corporate chains. “I can tell you that 99.9 percent of the independent pharmacies are following that (HIPAA) rule that they realize that we can’t generate email lists with the information we’re getting from the patients” through COVID-19 vaccination registrations, Swartz said.

Hospitals market vaccines, themselves Beaumont Health likes to present itself in television and radio advertisements and in media interviews about how it has treated the most patients with COVID-19 and vaccinated the most people in Michigan against coronavirus. “Beat the pandemic with Beaumont” is a 30-second TV ad that leads off with how Beaumont has been fighting the pandemic since Michigan’s first COVID patients were diagnosed. “It takes all of us. We’re proud to have cared for the most COVID patients in the state. And now, we’re leading the fight to end the pandemic with our new vaccination clinics, with every person we vaccinate, our community grows stronger, but we can only do it together. Beat the pandemic with Beaumont.” While the ad was created to encourage people to get their COVID-19 vaccination, Beaumont is clearly sending the message that people can trust their medical care to Beaumont doctors and nurses, even in a pandemic. When coupled with other Beaumont ads and announcements encouraging people to not delay elective surgeries, procedures or other routine tests because of fear of contracting COVID-19, the vaccination ads support a larger marketing message for Southfield-based Beaumont, an eight-hospital nonprofit system. In a statement to Crain’s, Beaumont said anyone who registers for COVID-19 vaccinations through Beaumont myChart system could receive a variety of educational materials about Beaumont’s clinical services unless the person opts out of receiving them. “For all people living in and around the communities we serve, Beaumont has always encouraged community members to be proactive with their health care by having a primary care physician and having appropriate health screenings and exams,” the statement said. “Beaumont sends educational materials to people who are patients and

to people who are not patients. If an individual does not want to receive educational information from Beaumont, he or she can opt out at any time,” Beaumont said. For example, if a Beaumont patient or someone who registered for a vaccine is over age 50, they may receive a reminder for a colonoscopy, a spokesman said. Grand Rapids-based Spectrum Health, another large health system with 15 hospitals in Michigan, also has been aggressively advertising and marketing its COVID-19 vaccination program. Like Beaumont, Spectrum has regularly held Zoom telepress conferences with doctors, nurses and administrators encouraging people to get vaccinated and trying to allay fears people might have of being exposed to coronavirus by coming to hospitals for routine treatment. In a statement, Spectrum said its goal has been to educate the public

about the COVID-19 vaccine and the clinical studies that indicate the vaccines are safe and effective. The nonprofit health system has worked closely with local health departments and other health systems to offer vaccination sites. Geroux said she believes hospitals are advertising coronavirus vaccinations primarily as public service announcements. She said higher vaccination rates will reduce community spread of COVID-19, save lives and reduce suffering. But the secondary message to customers has the potential of burnishing hospitals’ brands. “Every time they get any sort of coverage, whether it’s in the news or their own marketing campaign, at the end of the day, it’s the brand that you’re hoping the viewers will remember,” Geroux said. Contact: jgreene@crain.com; (313) 446-0325; @jaybgreene

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Seeking a vacant land parcel within a 20-minute drive of the John D. Dingell VA Medical Center at 4646 John R Street, Detroit, MI. VA proposes to construct and operate a Fisher House on the site. Fisher Houses provide a “home away from home” for the family members and caregivers of hospitalized Veterans and Active Duty Servicemembers. The ready-to-develop parcel should be a minimum of 1.25 acres, in an established neighborhood and within easy walking distance to public transportation, shopping, and eateries. The parcel must not be in a 100-year floodplain or possess any other barriers to development. Please contact Shahidat Abbas at shahidat.abbas@va.gov with available parcels in the greater Detroit area or for additional details on VA’s requirements. MAY 10, 2021 | CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS | 23

BEAUMONT

From Page 3

The renovated clubhouse has panoramic views of the Detroit and Windsor skylines. | ELEMENT PHOTOGRAPHY

BAYVIEW

From Page 3

It boasts a new grand entrance that will display trophies and plaques, a new second-story deck with panoramic views of the Detroit and Windsor skylines, and revamped bar and dining areas led by local restaurateur Matthew Prost, hired as the club’s general manager in March. More than 85 percent of the clubhouse had to be demolished and rebuilt, and the cost swelled by $1 million due to rising water levels and flooding in the foundation. Around 40 percent of the project cost was funded by member donations and the rest by a loan through Flagstar Bancorp. “The clubhouse was falling apart,” said Brad Kimmel, who oversaw the renovations done by Farmington Hills-based architect Nordstrom Samson & Associates and Rochester-based general contractor Frank Rewold & Sons. “It was born out of necessity, and No. 2, to cater to our next generation and their demands and wants.” That meant evolving from a sailor’s hideaway to a place where members can drop in for a business meeting or relax with family. After the Great Recession, membership at private clubs and country clubs throughout the state contracted, and for many including Bayview, membership never recovered. That’s forced many clubs to shed their “good old boys” aura and provide amenities that cater to families and a more diverse pool of potential customers.

Membership shrinks Bayview has around 350 active full-time members, down more than 25 percent from its pre-recession peak, while most members are around 50 years old and up. The club, which operates as a 501(c)(7) nonprofit social club, does around $4 million in annual revenue. That declined somewhat last year due to the pandemic, but membership did not dip. Stormes said the club is financially viable, but it needs more members to remain that way. The goal is to reach 400 in the next 18 months. Sailing remains at the center of the club’s mission. It has 10 boats spanning 20 feet and offers boat slips and storage. It hosts a highly regarded junior sailing program, collegiate sailing, winter seminars and a variety of races, including international matches and the popular Bayview Mackinac Race, also known as the Port Huron to Mackinac Race. Costs of a full active membership 24 | CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS | MAY 10, 2021

Kimmel

Prost

for ages 35 and up include a $2,500 admission fee, $200 monthly dues and a $150 quarterly minimum spend. There are incentives for younger members. The admission fee is $100 for those ages 27-35, and monthly dues are less than half that of older members. A junior class membership has no monthly dues or spend minimums. Those ages 2226 pay $171 annually, while 21 and under pay $81 annually. “We need a definite new influx of young people that want to get into the sport of sailing because the sport of sailing is dying,” Kimmel said. “We’re really trying to promote the sport of sailing by offering the best amenities that cater to the next generation.” Management figured the best way to strengthen its sailing program in the long run was to invest in other areas. The new club will be outfitted with half a dozen flex-space meeting and conference rooms with WiFi, printing and other office amenities. Besides sailing, offerings include kayaking, golf leagues, winter hockey, fowling leagues, a book club, music and live events, as well as holiday parties, weddings and rentals for other special events. Among the most notable changes — and perhaps the biggest draw for younger prospective members — will be the kitchen and bar. Millennials love a good cocktail and small plate.

Food and beverage overhaul Prost, a longtime restaurant manager, is planning an upscale but casual supper club concept for the club’s main indoor dining room. Think comfort dishes, steak and prime rib, with some twists. Upstairs, he envisions a Key West kind of vibe for the 40-foot deck equipped with a full bar and 38-foot couch overlooking the water. Tiki cocktails and shellfish appetizers to start, and a wood-fired outdoor pizza oven to handle a heartier meal. “We’re driving that narrative to attract that newer, younger member,” he said. Prost replaced Tim Gardella, who left the club late last year as it laid out its new direction. Prost ran the bar and lounge at Walt Disney World Swan and Dolphin resorts for 12 years before coming to De-

troit, where he managed restaurants at the Westin Book Cadillac Detroit and Royal Park Hotel in Rochester, as well as Social Kitchen and Bar in Birmingham. Before Bayview, he worked for more than three years as regional manager for Delaware North, managing food and beverage at Little Caesars Arena and Hockeytown Café in downtown Detroit. “Quite frankly, COVID was a devastating time to be an employee at the arena,” he said. “It was a great opportunity to see what was out there, and Bayview came calling.” A couple weeks ago, Prost hired away executive chef Tim Enfield from The Henry Hotel in Dearborn. The food and drink menu is still being developed. In the meantime, Prost is looking to hire 50 full- and part-time employees by the June opening. He is worried about finding enough people given the ongoing shortage of workers in the hospitality industry. “All my friends and colleagues in the industry have had a really hard time finding help,” Prost said.

Mackinac race keeps afloat While renovations on the clubhouse wrap up, club leadership is busy organizing the 97th iteration of the Bayview Mackinac Race, scheduled for July 24. Due to the COVID-19 pandemic and planning challenges, the Lake Huron race likely won’t be the big party it usually is, but the club hopes it will be more traditional than last year, when social gatherings were prohibited and the race moved forward with little fanfare. Atwater Brewery took the place of Bell’s as the race’s main sponsor right before the pandemic began. The deal with Atwater, which extends through 2022, is smaller than the one with Bell’s, but financial terms were not disclosed. Bell’s Brewery founder Larry Bell and Bayview parted amicably and left open a chance for a partnership in the future. “Our analysis on the return on investment as title sponsor didn’t make financial sense to us anymore. It was a huge outlay of cash,” Bell told Crain’s. “We have a friendly relationship. We enjoyed the heck out of it. We hope that at some time we can be their beer sponsor again. That hasn’t worked out yet.” For now, Bayview is ready to say cheers to a new start. “It’s a great time to be opening a club,” Prost said. “In a year of losses, it’s fun being part of a grand opening.” Contact: knagl@crain.com; (313) 446-0337; @kurt_nagl

“I was given a new medication (remdesivir) that is supposed to help your body fight COVID,” Brown said. “It helped my breathing. Before, it felt like my stomach was rising up my chest and like your heart’s going to stop.” Brown said he was afraid and very fearful the first few days in the hospital. “I heard about Beaumont and wanted to come here. I have been treated very well, but I was in a new environment and I was feeling really bad. I was really afraid I might not make it.” A former engineer, Brown became a paraplegic seven years ago after being the victim of four gunshot wounds. “I’ve been through a lot of trauma in my life, the gunshots and four operations, but this is just, wow. Yeah. Never want to go through this again,” said Brown, 55, who spoke in a clear voice from his bed to a reporter in a Beaumont COVID-19 medical unit where he has been recovering. “It’s been extremely difficult on me.” After seven days at Beaumont, Brown was discharged on May 4. “When I go home I am going to do the quarantine and then I think I’m gonna probably find another place somewhere,” he said. “We have, unfortunately, a large number of people that passed from COVID in that facility. So we’ll try to find something more private.”

Patient transporter Katrina Fajardo disinfects a hospital bed. | PHOTOS BY CYDNI ELLEDGE FOR CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS

Dr. Felicia Ivascu, COVID-19 ICU doctor As vice chief of surgical services and medical director of the ECMO program at Beaumont Hospital, Dr. Felicia Ivascu has seen dozens of the sickest of COVID-19 patients. Ivascu works in a 20-bed surgical ICU unit where all the patients have COVID-19. Half are on ECMO — extracorporeal membrane oxygenation support. It is an advanced life-support machine where blood is pumped outside of your body to a heart-lung machine that removes carbon dioxide and sends oxygen-filled blood back to tissues in the body. Ivascu said the ECMO patients are “holding their own. They’re all young people that are in various stages of their disease. But they’re all fully supported on ECMO right now.” But a recent study of 17 Paris hospitals found that mortality rates after 90 days on ECMO was about 38 percent for COVID-19 patients with average age of 52. The most common causes of death were multiorgan failure and septic shock, the study concluded. During the previous surges, Ivascu said, ICU patients with COVID-19 were older and had more conditions like diabetes or heart disease. “They had a reason to be really sick. Now we are seeing young people with very little comorbidities. They’re healthy people. We have people here that ran marathons. They exercise every day. And now they’re here,” she said. “They don’t know how they got it, just being in the community, going out to eat.” Ivascu said the disease affects people differently. There is little understanding why some young healthy people get COVID-19 worse than others, she said. “For the most part, the mortality rate is definitely lower in the younger people. But there’s still a pocket of patients that are young that get really sick. And the mortality rate in that

Darius Brown, 55, was hospitalized with COVID-19 on April 28. At the worst of his illness, Brown’s temperature rose to 103 degrees.

A poster reading “We love you” from a COVID-19 patient’s family.

patient population is still very high,” Ivascu said After the past year, Ivascu said she has been as tired as any time in her 20-year career as a physician, adding she wouldn’t have been able to do it without family support. “It’s worth it when you hear the success stories, and you hear about patients back with their family,” said Ivascu, who was a surgical resident at Beaumont. “Many of our patients have children, school-aged children, like my children. That’s what keeps us working so hard, because of the implications it has for their family and hoping that they can survive and get back to.” Her most difficult cases are the ones where she has to tell family members a loved one has died or to prepare them for a possible death. “It’s tough because of the numbers who are dying. We try to explain we hope they’re going to come home but we don’t know,” she said. “The toughest to hear is a mother tell her kids that we don’t know if Dad’s gonna come home or we don’t know when he’s going to be home.”

Jill Pendegraft, COVID-19 unit nurse

Dr. Barbara Ducatman is chief medical officer and a pathologist by training.

Dr. Felicia Ivascu: ECMO advanced life support patients are “holding their own.”

Registered Nurse Jill Pendegraft has worked at Beaumont for more than 20 years.

Sims said the COVID-19 vaccines have done a super job keeping older patients out of the hospital, but there are still people over age 60 coming in who haven’t been vaccinated. “Before vaccines were available, we were really hit hard by the over 65 population who were coming from nursing homes. They have put in much better procedures to prevent the spread of COVID,” Sims said. Sims said he still has one haunting memory of a young patient early in the pandemic. “Before remdesivir was widely available, there was a young person in his 30s with kids who got admitted. He was doing OK, then he got sicker and ended up in the ICU. We applied for remdesivir and it just didn’t get here in time. He didn’t make it,” Sims said. “That was the first patient that showed me just how devastating this disease is.” Sims said he couldn’t get through the long hours and the deaths he has seen without his family support. “My partners, my colleagues, in the beginning of this a year-plus ago, we were shoulder to shoulder, (feeling like) we’re marching to war,” Sims said. “Now we’re just sort of continuing to fight as best we can with every weapon we got. And we just keep looking for that magic bullet.”

Jill Pendegraft is a charge nurse on a COVID-19 only medical unit with 34 private rooms on three wings. She oversees nine or more other registered nurses. Pendegraft said the drop in patients is a relief for the nursing and Brett Todd, ER doctor support staff, especially after three major surges. Beaumont’s bed occuBrett Todd, an ER staff physician pancy percent now is in the low 80s, at Beaumont Royal Oak and Troy, but at times has been in the high said the past two weeks the flow of 90s. patients has slowed for COVID-19 “I’m doing well, just exhausted patients and picked up for traditionfrom COVID,” said Pendegraft, who al emergency injuries. has worked at “It has been Beaumont more “IT’S MENTALLY AND busy. But we’re than 20 years. noticing that the “It’s mentally PHYSICALLY EXHAUSTING last couple of and physically PUTTING THE GOGGLES ON weeks is lightenexhausting puting up,” said ting the goggles AND OFF ALL DAY.” Todd. “We’re still on and off all — Jill Pendegraft, COVID-19 unit nurse far busier than day.” we were after the But there are very first surge in memorable COVID-19 patients who the summer.” have stuck with Pendegraft. What are the differences in the ER “I had a patient recently who real- now compared with the first two ly touched my heart because he was surges last spring and winter? going through a lot in the last year “There’s a number of differences. and a half and it was just really tough First off, they tend to be younger, eson him and he was nervous,” she pecially the first surge where we had said. “He just needed a lot of atten- that older cohort of patients, partiction and talking, about religion and ularly from nursing homes,” Todd other stuff. It was wonderful be- said. cause he finally got out of here and “Now we’re seeing patients who was so excited. I was very happy for are in their 20s, 30s, 40s, and a lot him.” more children who have COVID in which I suspect is from school, just interacting with each other more,” Dr. Matthew Sims, said Todd. infections disease doctor Last Wednesday, Todd treated an Dr. Matthew Sims, as Beaumont’s 8-year-old child for a thumb injury director of infectious disease re- playing goalie in a soccer game. “That was such a relief to see the search, typically sees patients seven or eight weeks out of every six months kids are out there. We’re starting to as part of the infectious disease see the typical emergency departgroup. During COVID-19, he has ment stuff again, which is really nice,” Todd said. treated many more patients. But it is the patients Todd will reDuring the past two weeks, Sims said he is finally seeing fewer member most about the COVID-19 COVID-19 patients in the hospital. pandemic. “So many patients stand out to He said patients either get better and are discharged in a week or two, or me. But early on, there were so many they get worse and are transferred to patients who were elderly, and frightened. And alone. They were a higher level unit such as an ICU. “We try to wait as long as we can struggling to breathe,” he said. “Then before putting them on the ventila- they had to be separated from their tors because it can be difficult to get family for everybody’s safety. They them off,” Sims said. “There are times needed our care and we were the that people can’t come off a ventila- ones who were there for them.” tor. If they can’t, there are places we call chronic vent units where they Contact: jgreene@crain.com; (313) 446-0325; @jaybgreene go.”

MAY 10, 2021 | CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS | 25

THE CONVERSATION

You know his company’s music. Now get to know Brian Yessian YESSIAN MUSIC: Now 50 years old, Yessian Music Inc. has seen first-hand how technology has impacted the music and advertising businesses. The Farmington Hills-based Yessian was started in 1971 by school teacher and musician Dan Yessian as a commercial music production company working with automakers and other companies in the area. Now a second-generation company run day-to-day by Dan Yessian’s sons Michael and Brian, the company has expanded to have clients around the globe and production studios in Los Angeles, New York and Hamburg, Germany. Brian Yessian, 44, partner and chief creative officer with Yessian Music, spoke with Crain’s about how the company over the last two decades has expanded beyond its Detroit roots (which, yes, includes ties to Bob Seger), and how consumer demand for new experiences is pushing the company into new areas. | BY NICK MANES `How did you wind up following your father into the family business? I guess in like the late ’90s is when I got involved in the company. I come from a music background. I’m a classical clarinetist. I went to music conservatory (Mozarteum University of Music in Salzburg, Austria) and finished my degree at Wayne State in Detroit. And my brother got involved in the early 2000s. I kind of come from a very global mindset, because I did part of my schooling overseas in Austria, going to Music Conservatory. And I’ve always been fascinated with traveling the world since I was very young and involved in music. It was never my intention to get involved in the industry and in this business. I was always kind of playing in orchestras and ... touring around the world for that matter and really enjoyed it. But, kind of came home a summer and just got sucked in, because I just fell in love with the business. `What was happening at Yessian Music at the time you got involved? So when we got when we started in the early 2000s, we just really had this idea of being able to expand our offerings and work not only in Detroit, Michigan, but around the country and around the world, for that matter. So I had a lot of high hopes (for) really, how can we take what we do, knowing that there’s fierce competition on the coasts in New York and L.A., especially. But how can we be something a little bit different and special in these industries. `What did you find? It was a very organic process. We started out very small, with just a person working out of their home in these cities, and then slowly started to expand what we did and what our offerings were. And then globally, which has always been the fascination for me, just to travel the world and interact with

other cultures. We really made a big push to be working around the world with different types of companies. And then not only advertising, but now we’re doing everything from immersive experiences, and theme parks around the world. And different types of innovative technologies, like virtual reality and sonic immersion in theater-type work. So it’s given us the opportunity to really expand what we do and create sound with kind of a future-forward mentality.

Brian Yessian partner and chief creative officer Yessian Music

new resources coming out on a daily, weekly basis here. I think, from our perspective, we’re trying to team up with some of those technology companies and collaborate with them more so that we become beta testers, and we’re involved in the process at a much earlier stage than when it’s just released. So that we are kind of ahead of the technology as it comes out. ` Music in Detroit is typically affiliated with Motown artists, Bob Seger, etc. Yessian Music, however, has worked on the commercial side of the business. How would you say the company fits in with Detroit-area music history? My dad has worked with so many artists over the years and integrated artists into the work that we do. Our head executive producer and mixer at our place, Gerard Smerek, he has recorded most of Bob Seger’s albums over the last several years. And he was actually Anita Baker’s main mixer and producer for many years as well. So a lot of the people that we have on our staff come from some of those Detroit roots and music roots. And I think that’s kind of found its way into the bloodstream of our company.

`Can you define what you mean by “future-forward mentality?” Right now what we’re really dabbling in is this idea of sonic immersion, and you know, immersive experiences within the last four or five years now have become very popular. You’re seeing like the Van Gogh exhibit coming to Detroit here, which is a full-on projection mapping of visual mixed with sound. As you’re walking through these environments, (you’re not) walking through a silent environment. You’re walking through something that’s immersed in sound, and sound that’s carrying you through the space. So we’re really testing and working with technology in audio, to pull people through spaces and get them to get sound to direct people in different ways, so that if something is supposed to happen on the other side of the room, how can the sound pull you over rather than just the visuals, or the combination thereof?

` Given the fierce competition you mentioned, how has your base in metro Detroit been viewed around the world? Over these (few) last years, you know, Detroit has quite a name around the world, not just in the U.S. It used to be when we started back in the late ’90s, early 2000s, expanding out of the Detroit area, people thought, well, ‘they’re just in Detroit, so they’re just a small town kind of music company, and they’re not going to be as good as the ones in New York or L.A.’ But now, not only were we able to prove them wrong, but now we have the kind of Detroit backing of the name behind us. And we take that around the world with us.

`So on a broader scale, how would you say shifting technology and consumer practices are impacting how Yessian Music does music? I think the technology is always moving very quickly. And there’s new tools and

READ ALL THE CONVERSATIONS AT CRAINSDETROIT.COM/THECONVERSATION

RUMBLINGS

Red-hot housing market isn’t cooling: Here’s exhibit A FORTY SHOWINGS OVER FOUR DAYS with 14 bids including many all-cash offers and a Corktown home on Church Street ended up selling for nearly half a million dollars, nearly $100,000 over its asking price in a residential real estate market that continues to burn white hot. The 1,650-square-foot home at 1832 Church St. in Detroit had huge positives, including an entirely refreshed interior, an adorable backyard and a prime location near Ford Motor Co.’s Michigan Central Station campus. Yet it also sits next to a large parking lot and the home doesn’t 26 | CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS | MAY 10, 2021

This charmer on Church Street in Corktown garnered 40 showings, 14 bids and a sale price nearly $100,000 over its asking price. | CHRIS GERARD

have a garage. O’Connor Realty in Corktown listed the three-bedroom, two-bath-

room home for $385,000 on April 19 for an impressive $233 per square foot. It went pending April 19 and closed April 30 with a sales price of $478,000, or $290 per square foot. The buyer’s offer was accepted in part because it was an all-cash bid, something that is rare in any market but is growing more common during this unusually competitive time in single-home sales, said listing agent Matthew Richmond. “It plays into the same narrative that is happening all over the country, especially Detroit — it’s a hot sellers’ market,” Richmond said. “There’s lot of pent-up demand in

the buyer pool both from last year’s lack of inventory, and that’s only got worse this year. There are more buyers than there are properties to purchase, and that’s creating a really interesting dynamic in the market when you get a really cute, move-in ready home in a great neighborhood.” Richmond said every buyer who put in an offer on the Church Street house came in at list price or above. Having a cash offer made the final decision on which offer to take — and that cash buyer was “joyous” at the closing at sealing the deal, Richmond noted.

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