FACES

Tim McGrane

Bloomfield Hills resident Tim McGrane grew up in southeast England and studied mechanical engineering in college. After college, he took a life-changing threeweek vacation to California – and decided to move to Palm Springs. He initially worked in the hospitality field, and through new connections began a long term, successful career in the world of classic and collection cars.

McGrane's interesting career has included a variety of car, racing, and events management positions, including CEO of the Laguna Seca Raceway in Monterey, California, and executive director at Blackhawk Automotive Museum in Danville, California, where he oversaw management of their significant collection of rare, vintage, and classic automobiles.

Two years ago, McGrane moved to Michigan from Arizona with his wife to work as CEO of M1 Concourse, an 87-acre property in Pontiac which provides a vibrant place where automotive enthusiasts can keep, show, exercise and enjoy their vehicles with other likeminded enthusiasts.

Despite previous travel to the Detroit area, McGrane’s perspective has changed since he moved here. “The car culture here is significantly deeper and broader than I knew. It goes well beyond domestic cars and includes all manner of domestic and foreign cars, such as exotic cars.”

The M1 Concourse property is located along iconic Woodward Avenue, also known as Michigan highway M-1. For nearly 120 years, the property has been home to a series of auto manufacturing facilities from the Rapid Motor Company in 1905 to General Motors most recently. M1 Concourse continued the site’s automotive legacy when it opened in 2016.

M1 Concourse features 255 privately owned garages that overlook a 1.5-mile track. The garages are varied sizes and range from functional to luxurious. The property has an event center and Motorsports Club, and it regularly hosts signature events and shows. Current plans include construction of a Performance Center and X-Center, an experience center that will include simulators and other exciting features for automobile fans.

According to McGrane, M1 Concourse believes in being a good community partner and that includes being supportive of the local Pontiac community.

As part of the inaugural American Speed Festival Checkered Flag Ball last year, M1 Mobility raised funds to assist Pontiac residents with the identified need for transportation by purchasing several vans that provide transportation services to local seniors, children, and other residents. Additionally, discounted tickets to many M1 events are also available to Pontiac residents.

An ongoing popular community event hosted onsite is “Cars and Coffee,” held the first Saturday of each month. This morning event is open to the public and provides a way for owners of classic, collector or special interest cars to showcase their vehicles while sipping complimentary coffee.

“In the summer, we’ve had up to 1,400 cars show up. It’s a fun opportunity to reach out to the car community...Visiting the property gives you a very different experience,” McGrane says.

So far, McGrane is enjoying Michigan’s four seasons and the Motor City’s heritage as the global center of the automotive industry.

“There is a vibrancy here in business, food, and culture. People are as passionate about Detroit as any big city. There is a wonderful transformation happening in Detroit and Pontiac. Oakland County has been so supportive and is a wonderful place to live and work. It’s nice to be part of the transformation as a gateway property for the city of Pontiac. M1 is making progress carving an identity on the national calendar. It’s exciting.”

When Michigan’s bottle return bill was fully enacted in 1978, the world had just seen the birth of the first “test tube” baby, the U.S. dollar was at its lowest value in decades, and President Jimmy Carter was working to make peace in the Middle East. Polyester suits became the hot fashion trend when John Travolta sported a white one in the movie “Saturday Night Fever,” back when people still went to the theaters to see a movie.

Back then, environmentalists and conservationists in Michigan were upset about how beverage consumers were trashing the state's parks, trails and waterways with tossed pop and beer containers. So they worked at the grassroots level to create what is the nation’s first – and most successful – can and bottle redemption and recycling program. Instead of littering, Michiganders were incentivized by that 10-cent redemption deposit to return glass and metal containers used for carbonated beverage consumption.

At 10 cents, Michigan is tied with Oregon for the highest bottle deposit law in the country – and it promotes recycling. In 2019, before the disruption of COVID-19, Michiganders brought back about 89 percent of returnable containers. Though Michigan’s rate of return has been in a slight decline, it’s still higher than any of the other nine states that have deposit laws.

But a lot has changed since the 1970s. We now consume 57 percent of our beverages in single-use plastic containers, and most of these drinks are non-carbonated. There’s no deposit incentive for noncarbonated drinks, as evidenced by the amount of tossed plastic bottles that we encounter every time we step out for a walk.

While conservationists, environmentalists and advocates of recycling say it’s time for a change, beverage industry leaders say they need to be better compensated in order to build the needed expansions in the deposit/redemption recycling infrastructure before any expansion of the bottle bill can happen.

One of the organizations that spearheaded grassroots efforts to get the original bottle bill enacted in the late 1970s as an initiative on the statewide ballot was the Michigan United Conservation Clubs (MUCC).

Amy Trotter, MUCC’s executive director, said back in the 1970s, hunters and anglers grew tired of the number of aluminum cans and glass bottles strewn in the state's parks and natural lands. Now, they are seeing the same with plastic.

“For a while now, we have been saying we need to take the bubbles out of the bottle bill,” Trotter said. “As it stands now, the bottle bill mostly takes care of carbonated beverages, but most of the waste we see now is from water bottles. Michigan was the first in the nation to have a bottle bill, and this is largely due in part because MUCC led the charge with a petition to get it on the ballot. We put it before the voters. Now, we would like to see an expansion to the bill. And if we have to take it to the voters again with a ballot proposal, we are willing to go that route.”