DBusiness | March-April 2021

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March - April 2021 || Volume 16 • Issue 2

56

COUNTRY DRIVE Lincoln Motor Co., part of Ford Motor Co. in Dearborn, has produced vehicles since 1920, including the 1936 Lincoln Zephyr.

44 SYSTEM FAILURE A year ago, senior care facilities turned deadly after state leaders failed to adequately separate COVID-19 patients from healthy residents. By Ilene Wolff

51 CENTURY CLUB Lessons from lasting 100-plus years: Lincoln Motor Co., Henry Ford Hospital, Rose Pest Solutions, Mans Lumber & Millwork, and Detroit Golf Club. By Ilene Wolff

58 THE ROSS EFFECT How a friendship forged at the University of Michigan set the stage for a $60-billion real estate portfolio built on diversity and inclusion. By Tom Murray

FORD MOTOR CO.

Features

10 DBUSINESS || MARCH - APRIL 2021

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Contents || March - April 2021

30

74

Commentary 19

22

MOBILITY MECCA Metro Detroit can become the mobility capital of the world by riding the wave of new transportation solutions being developed by the automotive and technology industries.

AGRICULTURE: The private and public sectors can accelerate overall yields and reduce carbon usage by investing in vertical farming infrastructure.

TRANSPORTATION: Technology introduced at the virtual CES show in January shows the auto industry is looking skyward toward its future.

COMPENDIUM How outsiders view Detroit.

The Ticker 26

28

SCRAMBLE WIN Professional Golf Planners of America, in Shelby Township, takes the work out of staging a corporate or charity event. By Tim Keenan DIGITAL PLAY Statewide casinos open their doors to online sports betting. By Dan Calabrese MARCH MADNESS COVID-19 moved the NCAA Tournament games scheduled at Little Caesars Arena to Indianapolis, but the 2024 regional tourney at LCA will go on as planned. By Tim Keenan CRITTER CATCHERS As humans move, so do pests and animals — and more so now, with COVID-19. Tales from the front lines of pest control. By Alan Fisk

30

PDA Q&A: Jim Lareau, COO of M3Linked in Birmingham, is in Scottsdale, Ariz., at the company’s executive leadership annual planning session.

By R.J. King HOME ALONE Interactive visuals from Hommati’s new metro Detroit location have kept home buyers’ attention during the pandemic. By Grace Turner HIGHWAYS IN THE SKY The Detroit Region Aerotropolis Development Corp. is working to build highways in the wild blue yonder. By Tim Keenan

Focus 31

EVERYBODY NOW Butzel Long, General Motors Co., Henry Ford Health System, LaunchDETROIT, and TCF Bank are making strides in their ongoing journeys toward equality, diversity, and inclusion.

By Grace Turner

Perspectives 38

LAND OF OPPORTUNITY Can a red-hot commercial real estate market in the region, driven by a nearly insatiable demand for mobility, e-commerce, and R&D facilities, finally bring about a renaissance in Detroit? By Tom Beaman

Exec Life 67

SPRING FLING Check out the latest in executive fashions for spring/summer 2021. Styled by Jennifer Pickering

70

74

76

RETURN ON INVESTMENT Savoring Success: Some members of the Fisher family pulled up their Detroit roots and headed west for a new adventure: crafting premium wines.

By Tom Murray PRODUCTION RUN Total Life Changes emerges from a Chesterfield Township basement to become a nutrition supplement powerhouse. By Tim Keenan OPINION Empowering Employees: How to grow a residential property management team. By Leslie L. Etterbeek

Etc. 14 16 16 78

82

CONTRIBUTORS LETTER FROM THE EDITOR LETTERS FROM OUR READERS FROM THE TOP Top Undergraduate and Graduate Business Schools, Top Circuit Court Judges Top Home Builders, and Top Mortgage Lenders.

CLOSING BELL Starting more than a century ago, Detroit’s automakers commissioned thousands of films that rivaled Hollywood’s output. By Ronald Ahrens

ON THE COVER Stephen M. Ross, founder and chairman of The Related Cos. in New York City

CLOCKWISE FROM LEFT: COURTESY OF FORD MOTOR CO.; COURTESY OF HOMMATI; MATTHEW LAVERE

38

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ALWAYS OPEN FOR MICHIGAN BUSINESSES. As we move through 2021, Michigan businesses will continue to adapt. And the Michigan Economic Development Corporation will be here, helping to connect businesses to new resources, meet new partners and access the additional capital they need from the start. If your business needs support to reach its new potential, the MEDC is available to help in any way we can.

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Contributors || March - April 2021

CONTRIBUTORS

VOLUME 16 • ISSUE 2 PUBLISHER John Balardo

EDITORIAL

EDITOR R.J. King MANAGING EDITOR Tim Keenan ASSOCIATE EDITOR Grace Turner COPY EDITOR Anne Berry Daugherty EDITORIAL INTERNS Jake Bekemeyer, Brande Clark, Alec Zajac

DESIGN

ART DIRECTOR Austin Phillips ASSOCIATE ART DIRECTOR Alexander Shammami

ADVERTISING SALES CONTRIBUTION: Focus photography SEE IT HERE: Page 31

CONTRIBUTION: Editorial intern SEE IT HERE: DBusiness Daily News

CONTRIBUTION: Editorial intern SEE IT HERE: DBusiness Daily News

DARREL ELLIS is a Detroitbased freelance photographer.

His work has been featured in The New York Times, The Washington Post, The Los Angeles Times, and other publications. He has taught at the College for Creative Studies in Detroit and exhibited at the Scarab Club. His clients include the Community Foundation for Southeast Michigan, the Kresge Foundation, and the University of Michigan. He has a passion for portraiture that captures the heart and soul of his subjects, with a focus on lighting. Ellis, born in Brooklyn, N.Y., enjoys traveling (or dreaming of travel, given COVID-19) with his wife and son. They’ve camped on the shore of Lake Superior, felt the spray of geysers in Iceland, and savored fresh seafood in Spain. Currently, they’re working to convert a cargo van into a camper so they can hit the road.

BRANDE CLARK is a journalism major and screen studies minor at the University of Michigan– Dearborn, where she also is working toward a certificate in public relations. She’s a winter 2021 intern with DBusiness, and contributes articles to the magazine’s website as well as to the DBusiness Daily News and DBusiness Tech and Mobility News newsletters. In addition, she writes and posts content for the Give Detroit Spotlight and On the Move sections of DBusiness. Clark graduated with honors from U-M Dearborn with a bachelor’s degree in general studies in 2011. She has always had a passion for writing and decided to go back to school to earn a journalism degree. In her spare time, she enjoys critiquing films and writing. Currently, she’s writing a book sharing her life experiences and hopes to turn the book into a film.

ALEC ZAJAC is a winter editorial intern for DBusiness. During his time with the publication, he contributed articles to the On the Move and Give Detroit Spotlight sections of the DBusiness website, and to the DBusiness Daily News and DBusiness Tech and Mobility News newsletters. He also helped update the list of Top Graduate Business Schools in Metro Detroit in this issue, and posted articles to the magazine’s website. A journalism major and digital media production minor at Rochester Hills’ Oakland University, Zajac is scheduled to graduate in April 2021. After spending his younger years enjoying the news and attending tapings for the “Today Show” and “Good Morning America,” his dream is to have a career in broadcasting. He enjoys working out, traveling with family, and spending time with his cat, Bailey.

CONTRIBUTING WRITERS Ronald Ahrens, Tom Beaman, Dan Calabrese, Leslie L. Etterbeek, Alan Fisk, Tom Murray, Jeff Sloan, Ilene Wolff CONTRIBUTING ARTISTS Brian Britigan, Darrel Ellis, Matthew LaVere, Jennifer Pickering, James Yang

ASSOCIATE PUBLISHER Jason Hosko AD & SALES COORDINATOR Danielle Szatkowski ACCOUNT EXECUTIVES Cynthia Barnhart, Karli Brown, Lauren DeBano, Donna Kassab, Mary Pantely and Associates, Molly Stelma, Angela Tisch

PRODUCTION

PRODUCTION DIRECTOR Jenine Rhoades SENIOR PRODUCTION ARTIST Robert Gorczyca PRODUCTION ARTIST Stephanie Daniel AD & SALES COORDINATOR Danielle Szatkowski PRS GRAPHIC ARTIST Jim Bibart ADVERTISING DESIGNERS Daniel Moen, Amanda Zwiren

WEB

DIGITAL DIRECTOR Nick Britsky WEB PROJECT LEAD Matt Cappo WEB PROJECT ASSISTANTS Mariah Knott, Luanne Lim, Bart Woinski SOCIAL MEDIA COORDINATOR Travis Cleveland

IT

IT DIRECTOR Jeremy Leland

CIRCULATION

DIRECTOR OF AUDIENCE DEVELOPMENT Michelle VanArman CIRCULATION MANAGER Riley Meyers CIRCULATION COORDINATORS Barbie Baldwin, Elise Coyle, Cathy Krajenke, Rachel Moulden

MARKETING AND EVENTS

MARKETING AND EVENTS DIRECTOR Mary Sutton MARKETING RESEARCH DIRECTOR Sofia Shevin MARKETING RESEARCH COORDINATOR Ana Potter MARKETING RESEARCH ASSISTANT Hannah Thomas MARKETING AND EVENTS INTERNS Caitlin Farrand, Alexis Nixon MARKETING AND RESEARCH INTERNS Eric Borg, Lourd Dawood

BUSINESS

CEO Stefan Wanczyk PRESIDENT John Balardo PUBLISHING ASSISTANT Kristin Mingo DIRECTOR OF BUSINESS OPERATIONS Kathie Gorecki ACCOUNTING ASSOCIATES Natasha Bajju, Andrew Kotzian, Katie West DISTRIBUTION Target Distribution, Troy

Postmaster: Send address changes to DBusiness, 5750 New King Drive, Ste. 100, Troy, MI 48098 For advertising inquiries: 248-691-1800, ext. 126 To sell DBusiness magazine or for subscription inquiries: 248-588-1851 DBusiness is published by Hour Media. Copyright © 2021 Hour Media. All rights reserved. Reproduction in whole or in part without permission is prohibited. DBusiness is a registered trademark of Hour Media.

WEBEXTRA Check out DBusiness Daily News for exclusive business news, blogs, podcasts, and videos, available for free at DBusiness.com/daily-news.

14 DBUSINESS || MARCH - APRIL 2021

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INVESTING IN COMMUNITY HEALTH, AND BUILDING COMMUNITY WEALTH

 Candice Matthews Brackeen, founder and CEO, Lightship Capital; Margaret Trimer, vice president, strategic partnerships,

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Letters || March - April 2021

Green Room safety, well-being, and autonomous mobility. On the latter point, as more vehicles become part of a connected infrastructure of sensors that will confine vehicle and pedestrian traffic to dedicated lanes, there’s a huge opportunity to add larger sidewalks filled with gardens, statues, fountains, playgrounds, art exhibits, and year-round store and restaurant sheds.

Speaking of sidewalks, as autonomous and connected vehicles become more widespread, do we need traditional traffic lanes, bicycle paths, sidewalks, and curb cuts anymore? Or are we at an inflection point where smart planning will lead to a new age of urban and suburban enjoyment that extends to streets and alleys?

To peer into the future of urban infrastructure design, explore the transformational study of the Champs-Élysées in Paris by Philippe Chiambaretta Architects, or PCAStream. The firm transformed the famous avenue into a lively promenade that embraces multimodal transportation needs, reduces nuisances like noise and heat, and improves air quality and overall well-being. The study, along with an engaging video, can be accessed at https://bit.ly/3cR8I0C. Rather than stick with what’s worked in the past, our gathering places should be, as the study notes, “an urban laboratory bringing together researchers and (planners) in order to create more sustainable, desirable, and inclusive cities.”

R.J. King

rjking@dbusiness.com

TECH TRACK

Just a quick note to congratulate you on the November/December 2020 edition of DBusiness.

Great content (as always). I particularly enjoyed the feature “Tech Track” by R.J. King. I appreciate the extra effort you and your team make to promote our unique city.

Tom McGannon Southfield

ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

The term “artificial intelligence” is common today and is absolutely misunderstood. I would urge you, if you can find a different working term for this technology, to use it. ...

I maintain, as a computer scientist, that computers have no intelligence. They are constructed and programmed in very complex, sophisticated ways. Computers cannot think.

Over “AI,” I prefer the term “intelligence mimicking.” ...

In his book, “Computer Power and Human Reason: From Judgement to Calculation,” Joseph Weizenbaum takes the position that, while it may be true that computers will one day be able to replicate every human behavior, there are certain tasks that they should not be made to perform.

I agree with Weizenbaum, and I think the term “artificial intelligence” sets us up to accept truly intelligent behavior from these machines.

Again, I plead with you, find another term for this technology.

T. Alger Greenhoot Detroit

CORRECTION In the January-February 2021 issue of DBusiness, the photographer of “The Hudson’s House” elevator feature was Jim Haefner.

EMAIL US AT: editorial@dbusiness.com SEND MAIL TO: Letters, DBusiness magazine, 5750 New King Drive, Ste. 100, Troy, MI 48098 Please include your city of residence and daytime phone number.

We reserve the right to edit letters for length and content.

COURTESY OF PHILIPPE CHIAMBARETTA ARCHITECTE, PARIS

S

pring is around the corner, and even COVID-19 can’t stop the advance of warmer weather. In fact, nature is stronger than anything we can imagine.

Since Detroit was founded in 1701, we have covered acres of land for homes, buildings, roads, and infrastructure, often with the idea that Mother Nature could somehow be tamed. But she doesn’t let up. Sun, wind, rain, ice, and snow come in steady cycles, and there’s nothing we can do to stop it.

Rather than fight nature, we should more fully embrace its reinvigorating powers. As more people venture outdoors again, it’s clear that wide open spaces will be preferred over dense, urban settings. Consider last summer, as the pandemic raged across the land, northern Michigan residences and resorts experienced a surge in usage and patronage. Downtown districts, however, didn’t fare as well.

For years, cities have invested millions of dollars to transform fairly staid concrete environs AGE OF ENLIGHTENMENT into lively enter- A reimagined design of the Champs-Élysées in Paris. tainment and recreational zones. Propelled by private and public investment, Plymouth, Northville, Rochester, Utica, Grosse Pointe, Detroit, and other downtown districts have added or enhanced their streetscapes, parks, fountains, landscaping treatments, and all manner of sports, educational, and entertainment venues and settings.

But what good are the improvements today if fewer people can enjoy them? To restore the adoration and usage of urban squares, new planning and infrastructure goals should be adopted that embrace nature like never before.

For example, even with all of the improvements in downtown Detroit over the last two decades — three new stadiums, a revived theater district, new shops and restaurants, enhanced casinos, and more office and living spaces — the central business district is still a concrete jungle.

Yes, places like Campus Martius Park, Capitol Park, Cadillac Square, and the riverfront have been greatly improved, but now we need more green room to attract people.

Streets should be redesigned for a new age of

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INSIDE || MOBILITY MECCA | VERTICAL FARMING | FLIGHT PLAN | COMPENDIUM

THE SOONER WE CAN DEPLOY SMART INFRASTRUCTURE, THE MORE LIVES ARE GOING TO BE SAVED. — TREVOR PAWL, CHIEF MOBILITY OFFICER, STATE OF MICHIGAN

ECONOMIC DEVELOPMENT

MOBILITY MECCA

METRO DETROIT CAN TAKE A PAGE FROM SILICON Valley’s playbook and become the mobility capital of the world. By riding the wave of new transportation solutions being developed by the automotive and technology industries, our region and state can better capitalize on our standing as one of the few places on the globe that can meld hardware and software to produce highly advanced products at scale.

Consider that in the 1970s, San Jose was a

farmer’s paradise until several factors converged to make it the technology capital of the world.

The dawn of the computer age helped drive the skilled science sector into developing commercialized products like cell phones and desktop computers, propelled by Stanford University and other research institutions. Funding the growth was a steady stream of U.S. Department of Defense spending and a robust venture capital market that now represents one-third of such

value in the country (based on state rankings).

But the growth came with a price. California stalwarts like Tesla, Oracle, and Hewlett Packard Enterprises are now moving their headquarters to other states due to a combination of high taxes, wages, and cost of living expenses relative to other parts of the country, along with fairly stringent state regulations.

That lesson shouldn’t be lost on Detroit, given it represents an opportunity to draw high-tech MARCH - APRIL 2021 || DBUSINESS.COM 19

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Commentary || March - April 2021

INSIDE THE NUMBERS $ B

65.6 Value of venture capital investment in California (2019).

803.2M

$

Value of venture capital investment in Michigan (2019).

15

Number of states with more than $1 billion in venture capital investment (2019).

Source: Statista.com

firms from California. Already, the momentum is building to enhance our technical innovations and skill sets in the mobility sector, but it shouldn’t stop there. The city and state are home to thousands of companies and organizations that are leading research and manufacturing advances in defense, life sciences, medical devices, technology, engineering, cybersecurity, health care, aerospace, and agriculture.

Drilling down further, the private and public sectors have done a good job of establishing entrepreneurial ecosystems in major cities like Detroit, Ann Arbor, Grand Rapids, Battle Creek, and Kalamazoo, complemented by research at colleges and universities. More cities and organizations across the state should jump on the bandwagon to launch business incubators, paired with funding from the private sector to encourage further economic growth.

As an example, technical epicenters are emerging in and around downtown Detroit, including the 100-plus firms in the portfolio of the Rocket Family of Companies led by Dan Gilbert, as well as General Motors Co.’s world headquarters at the Renaissance Center.

In addition, at I-375 and Gratiot Avenue, Gilbert and Stephen Ross, chairman of The Related Cos. in New York City, are collaborating on the U-M/Detroit Center for Innovation. The project will include a 190,000-square-foot research and graduate education building, midrise residential buildings for U-M graduate students, a business incubator space, and a hotel.

West of downtown, Ford Motor Co. is investing $740 million to develop a mobility innovation hub among several buildings, including Michigan Central Station. The mobility campus will open in 2023.

To enhance the overall impact, planning officials should encourage collaborations between the mobility and technology zones, while state and local leaders must ramp up venture capital funding. The two-part strategy will provide for more economic growth and stimulate conversations that often lead to major breakthroughs and new enterprises.

AGRICULTURE

VERTICAL FARMING

FERTILE SOIL, FAIRLY STEADY WEATHER PATTERNS, AND AN ABUNDANCE OF fresh water help drive agricultural output in Michigan. While farms and orchards in rural areas dominate production, the private and public sectors can accelerate overall yields and reduce carbon usage by investing in vertical farming infrastructure and technology.

Plenty, a San Francisco startup, reports it can produce 400 times more food per acre with vertical operations over conventional farming styles. Two acres of warehouse space filled with rows of vertical plants can produce a harvest three or four times a year. By comparison, the same output at a farm would require nearly 3,000 acres of land. Labor costs inside a warehouse also are lower, because much of the work is done by robots.

Tapping artificial intelligence and other technologies, vertical farms can produce larger and more nutritious fruits and vegetables, while the use of fertilizers and pesticides is vastly reduced. Warehouses also aren’t impacted by a frost, a hail storm, or a tornado. Overall, Plenty states its vertical farms use 95 percent less water than its outdoor counterparts.

Growing produce indoors also cuts down on shipping costs, as watermelons, for example, can be grown year-round. Today, watermelons and other fruits and vegetables are imported from all over the world during winter months, which raises prices. With an abundance of urban land around the state, vertical farming offers an opportunity to produce higher-quality, less expensive food using fewer resources.

TRANSPORTATION

FLIGHT PLAN

WHEN CADILLAC AND FCA SHOWED OFF THEIR CAPABILITIES IN MANUFACturing VTOL aircraft components and supplying electric battery systems, it was a clear sign that an industry once dominated by ground vehicles is turning to the skies. At the virtual CES show in January, Cadillac’s Halo Portfolio revealed a one-seat eVTOL aircraft concept.

Michael Simcoe, vice president of global design at GM, said it was the automaker’s “first foray into aerial mobility.”

At the same time, FCA and California’s Archer, a company working to create the world’s first all-electric airline that moves people through cities, announced a major supply agreement. Under the deal, FCA will offer Archer access to its supply chain, advanced composite material capabilities, and engineering and design experience.

The partnership is designed to help accelerate Archer’s timeline in offering cost-effective, sustainable air mobility. Morgan Stanley estimates the market will be $1.5 trillion by 2040. Other local companies like Detroit Aircraft and ASX, both at the Coleman A. Young International Airport in Detroit, along with a top aircraft component manufacturing ecosystem, serve as harbingers of a vast market for aerial passenger and cargo services.

Private and public investors should work to build on the momentum here. In turn, the market for short flights between regional airports and FAA-approved landing pads for passengers, cargo, and emergency medical supplies requires a robust communication platform where ground and aerial vehicles “talk” to each other. The good news is it can all be developed here and licensed to the world.

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HOW OUTSIDERS VIEW DETROIT Bloomberg | Jan. 18, 2021 | By Tara Patel, Gabrielle Coppola, and Daniele Lepido

AUTO CEO LITTLE KNOWN IN DETROIT TAKES OVER A $51B EMPIRE

THE NEWLY MINTED MERGER OF FIAT CHRYSLER Automobiles NV and PSA Group is poised to raise the global profile of an under-the-radar chief executive who will lead a vast and massively complex carmaker with quiet intensity.

The market debut of Stellantis, the group formed by the Italian-American and French auto manufacturers, is a coming-out party for its leader, Carlos Tavares. The shares surged as much as 8.5 percent

in Milan on Jan. 18, valuing one of the world’s largest-volume carmakers at more than 42 billion euros ($51 billion).

Tavares has spent a 40-year career rising up the ladder of an industry that birthed the modern-day celebrity CEO, engineering impressive turnarounds while largely going unrecognized taking commercial flights in and out of Detroit.

The wiry, hyperactive 62-year-old has shown little desire to be another Lee Iacocca, Dieter Zetsche, Sergio Marchionne, or Carlos Ghosn. But whether he comes around to the spotlight or not, he’ll get much more of it steering an empire of roughly 400,000 employees and 14 brands into an uncertain future, where cars increasingly run off of batteries and software and the combustion engine meets its demise.

“He’s not selling Carlos, and he doesn’t want to,” said Jim Press, an auto executive. …

Forbes | Jan. 18, 2021 | By Jules Posner

THE DETROIT TIGERS NEED MORE THAN LUCK FROM WILLI CASTRO IN 2021

THE DETROIT TIGERS DID NOT HAVE MANY bright spots in the COVID-19 shortened 2020 season. With an offense that improved considerably from 2019 to 2020, Willi Castro emerged as the Tigers’ most potent bat in 2020.

It is important to note that in an abridged season Willi Castro only got into 32 games in 2020. Meaning, what we saw from Castro was a small sample of a small sample, but when Castro got his opportunity, he knocked it out of the park.

While Tigers fans were treated to an uplifting turnaround from Jeimer Candelario, Castro’s efforts flew under the radar.

Despite the small sample, it was actually Willi Castro that led the team in wRC+ by posting a 151 mark. He was also fourth on

the team in home runs and slugged his way to a respectable .202 ISO. Now the bad news; Willie Castro’s numbers are not sustainable. Willi Castro posted an insane .448 BABIP in 2020, which in a larger sample would most likely come down. …

The Verge | Jan. 12, 2021 | By Andrew J. Hawkins

GM SURPRISES WITH AUTONOMOUS CADILLAC AND FLYING CAR CONCEPTS

CES WOULDN’T BE CES WITHOUT SOME BONKERS, far-out vehicle concepts. And thankfully, General Motors brought two.

The automaker showed off a luxury egg-shaped autonomous vehicle and a single-seater electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft during its keynote address. Both vehicles are part of Cadillac’s Halo Portfolio and probably won’t be going into production anytime soon — or at all.

Still, the concepts are meant to show off Cadillac’s (and, by extension, GM’s) design intentions for future products, as well as serving as an extravagant symbol of the brand’s manufacturing skills.

The AV concept looks like a leather-and-furdraped version of many of the autonomous people-mover shuttles that we’ve seen in college towns and corporate campuses around the globe. It lacks traditional controls like a steering wheel and pedals, instead opting for an interior that looks more like a 1970s-era sunken living room. Michael Simcoe, GM’s VP of Global Design, described it as “a social space for a group of friends or family to spend time together on their way to a destination.”

The vehicle features a vertical light signature, expansive glass roof, and biometric sensors to read passengers’ vital signs and use that data to adjust settings like temperature, lighting, ambient noises, and even aromatics. Other options, like voice control and gesture recognition, will ensure making those adjustments is mostly effortless (depending on the quality of the technology, of course).

The VTOL concept looks like a more futuristic version of some of the air taxi prototypes that are under development right now. Simcoe called it GM’s “first foray into aerial mobility” — although it’s just a design exercise, and it’s unclear whether GM actually intends to pursue a commercialized version. ...

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Compendium || Commentary

Fortune | Jan. 13, 2021 | By Michal Lev-Ram

APPLE REVEALS HOW IT WILL SPEND THE $100M IT PLEDGED IN JUNE TOWARD RACIAL EQUITY LAST JUNE, APPLE ANNOUNCED IT WOULD EARMARK $100 million for its new Racial Equity and Justice initiative, an effort to “challenge the systemic barriers to opportunity and dignity that exist for communities of color and particularly for the Black community.” Now the company is ready to share the details on how some of that money will be put to use.

On Wednesday morning, the iPhone maker said it would invest in a series of programs: a learning hub for historically Black colleges and universities (both online and brick-and-mortar, in Atlanta), an Apple Developer Academy to teach coding skills in Detroit, and a $10 million check toward venture capital funding for entrepreneurs of color.

“We were asked by the CEO to put real emphasis on this (the push for racial equity),” Lisa Jackson, vice president of environment, policy, and social initiatives, told Fortune in a phone interview. “We wanted to show people that this wasn’t just talk.”

In addition to her other duties, Jackson, the former administrator of the Environmental Protection Agency, has been charged with heading up Apple’s Racial Equity and Justice initiative.

According to the company, this effort complements the work of Apple’s internal diversity team. (The company recently announced that Barbara Whye, the former head of diversity and inclusion at Intel, would spearhead those internal efforts starting early this year.)

Apple isn’t the only tech company making new and ambitious commitments to addressing racial inequities, plus doubling down on efforts to increase racial and ethnic representation among its employee base. (Thus far, few technology giants have managed to significantly move the needle when it comes to their internal efforts.) Following the killings of Breonna Taylor, George Floyd, and other Black Americans — and the massive protests that ensued as a response — many corporations

made similar commitments. Now some are following through.

Tech vendor HP, for example, has also publicly stated its diversity goals and is getting ready to announce several new steps it plans to take. ...

Bloomberg Businessweek | Jan. 29, 2021 | By David Welch and Ryan Beene

WLS-TV Chicago | Jan. 7, 2021 | By Jordan Arseneau

GENERAL MOTORS CO. CHIEF EXECUTIVE OFFICER Mary Barra just stomped on the electric-vehicle accelerator pedal. Call it the Biden effect.

Six months ago, the automaker backed the Trump administration in a legal battle that could have neutered California’s longstanding right to set its own tougher carbon-emission rules. About two weeks after Trump lost, GM withdrew from that fight

DOES DETROIT-STYLE PIZZA ROCK WINDY CITY taste buds?

The owners of Five Squared Pizza, a food truck and commissary kitchen in Chicago’s Garfield Park neighborhood, think the Motown classic can compete in Pizza City, USA. “At first bite, I just sit there, close my eyes, and just moan for a couple minutes because it’s so good,” Five Squared co-owner Steve Kaplan said.

Steve and his wife, Jenn Kaplan, founded Five Squared after falling in love with the pan-style pizza and creating a recipe their friends enjoyed.

“And we're like, ‘this is it,’ ” Jenn added. “We have to do this in a food truck.”

The couple left their jobs just a few months after the idea sparked but running a food truck in Chicago was much harder than they expected.

Sparse parking availability and canceled events eventually led them to operate mostly as a commissary kitchen where the pies are available for carryout and delivery.

“We give you the pizza pan-baked,” Steve explained. “Basically when you're ready to eat it, you put it on a sheet tray, and you heat that baby up for 10 minutes.”

Five Squared’s airy and crispy pizza is served with sauce on top and comes in (five varieties including) cheese, pesto, (and others). ...

BIDEN’S GREEN PUSH GIVES DETROIT THE COVER TO GO ELECTRIC and two weeks after he left office, it pledged to match the state’s mandate to sell only electric vehicles starting in 2035 — and do that all across the U.S. Why the 180? Barra is getting a jump on President Joe Biden’s policies, which are expected to help GM and its rivals build and sell more EVs in the U.S. He wants to restore the $7,500 tax incentives that companies including GM and Tesla Inc. exhausted under Trump’s watch, and Biden plans to build 500,000 charging stations across the country. That could make EVs more affordable and ease concerns of would-be buyers about battery-powered cars’ driving range.

Some see GM’s about-face on the politics of clean cars as less a calculated policy move than a recognition of longer-term global forces at work.

“They would not make an announcement this substantial just for political purposes,” said Joe Britton, executive director of the Zero Emission Transportation Association, a Washington-based lobby group pushing for full adoption of EVs by 2030. “This is a clear sign that electric vehicles are going to be the future and that we’re in a bull market for innovation right now.”

Believe it or not, Biden’s position has been met with a collective sigh of relief in some quarters of Detroit. …

DETROIT-STYLE PIZZA IN CHICAGO

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SPONSORED BY STARTUPNATION

A Life of Purpose Inspired to assist women and young girls of color reach their business goals, Monica Wheat helped launch Venture Catalysts in Detroit.

A

strategist, educator, and venture developer, Southfield native Monica Wheat has dedicated her career to venture capital, but what truly sets her apart is her dedication to improving Detroit’s startup community and making it more inclusive to women and girls.

When in high school, Wheat attended camps to learn about career options. That’s where she first found out about the venture capital business. Being a woman and a person of color, Wheat says she noticed that there weren’t a lot of women or people of color in certain STEM sectors, like technology and engineering.

After studying engineering at the University of Michigan in Ann Arbor, Wheat began working for General Motors in Shanghai.

During her time overseas, she realized her passion was back in Detroit. When Wheat returned to the U.S., she continued her career in corporate engineering until she realized she was more interested in developing and directing companies than spending every day in a cubicle.

Today, Wheat is executive director and co-founder at Venture Catalysts in Detroit, a nonprofit venture and ecosystem development group, and lead of Backstage Capital’s Detroit Accelerator, a three-month program designed to give underrepresented founders the financial support they need to reach their next critical milestone.

“We’re a majority minority city, and it’s one of those wide chasms that happens in the funding cycle that female founders, as well as people of color who are founders, just don’t get that access to capital. These companies that we’re working on, most of them had six and seven figures in revenue all on their own, but they just didn’t have access to grow and scale to the next level,” Wheat says of her clients at Backstage Capital.

While her focus is in venture capital and startup development, Wheat’s broader interest and purpose is to improve the climate for everyone in the region to launch and grow startup companies, particularly women and girls.

Coding, technology, and education have

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BY JEFF SLOAN

always been central to Wheat. When she recognized the heavy emphasis on careers in technology and engineering for young boys, but not young girls, she decided to act.

In addition to providing financial support to female-led startups and minority entrepreneurs in Detroit, Wheat is founder and executive director of Digerati Girls and Digerati Kids, a nonprofit organization that introduces young girls to digital and tech careers through coding classes and workshops.

Through the program, Wheat and her team provide opportunity, access, and insight to aspiring girls to help them understand the career path involved in starting a high-tech company. “They say, ‘You can’t be what you can’t see,’ so we try to make sure they can see it,” Wheat says of the classes and workshops taught by female founders and engineers.

Wheat is an exemplary entrepreneur, actively advocating for diversity, equality, and

inclusion in Detroit, along with shaping the future of the region and the people in it. She has lived a life of purpose as a venture capitalist, looking to improve the entire ecosystem in which her business exists. Wheat is living a life of important purpose from which we all stand to benefit.

JEFF SLOAN is founder and CEO of StartupNation and Aria Ventures, both in Birmingham.

2/10/21 12:33 PM

The Ticker

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: COURTESY OF PROFESSIONAL GOLF PLANNERS OF AMERICA

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MINDING YOUR TEES

Professional Golf Planners of America in Shelby Township organizes corporate and charity events.

BY TIM KEENAN

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Ticker || March - April 2021

DBUSINESSDIRECT Ford Hires New Global Design Head Effective April 1, Anthony Lo will become vice president of design for global Ford and Lincoln brand vehicles at Dearborn’s Ford Motor Co. He replaces Moray Callum, who will retire May 1 after a 38-year product development career.

Most recently, Lo was vice president of exterior design for Renault in France.

Pontiac’s United Wholesale Mortgage, Gores Holdings IV Finalize Merger United Wholesale Mortgage in Pontiac and Gores Holdings IV Inc. in Los Angeles closed on their previously announced merger Jan. 21 ,creating a $16-billion company. At the closing, UWM received approximately $925 million of gross proceeds, which includes approximately $425 million of cash from Gores Holdings IV, as well as $500 million in proceeds from the private placement, which included top-tier institutional investors.

Scramble Win

U.S. Attorney Schneider to Join Honigman Law Firm as Partner

American Festival of Speed Comes to M1 Concourse Sept. 30 to Oct. 3 The inaugural American Festival of Speed is designed to combine a world-class auto exposition with live racing action at the M1 Concourse in Pontiac from Sept. 30 to Oct. 3. The event will follow Motor Bella at M1 Concourse, Sept. 21-26, which will replace the traditional North American International Auto Show for this year.

Stellantis Will Offer Two Vehicle Voice Assistants, Including Amazon’s Alexa Auburn Hills-based Stellantis announced Jan. 15 that it is the first automaker to implement Amazon’s Alexa Custom Assistant into its vehicles.

The Alexa Custom Assistant solution is built directly on the Alexa technology stack within the automaker’s Uconnect system. It can be tailored to each Stellantis brand personality and customer need with a unique wake word, voice, skills, and capabilities.

For full stories and more, visit dbusiness. com/daily-news to get daily news sent directly to your email.

Professional Golf Planners of America in Shelby Township takes the work out of staging a corporate or charity event.

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BY TIM KEENAN

olf can be a relaxing game, played in the serenity of the great outdoors.

Staging a corporate or charity golf outing, on the other hand, is anything but serene, with seemingly hundreds of details and moving parts to attend to — unless you hire someone else to do it.

Four years ago, Tony Comperchio started Professional Golf Planners of America in Shelby Township specifically to take the heat off of golf event planners. For a fee, Comperchio and his team will organize golf outings for charity, to promote business networking, or for any other reason.

The menu of services includes golf course selection, event planning, participant and sponsor recruitment, gift bag and prize procurement, online registration setup, dining and entertainment, and event staffing.

“One of our value propositions is we reduce our clients’ time on an event by up to 70 percent, (so) their employees can focus on what they were hired to do rather than putting on a golf tournament,” Comperchio says. “We’re very efficient because this is what we do.”

Another way PGPA brings value to an organization’s outing is through its database of more than 15,000 area golfers and businesses. “We leverage that to help support our clients’ outings, if they choose that service from us,” Comperchio he says.

The PGPA team works methodically over a period of

GAME ON The Veterans4USA charity outing at Paint Creek Country Club in Lake Orion was organized by Professional Golf Planners of America.

four to six months to put on a client’s golf event. It starts with a “blueprint” that states the goal of the outing. For example, a charity wants to net a certain amount of money, while a business seeks to attract a certain number of potential customers.

Another key element of the blueprint is the price. “It outlines the revenue in against costs, and that should get you to your goal,” he says. Other cost considerations depend on how many volunteers or workers the client can bring to an outing to lessen the load on PGPA. “It wouldn’t be uncommon for a 30-year event with more than 200 golfers to net out at $100,000,” says Comperchio, a golf tournament consultant certified by the Golf Tournament Association of America. “The title sponsorship for that event is probably $25,000.”

By contrast, a first-year event’s title sponsorship might go for $3,000; with 60 or 70 golfers, it would net $5,000 to $10,000 for the organization.

Although Comperchio says PGPA lost about 60 percent of its business due to the COVID-19 pandemic in 2020, he’s planning to expand by hosting indoor simulator tournaments, golf clinics, a par-three tournament, and golf leagues in 2021. “(We’re) always looking for new opportunities and new revenue streams,” he says.

: COURTESY OF PROFESSIONAL GOLF PLANNERS OF AMERICA

Matthew Schneider, who served as the U.S. Attorney for the Eastern District of Michigan between January 2018 and January 2021, joined the Detroit-based Honigman law firm in February as a partner. He’s also co-leader of its white-collar defense and investigations practice, and a member of Honigman’s government relations and regulatory practice.

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March - April 2021 || Ticker

Digital Play

Statewide casinos open their doors to online sports betting.

BY DAN CALABRESE

P

lacing a wager on Michigan’s appetite for online sports betting — which raced out of the gate in mid-January — Detroit’s three casinos and the industry as a whole are looking to recover from losses approaching 50 percent of revenue in 2020, following record results the previous year.

Online gaming, where sports fans across the state can place wagers to support their home teams or choose from an array of games across multiple leagues, looks to be a winner. For the casinos, being able to cash in at a time when physical facilities are closed or restricted by capacity bodes well for when the full market returns. Look for new offerings in the coming months to keep the good times rolling.

One good measure of the prospects arrived on the first Sunday of betting. With a single move, George Sinishtaj, a partner at Oak Parkbased Ooze Wholesale, dropped $420,420 on the Buffalo Bills to cover a three-point spread against the Kansas City Chiefs in the AFC Championship Game. The Bills failed to cover the spread, but Greektown Casino agreed to match the bet dollar-for-dollar to stake its Barstool Fund — designed to boost local businesses hurt by virus-related shutdowns.

Overall, Greektown handled nearly $3 million in sports bets through its partner, Barstool Sports, on the very first day. According to Christina Bachmann, regional marketing manager for Penn National Gaming (which

owns Greektown Casino), the money wagered was more than Penn’s entire opening weekend for a recent venture in Pennsylvania.

On the other side of town, MotorCity Casino partnered with FanDuel to handle its on-site sports betting. Mike Raffensberger, chief marketing officer at FanDuel, is bullish on Michigan’s chances to succeed. “Online is going to be a game-changer for the casino industry,” he says.

Sports bettors can wager online or on-site at sports lounges. David Thai, president of the Midwest Group for MGM Casino (based in Detroit), says the casino hopes to attract a subset of sports bettors who want a lounge experience. Already he’s seen it work in Mississippi, where he was part of a similar launch in 2018

that attracted a younger demographic. “It was more male compared to a slots player or a table player, so people who didn’t normally come to the casinos were coming onto the property, particularly to bet on sports.”

MGM’s betting platform, BetMGM, is a partnership between MGM and Etain PLC — a European-based platform that aligns with all MGM properties in North America.

“The launch was good,” Thai says. “I think we received overwhelming demand, and we had strong numbers of people registering for accounts.”

MGM has also signed sponsorship deals with the Lions and Red Wings, while the Ilitch-owned MotorCity has similar deals with the Ilitch-owned Tigers and Red Wings.

: ISTOCK

March Madness || By Tim Keenan LITTLE CAESARS ARENA WAS TO HAVE been home to several first- and second-round NCAA tournament games in March. Health concerns around the COVID-19 pandemic put an end to that and any economic gain the region may have seen as a result.

The March Madness games were scheduled to be played March 18-20

at the downtown Detroit arena, but in November they were moved to Indianapolis, where the Final Four already was scheduled.

“My committee colleagues and I didn’t come lightly to the difficult decision to relocate the preliminary rounds of the 2021 tournament, as we understand the disappointment 13

communities will feel to miss out on being part of March Madness next year,” Mitch Barnhart, chair of the Division I Men’s Basketball Committee, said when the decision was announced. “The committee and staff deeply appreciate the efforts of all the host institutions and conferences, and we look forward to bringing the

tournament back to the impacted sites in future years.”

Detroit’s Little Caesars Area still is the planned site of the 2024 NCAA Men’s Regional Tournament. It will be the second time an NCAA regional basketball round will be played in the Motor City. The last time was in 2008 at Ford Field.

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Critter Catchers As humans stay home animal pests move in — and more so now, with COVID-19.

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BY ALAN FISK l Smith is in a hurry. As owner of Aapex Pest Control in New Baltimore, Smith says demand for his services “has been absolutely insane” over the past year.

In particular, there have been so many calls to remove larger animals like raccoons and squirrels that he ran out of traps. Complaints about yellow jackets and wasps have been “four times greater than usual.”

Smith isn’t the only pest expert who’s busy.

Gordon Ligon runs Detroit-based Goodbye Geese, whose clients include country clubs, yacht clubs, marinas, apartments — anyplace infested with Canada geese. The large birds leave messy droppings and can attack people who get near their nests. “The geese normally migrate, but with climate change — which means more food and ponds that don’t freeze over — more geese are staying over the winter,” Ligon says.

His business, which has a state permit, doesn’t harm the birds. Rather, he uses his three

border collies to roust the birds to find new homes. “The birds see the dogs as predators,” he explains. Demand has been pretty consistent.

“Sometimes we have to go back several times,” Ligon says.

The U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention and others report more pests are invading homes as waste from restaurants and other food purveyors — a prime source of food for pests — have had to shut down or trim services due to COVID-19. Plus, the millions of people now isolating at home are generating far more garbage than normal.

Monroe resident Peter Liebner says he’s been seeing more red foxes, squirrels, starlings, and chipmunks that “have chewed through metal vents to get into my crawl space. And my whole yard is full of wild turkeys.”

FOOD FOR THOUGHT The gypsy moth is one of dozens of pests that can wreck havoc in Michigan and elsewhere. The presence of caterpillars, which eat leaves, has defoliated oak trees across the state.

Pests can have a huge financial cost as they invade homes and businesses and chew on wiring, walls, and furnishings — all the while spreading disease as they hunt for food.

Jeff Hartfield of Clinton Township waged a battle over the past year against what he thought were gophers; later, he was told the intruders were muskrats. The pests tore up his lawn and gardens and, worse, punctured the lining of his swimming pool.

“We lost about 25,000 gallons of water,” Hartfield says. “Our neighbor said it looked like a tidal wave when it ripped through the yard.” The total cost of his critter invasion: $8,000.

JIM LAREAU

COO M3Linked, Birmingham

DB: WHERE ARE YOU? JL: In Scottsdale, Ariz. We’re having our executive leadership annual planning session as well as EOS training (Entrepreneurial Operating System for Businesses). There are four people on our executive leadership team.

DB: HOW IS M3LINKED DOING? JL: Very well. We started last September. The business was originally launched in Scottsdale as Alliances, and it’s been up and running for seven years. Two of our partners were members of the Alliances network, and

they realized it was a wonderful business model in which members share success stories, seek out knowledge, cultivate relationships, and provide opportunities — all in a private, confidential, invite-only setting.

DB: ARE YOU EXPANDING? JL: Under the Alliances brand, they started with Tampa and Washington, D.C. But as things played out, it was beyond what the original owner wanted to do.

So the business was acquired, and Steven Nelick (CEO) and I came on board.

We’ve since expanded into Philadelphia, Detroit (Birmingham), Chicago, Palo Alto, and we’ll be opening soon in Los Angeles, New York City, and Las Vegas. We’ve identified 46 communities, based on population, where we believe our organization will be very successful. In the future, we’ll be in Canada and the UK. DB: WHAT PROGRAMS ARE OFFERED? JL: We have multiple offerings, including M3Forum, where we meet weekly (virtually) with a guest speaker and

have break-out discussions; M3Tank, which is like “Shark Tank”; M3Mastermind, where you have a group of M3 members help another member launch a product or service, for example; M3Social; and more.

DB: WHAT’S THE COST? JL: It depends on the membership level. We’re unique in that we’re not interested in having our members conduct transactions. We’re about business development and collaboration. Our mission is to connect, energize, grow, and promote entrepreneurialism.

: COURTESY OF THE INVASIVE SPECIES PROGRAM

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DBUSINESSDIRECT

Sentinel Capital Partners announced plans to sell Livonia-based Pet Supplies Plus, the third-largest pet specialty chain in the U.S., to Franchise Group Inc. for $700 million.

Baker College to Build $51M Flagship Campus in Downtown Royal Oak Flint-based Baker College announced that it is building a new, $51 million, 86,000-square-foot, seven-story facility in downtown Royal Oak that will become the school’s flagship metro Detroit campus. It will be located at 420 S. Lafayette Ave., at the intersection of S. Lafayette and 5th Avenue.

Ascension Providence Rochester Opens Advanced Stroke Care Center Ascension Providence Rochester Hospital has opened a new advanced stroke care center to provide minimally invasive procedures for the diagnosis and treatment of medical conditions in the brain. This will include specialized care for people who have experienced or are at risk for a stroke or transient ischemic attack and people who have a complex neurovascular disease such as a brain aneurysm.

Rivian Closes on $2.65B Investment Round Plymouth Township-based electric vehicle manufacturer Rivian has closed an investment round of $2.65 billion led by T. Rowe Price Associates Inc. and other investors, bringing the value of the company to a reported $27.6 billion. The investment comes as the company prepares to start production of its all-electric pickup truck this summer at its plant in Normal, Ill.

GM and Cruise Partner with Microsoft to Advance Autonomous Vehicles General Motors Co. in Detroit and Cruise in San Francisco announced that they have entered a long-term strategic relationship with Microsoft in Redmond, Wash., to accelerate the commercialization of self-driving vehicles.

For full stories and more, visit dbusiness.com/daily-news to get daily news sent directly to your email.

Interactive visuals keep home buyers’ attention during the pandemic.

BY GRACE TURNER

H

ommati, a company that offers digital imaging for showing houses, opened a new location in metro Detroit just before the COVID-19 pandemic began in March 2020. It was a fortunate move, because it enabled house-hunters to keep shopping despite stay-at-home orders.

Justin Barton, franchise owner and operator of Hommati’s Livonia office, says his business offers virtual home-showing tools to real estate agents, who can use the system to market properties they’re working to sell.

Hommati, which has its national headquarters just north of Columbus, Ohio, has other Michigan locations in Novi and Grand Blanc. The company provides 3-D tours of properties, virtual reality tours, aerial videos and photos, interior and exterior photos, and floor plans. It also offers virtual staging, in which to-scale images of furniture can be added to photos of rooms. In his first year of business, Barton says the Livonia office signed up “dozens of clients.”

“The 3-D tour provides an interactive doll-house view where you can tour the home, and then you can go back to your Realtor and say, ‘Hey, we had 20 homes where we really liked the photos, but when we dove down into the interactive tour, we narrowed it down to these five,’ ” Barton says.

The company’s services are meant to supplement a buyer’s initial search, so they can spend less time physically touring homes. This is especially helpful when people are trying to stay home as much as possible. It saves buyers precious time in competitive markets, and it’s more convenient to be able to view an initial “tour” at any time

Highways in the Sky

VIRTUAL OFFER Many homes listed for sale in metro Detroit are being shown virtually by companies like Hommati, which has offices in Livonia, Novi, and Grand Blanc. Virtual tours save time and promote safety.

from the comfort of the couch. It also benefits sellers, as it saves them from having lots of strangers trek through their homes.

Real estate agents can opt to offer all of the showing tools per listing, or they can purchase specific tools for each listing à la carte. Offerings can contain agents’ branding, and Hommati also provides social media marketing services.

Barton says agents who use Hommati’s services have received four times more inquiries on listings, homes sell 68 percent faster, and 49 percent more qualified leads come through. Homes with dynamic visual content sell for 9 percent higher on average nationwide, he adds.

New this year, Barton’s office is offering agents presentation videos and branded magazines. The agents can use the materials to show the Hommati services that are available to clients who are looking for agents to sell their homes.

|| By Tim Keenan

THE DETROIT REGION AEROTROPOLIS Development Corp. is working to build highways in the wild blue yonder.

According to the organization’s 2020 annual report, the economic development zone in southern Wayne County led the nation in advancing air mobility.

In January 2020, the Detroit Aerotropolis licensed the Airspace Link AirHub platform, in partnership with Michigan’s PlanetM and the Michigan Unmanned Aerial Systems Consortium, to establish and test a new

low-altitude drone infrastructure in the region. The platform brought new advanced manufacturing prospects to the region, according to the report. It also expanded on the multimodal mobility network that’s often a deciding factor for corporate expansions.

“With our partnership, Aerotropolis is providing the foundation to safely integrate drones into the national airspace and its communities, while providing a foundational drone infrastructure for advanced operations,

manufacturing, and innovation,” Michael Healander, president and CEO of Airspace Link, wrote in the report.

During the past year, the Detroit Aerotropolis supported greenfield expansion by marketing 6,000 acres of development-ready land centered near Metro Airport. It also formed a partnership with Kroger and online retail company Ocado that resulted in a $95-million investment in Aerotropolis to support the growing demand for grocery e-commerce services.

COURTESY OF HOMMATI

Pet Supplies Plus in Livonia to be Sold for $700M

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Diversity and Inclusion || Focus

EVERYBODY NOW Five metro Detroit companies are making strides in their ongoing journeys toward equality, diversity, and inclusion in their workplaces, communities, and the world. The enterprises say their efforts improve recruitment and retention, keep clients and partners engaged, bolster their reputations, support the regions they serve and, ultimately, boost their bottom lines.

BY GRACE TURNER |

DARREL ELLIS

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Focus || Diversity and Inclusion

BUTZEL LONG

COMPANIES MORE LIKELY TO HAVE ABOVE-AVERAGE PROFITABILITY

25%

GENDERDIVERSE EXECUTIVE TEAMS

36% ETHNIC AND CULTURALLY DIVERSE COMPANIES

Chamber that works to keep high school students on track to attend college.

Through their work, Arends says, lawyers help shape policy across the country. She explains that a lack of diversity among lawyers, and therefore a lack of diverse perspectives, will result in policies that don’t benefit diverse communities.

Non-diverse firms also risk losing business.

“It’s important to our clients that we have the same values they have,” Arends says.

IN 2019, COMPANIES IN THE TOP QUARTILE FOR GENDER DIVERSITY ON EXECUTIVE TEAMS WERE 25 PERCENT MORE LIKELY TO HAVE ABOVEAVERAGE PROFITABILITY THAN COMPANIES IN THE FOURTH QUARTILE. COMPANIES IN THE TOP QUARTILE FOR ETHNIC AND CULTURAL DIVERSITY WERE 36 PERCENT MORE LIKELY TO HAVE ABOVEAVERAGE PROFITABILITY THAN THOSE IN THE FOURTH QUARTILE. SOURCE: MCKINSEY AND CO.

GEANEEN ARENDS

HAIR STYLIST: TALYA ASHFORD; MAKE-UP ARTIST: MAYA MITCHELL

ONE DETROIT-BASED LAW FIRM HAS REVAMPED ITS diversity efforts twice in less than 10 years.

While Butzel Long had a committee dedicated to diversity and retention for many years, it wasn’t until 2014 that the group began to focus on recruiting diverse law students, many of whom are later hired to fill fulltime positions.

Geaneen Arends, who was in charge of the initiative and is now chair of the Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion Committee, chair of corporate and real estate practice groups, and an equity shareholder, decided in the spring of 2019 that the efforts needed to expand again.

“The DEI committee, in its current embodiment, is really working toward ensuring that diversity, equity, and inclusion — core values of our firm — are reflected in a broader way in our organization, touching everything that we do,” Arends says.

One initiative that sprung from the reorganization was the creation of a calendar that lists religious and secular holidays from different cultures. Employees receive emails explaining the meanings of the holidays, as a way to encourage them to be mindful of the cultures around them. For example, Arends says, it’s inappropriate to invite a Muslim co-worker to a meeting over lunch during Ramadan, when they observe a holiday fast.

As much of the firm’s other diversity, equity, and inclusion work is still in its beginning stages, Butzel Long hired an outside consultant to complete an audit of its existing policies. Everyone at the firm — about 200 employees — was asked to respond to a confidential online survey, and about 60 were selected for interviews with the consultant. Using the results, the consultant will help Butzel Long determine its next steps.

As part of its efforts outside of the firm, Butzel Long was one of nine area law firms that signed a statement last June in response to the police killings of Ahmaud Arbery in February 2020, Breonna Taylor in March 2020, and George Floyd in May 2020. In the statement, the firms pledged to work for equality and to increase diversity in their workplaces, offer pro bono services in underserved communities, and advocate for police reform. Arends says Butzel Long also offers pro bono services through Michigan Community Resources, an organization in Detroit that provides professional services to nonprofits.

In addition, Butzel Long is working with Detroit Drives Degrees, an initiative through the Detroit Regional

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Diversity and Inclusion || Focus

GENERAL MOTORS CO.

IMPLEMENTING INITIATIVES MEANT TO INCREASE INCLUsion is challenging for any company, but the task is an even bigger undertaking for global organizations that cross cultural boundaries.

Despite the enormity of the effort, Mary Barra, chairman and CEO of General Motors Co. in Detroit, announced in June 2020 a lofty goal — the automaker would become the most inclusive company in the world.

Meeting the objective falls largely on Telva McGruder, GM’s chief of diversity, equity, and inclusion.

Inclusion takes the forefront when working across cultural lines, McGruder says; in each society, different groups are traditionally included and excluded. For example, while many inclusion initiatives in the U.S. focus on race, in other countries GM may instead have to make extra efforts to bridge the male-female differential or the class divide among workers in an office or plant setting. The company has teams in every country in which it operates that are working to assess local cultures and prioritize initiatives accordingly.

“It really comes down to understanding the culture, understanding how we as GM are showing up in that particular culture, and ensuring that inside of the company we’re working to create a community that’s as diverse as the community outside, but more inclusive when considering some of the cultural norms,” McGruder says. “It’s tricky, but one thing that’s absolutely true is we can’t have one solution from Detroit that’s going to work in Dubai, or that’s going to work in Brazil, or is going to work in Korea.”

GM has had diversity, inclusion, and equity initiatives in place for decades. In 1972, the automaker launched a minority dealer program, and in 2001 it established a women’s dealer program. Some of the company’s employee resource groups trace their roots back 30 years, and many groups are international; the company’s employee resource group for women has chapters in countries including the U.S., China, Israel, India, South America, Canada, Egypt, Mexico, and other countries.

$

66b COMMITTED TO RACIAL EQUITY INITIATIVES

FORTUNE 1000 COMPANIES COMMITTED $66 BILLION TO RACIAL EQUITY INITIATIVES BETWEEN THE MAY 2020 KILLING OF GEORGE FLOYD AND THE END OF OCTOBER 2020.

• DURING THIS TIME, ABOUT ONE-THIRD OF THE COMPANIES MADE A PUBLIC STATEMENT ON RACIAL EQUITY. • OF THOSE THAT MADE STATEMENTS, 93 PERCENT FOLLOWED UP WITH AN INTERNAL OR EXTERNAL COMMITMENT, AND 57 PERCENT PUBLICLY ANNOUNCED THE AMOUNT THEY WERE COMMITTING. SOURCE: MCKINSEY AND CO.

TELVA MCGRUDER

McGruder says the work will advance indefinitely. “This is absolutely a journey of continuous improvement,” she says.

As the auto industry evolves, McGruder says GM will make sure diversity, equity, and inclusion efforts help inform the company’s decision-making so no one is left behind as transportation technology changes.

“We want to ensure that the future of electric vehicles is there for everyone in our urban communities, in our rural communities, and in our suburbs,” McGruder says. “We’re focused on creating product that’s going to walk into that future. We’ll do it a lot more effectively as our mindset around inclusion, diversity, and equity matures.”

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Focus || Diversity and Inclusion

HENRY FORD HEALTH SYSTEM EQUITY TOOK ON A NEW MEANING AT DETROITbased Henry Ford Health System as the COVID-19 pandemic rocked the region and, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, disproportionately affected racial and ethnic minority groups.

For many years, Henry Ford has championed programs that work to increase equity among those living in disadvantaged communities, but such programs faced new challenges and took on a new sense of urgency when the COVID-19 pandemic forced Detroit residents to stay home, making procuring necessities such as groceries and personal protective equipment more difficult.

“Henry Ford is driven, in part, by the moral imperative of this work,” says Dr.

40% BLACK-OWNED BUSINESSES CLOSED

17%

WHITE-OWNED BUSINESSES CLOSED

MORE THAN 40 PERCENT OF BLACK-OWNED BUSINESSES IN THE U.S. CLOSED BETWEEN FEBRUARY AND APRIL 2020 DUE TO THE COVID-19 PANDEMIC, COMPARED TO 17 PERCENT OF WHITE-OWNED BUSINESSES. SOURCE: MCKINSEY AND CO.

DR. KIMBERLYDAWN WISDOM

031.Focus.Mar.21.indd 34

Kimberlydawn Wisdom, senior vice president of community health and equity, and chief wellness and diversity officer for Henry Ford. “Long before it was fashionable to think about diversity, equity, and inclusion, Henry Ford was doing the work proudly.”

A program called At Your Door Food and More was started in response to the pandemic and the resulting supply shortage for many families. The health system also offers free flu vaccines and COVID-19 testing at sites across the region and through its mobile unit, housed in a large bus.

“That’s part of ensuring equity among diverse communities and helping them to feel included and not forgotten,” Wisdom says.

One of the health system’s older initiatives, the Women Inspired Network, works toward equity in birth outcomes for underserved women, primarily African-Americans. Blacks experience an infant death rate that’s three to four times greater than that of their white counterparts, Wisdom says. Participants receive information and prenatal care in group and private settings from midwives and community health workers. Among women participating in the program, which has been established for 10 years, there have been no preventable infant deaths; Wisdom says that’s unheard of within the target population.

Generation Promise, another program, teaches students in elementary through high school how to establish healthy eating habits, and it promotes the importance of physical activity. Participants watch cooking demos and leave with groceries — enough to feed six people for less than $10 – so they can replicate the recipe at home.

Finally, all patients have access to information in their preferred language, and interpreters are available to help out either in person or via video.

There’s also a business angle. Hospitals face fines from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services if patients are readmitted with the same condition within 30 days. “We can prevent readmissions by understanding who we’re serving and some of the challenges that certain demographics may experience,” Wisdom says.

Work is also underway to benefit the health system’s employees. In 2020, Henry Ford raised its minimum wage to $15 per hour, which affected about 3,000 workers. There are also 10 employee resource groups that have at least 2,000 members combined, and employees participate in unconscious bias education and training.

“There are steady efforts to look at how to create a culture where people feel valued and included, and there’s a level of equity,” Wisdom says.

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Diversity and Inclusion || Focus

MARGARET WILLIAMSON

LAUNCH DETROIT

WHILE CORPORATE-LEVEL INCLUSION EFFORTS are designed to encompass all backgrounds and create a variety of initiatives, one Detroit program’s main goal is to help women start and grow small businesses.

LaunchDETROIT was founded in 2012 by the 48 rotary clubs in district 6400, which covers southeast Michigan and Ontario.

Classes take place over five to 10 weeks and focus on business education, mentorship, networking, and microloans for entrepreneurs living in disadvantaged communities.

Each class trains and supports up to 14 entrepreneurs.

While men can and have participated in the program, it focuses on female entrepreneurs because, historically, they have access to fewer resources than their male counterparts, according to Margaret Williamson, chair of LaunchDETROIT and a past president of the

$ 2021

12T ADDITIONAL GDP

THE U.S. WOULD SEE $12 TRILLION IN ADDITIONAL GDP IF THE GENDER GAP WAS NARROWED BY 2025.

SOURCE: MCKINSEY AND CO.

2025

Rotary Club of Detroit. “We don’t turn away great ideas from men, but we found most of our applicants are women,” Williamson says.

The program has had more female participants than male; Williamson says that of 68 graduates, 13 are men.

According to an article published by the Washington, D.C.-based U.S. Chamber of Commerce, more than 11.6 million U.S. firms were owned by women in August 2019. They employed nearly 9 million people and generated $1.7 trillion in sales. JPMorgan Chase and Co. reported in February 2019 that women comprise 36 percent of business owners.

In the chamber’s report, the inability to obtain capital was cited as the biggest entrepreneurial challenge. It’s harder for women to get loans than men — just 2.2 percent of venture capital across the country went to female-founded startups in 2018.

Latricia Wright, founder and principal practitioner of Olive Seed in Detroit, participated in LaunchDETROIT in 2013. Her company offers wellness classes; nutritional counseling; ear acupuncture; cooking classes; virtual and in-person tea-tastings; products such as tea, honey, soap, and dietary supplements; and wellness equipment including massage chairs.

“No matter the stage you were in with your business, there was something for everyone,” Wright says of LaunchDETROIT. Williamson adds that most participants begin the program with some part of their business established.

A loan from LaunchDETROIT helped Wright bring Olive Seed’s infused honey to market. After she paid off the initial amount, she was able to take out another loan through the program to further grow her product line.

Wright says the program has given her the confidence to complete other programs, sometimes alongside C-suite executives through Goldman Sachs, Kellogg, and others. “(LaunchDETROIT) was definitely a springboard for my business development track,” Wright says.

Meanwhile, Wright is still learning from her experiences. She had planned to open a wellness center to host events, along with retail space, when the COVID-19 pandemic hit, but her business has done well online during the pandemic, so she decided not to open the center.

The virus brought changes to LaunchDETROIT, as well — participants took business education courses online through Learn@Forbes. For participants and graduates, relationships with mentors and program organizers as well as funding opportunities are ongoing.

“The door doesn’t shut,” Williamson says. “It’s up to them. We want to support their dream.”

Along with economic development, Rotary International focuses on promoting peace, fighting disease, providing clean water and education, and protecting the environment.

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Focus || Diversity and Inclusion

TCF NATIONAL BANK

A LINE OF ACQUISITIONS ISN’T GETTING IN THE WAY OF A local banking giant’s offering of diversity, equity, and inclusion initiatives.

Detroit-based TCF National Bank completed its integration with Chemical Bank in August 2020. The companies announced their merger of equals in January 2019 and decided to use TCF’s branding across locations in Michigan, Illinois, Minnesota, Ohio, Colorado, and Wisconsin.

With the acquisition came a renewed commitment to diversity and inclusion, along with new initiatives that seek to break new ground.

“We look at our diversity and inclusion initiatives as a movement, not a moment,” says Donnell R. White, chief diversity officer and director of strategic partnerships at TCF. “Our goal is to create a culture of inclusion.” White says such a culture promotes engagement and satisfaction among employees.

In December, the company inked another major deal when TCF signed a definitive agreement under which it will enter into an all-stock merger with Columbus, Ohio’s, Huntington Bancshares Inc. Terms of the deal, which is expected to close in the second quarter of this year, were not disclosed. The company will have headquarters in Detroit and Columbus.

“Huntington has a robust diversity, equity, and inclusion commitment, and our cultures are well-aligned,” White says. “We’re looking forward to continuing on our D and I journey with them once the merger is finalized, and we believe we’ll be even stronger together.”

Initiatives for employees include cultural awareness events and educational programming surrounding holidays such as International Women’s Day (March 8) and Veterans Day (Nov. 11), as well as Pride Month (June) and Black History Month (February).

Starting in 2020, TCF implemented its first mandatory employee training, which centered on unconscious bias. The training is a commitment to racial equality and is a result of the civil unrest that has occurred in the U.S. since the May 2020 killing of George Floyd by police in Minnesota.

Employees also have access to 24 employee resource groups across three regions, which work to promote professional development and engagement among members. The groups were launched last September.

Starting with a pilot phase in 2020, TCF team members are matched with mentors early in their tenure to create a welcoming environment.

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DONNELL R. WHITE

$

2b

POTENTIAL REVENUE

ACROSS THE U.S., THERE’S $2 BILLION IN POTENTIAL REVENUE IF FINANCIAL INCLUSION EFFORTS BROADEN SERVICES FOR BLACK AMERICANS. SOURCE: MCKINSEY AND CO.

Many initiatives were launched during the pandemic. Programming is virtual, which allows more people to “attend.” The Color Line, a Juneteenth TCF event that takes place June 19 and commemorates the emancipation of slaves in the U.S., attracted more than 2,000 team members across the bank system.

The initiatives branch out to the community, as well. TCF opened a banking center in December 2020 in partnership with the Arab American and Chaldean Council. The center is in the council’s building at 7 Mile and John R streets and is meant to serve low- to moderate-income residents in the community.

TCF also started a five-year, $1 billion commitment to female and minority business owners in 2020. The program features low monthly payments, interest rates, and down payments on equipment financing, and there are no bank origination or assessment fees.

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RRightNowCommunications_FP_DB_0321.indd 1

2/5/21 9:58 AM

Perspectives || Real Estate

Land of Opportunity Can a red-hot industrial market in the region, driven by nearly unsatiable demand for mobility, e-commerce, and R&D facilities, finally bring about a renaissance in Detroit? percent and $6.28 in the first quarter of 2020.

Specifically, warehouse and flex/R&D vacancies in the fourth quarter stood at 4.1 percent and 7.5 percent respectively. While those numbers are some of the best ever seen, they largely reflect a supply shortage at a time of growing demand for industrial space.

Hawthorne Gardening, a subsidiary of the Scotts Miracle-Gro Company based in Vancouver, Wash., and a wholesale distributor of nutrients, soil, growing media, and lighting for the hydroponic gardening and cannabis industries, doubled its space in November when it moved from Wixom to a 250,000-square-foot facility in Romulus to keep up with growing demand for its products.

“Michigan is one of the top states in the nation for hydroponic sales and use, and it’s our No. 3 state for profitability,” says Tyler Sullivan, Hawthorne’s marketing coordinator. “Detroit has 70 percent of the hydroponic retail outlets in the state. The cannabis market (recreational sales were launched in December 2019) drives our company.”

Kroger, the country’s largest grocery chain, announced last September it had selected Romulus as the location for an automated warehouse fulfillment center with digital and robotic capabilities. The 135,000-square-foot facility, which will support customers in Michigan, Ohio, and Indiana, is expected to open in 2022 and create 250 new jobs. Set in the Detroit Region Aerotropolis, a commercial development zone, the project replaces two nearby distribution facilities and is being driven by “growing demand for grocery e-commerce services,” says Robert Clark, Kroger’s senior vice president of supply chain, manufacturing, and sourcing.

Distribution and logistics enterprises located within multimodal zones like the Detroit Region Aerotropolis in southern Wayne County — offering close access to airports, freeways, railways, and shipping — are an answer to global demand for e-commerce and cargo services.

Consider that in November, the Detroit Brownfield Redevelopment Authority approved a project south of the Coleman A. Young International Airport that will support the demolition of the former Cadillac Stamping Plant site near Connor and Gratiot avenues. In its place will be a nearly 700,000-square-foot industrial/

manufacturing facility targeted toward one or multiple tenants, including automotive suppliers and advanced production and logistics operations.

Other demand-generators beyond e-commerce are expected for R&D space. Last summer, Michigan sought to attract more tech facilities with a first-of-its-kind connected and autonomous vehicle corridor. The project envisions connecting downtown Detroit and Ann Arbor along Michigan Avenue and Interstate 94 with an infrastructure allowing for two

FAIR DEAL An architectural rendering of Amazon’s Detroit Fulfillment Center to be built on the site of the former Michigan State Fairgrounds near Woodward Avenue and Eight Mile Road.

COURTESY OF AMAZON

W

ith the outbreak of the COVID-19 pandemic last March, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer issued Executive Order 2020-21 directing all “Michigan businesses and operations to temporarily suspend in-person operations that are not necessary to sustain or protect life.”

The downside of the order reverberated throughout the state’s economy, resulting in bankruptcies, a sharp runup in unemployment filings, an exodus from offices and schools, and a resulting patchwork of dozens of controversial and conflicting regulations.

Even as restaurants, hotels, movie theaters, and offices were allowed to open following Memorial Day, with tight limits on capacity, another Whitmer order prior to Thanksgiving closed bars and eateries across the state. The order was lifted on Feb. 1.

In neighboring Ohio, however, bars and restaurants remained open, albeit with capacity and safety restrictions. With predictions of a local recovery ranging from months to years, the Michigan Restaurant and Lodging Association in Lansing reported the state’s hospitality industry is “on the brink of irreconcilable damage.”

Prior to the pandemic, and to a certain extent during and after, industrial and commercial real estate developers in southeast Michigan were in clover, attracting attention from diverse corners of the economy.

“Before COVID-19, everything was going gangbusters. We had an incredibly hot industrial market,” says Paul Choukourian, executive managing director and market leader at Colliers International, a multinational commercial real estate services firm that has offices in Southfield and Birmingham. “It had probably been eight years of steady absorption and growth in office (space). Retail was doing very well. You had restaurants popping up, and 2020 was looking to be the best year ever.”

At the turn of the new year, metro Detroit’s industrial sector, particularly quality warehousing and distribution properties, remained somewhat stable. The total direct vacancy rate was 4.3 percent in the fourth quarter while the average asking lease rate was $6.56 per square foot, according to Colliers. Compare this to 3.6

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dedicated lanes (going in opposite directions) for connected and autonomous transit, freight, and personal vehicles.

Put it all together, and the region’s high-profile marquee projects and others that fly relatively low under the radar add heft to Detroit’s standing as an industrial heavyweight.

Another benefit of the industrial expansion tackles what past growth cycles couldn’t handle — namely, remediation of the leftover factories from the Arsenal of Democracy that helped win World War II. To meet the demand for tanks, planes, trucks, munitions, and more, factories built on the outskirts of town were quickly surrounded by neighborhoods.

When the need for war supplies plummeted following the victory overseas, many industrial facilities were vacated. As the economy improved in 1950, people began moving to the suburbs to be free of empty manufacturing and production plants that could be accessed by

curious children. The migration impacted an urban landscape that had marked Detroit since its founding.

Consider: Michigan Central Station helped power southwest Detroit when it opened in 1913, but in 1988, falling demand for rail service brought forward the city’s version of a haunted mansion. With the passage of time portending a future demolition, Bill Ford, executive chairman of Ford Motor Co. and a great-grandson of company founder Henry Ford (who used the train station regularly during his lifetime), set in motion a new direction. His decision also underscored why it pays to get out of the office from time to time.

After pondering the possibilities of a forlorn structure with all of its windows knocked out, Ford was inspired with a vision for a mobility-centered district anchored by the train station. In June 2018, he announced in front of the entrance doors to the monolith his plans for

what will become a 30-acre campus serving as an “innovation hub for innovators, startups, entrepreneurs, and other partners from around the world to develop, test, and launch new mobility solutions on real-world streets, in realworld situations.” The $744-million project will house some 5,000 employees in the first half of 2023 — half from the automaker, with the rest made up of mobility, logistics, robotics, and autonomous teams.

Ford is also pumping $700 million into the construction of the Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, to build an all-electric F-150 pickup by mid-2022. The neighboring Ford Rouge Center, where the F-150 has long been produced, along with the forthcoming F-150 PowerBoost hybrid, also benefit from the capital infusion. In turn, the automaker is spending $750 million and creating 2,700 jobs at its Michigan Assembly Plant in Wayne, which currently produces the redesigned Ford Ranger pickup

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ELECTRIC SURGE The new Rouge Electric Vehicle Center in Dearborn, a rendering of which is pictured, is part of a $700 million investment the automaker is making in the plant.

TAMING THE PANDEMIC

Prospects for a recovery of the hospitality industry in metro Detroit and the nation could extend into 2024.

DUE TO COVID-19, TWO OF THE HARDESThit sectors of the commercial real estate sector were lodging and restaurants; indoor dining was prohibited by state order from Nov. 18 to Feb. 1. Some eateries like Highlands, atop the Renaissance Center, and Olin, next to the Shinola Hotel, had splashy openings in the past year but for long stretches had to limit their service to carry-out orders or deliveries.

Overall, more than 5,600 establishments — representing 33 percent of the Great Lakes State’s restaurant operators — say it’s unlikely they will still be in business in six months, according to the Michigan Restaurant and Lodging Association in Lansing.

“Nobody wants to spread or perish

from the virus but, at the same time, it does seem as though there (was) an imbalanced penalty put on the food and beverage industry,” says Kees Janeway, managing partner at Iconic Real Estate in Detroit, who sits on the board of the Detroit Restaurant and Lodging Association. “You have people like (Andiamo Restaurant owner) Joe Vicari taking great precautions in his restaurants to provide social distancing, requiring masks, and doing temperature screenings to safeguard patrons.

Then you can just walk into (a mall) and be around lots of people. For a lot of (restaurateurs), it feels like they’ve been told their livelihood cannot exist.”

Weekly hotel occupancy for the week ending Jan. 2, 2021, in the United States stood at 40.6 percent, down 17.2 percent from year-ago

levels, according to STR, a global hospitality benchmarking firm based in Hendersonville, Tenn. The average daily rate was down 21.51 percent, to $108, and revenue per available room fell 35 percent, to $43.85.

Occupancy at metro Detroit-area hotels mirrored the national trend. For the week ending Jan. 2, 2021, occupancy in Macomb, Oakland, Washtenaw, and Wayne counties stood at 49.5 percent, 34.9 percent, 24.5 percent, and 33.2 percent, respectively, according to STR. “The properties that were hurt the most are the large, full-service convention-type hotels and the transient business travel hotels,” says Kevin Jappaya, president of KJ Commercial Real Estate Advisors in Farmington Hills and co-owner of seven Michigan hotels. “The extended

stay properties like Home2Suites by Hilton, Staybridge Suites by IHG, the TownePlace Suites, or Residence Inn fared much better in this environment because they have little kitchenettes so business travelers don’t have to worry about eating out.”

The light at the end of the long dark tunnel is still dim for hoteliers.

“Even with the encouraging vaccine news, this pandemic and the subsequent economic impact will continue to limit hotel-demand generators into the second half of 2021,” says Amanda Hite, president of STR. “Business demand won’t return at a substantial level until caseloads are better contained. ...

The forecast for 2021 remains functionally unchanged, and full recovery in revenue per available room is unlikely until 2024.”

COURTESY OF FORD

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and has started building three new Ford Bronco models. Part of the plant space will be dedicated to autonomous vehicles. The automaker is also spending $2 billion to redo its Research and Engineering Center in Dearborn.

Not to be outdone, in January 2020 General Motors Co. announced a $2.2 billion investment to convert its Detroit-Hamtramck assembly plant, rechristened Factory Zero, into its first fully dedicated electric vehicle production facility. The plant will produce a number of all-electric trucks and SUVs on GM’s Ultium battery platform, including the GMC Hummer pickup, which begins production later this year. It will be followed by the Cruise Origin, a shared, electric, self-driving vehicle designed by GM’s Cruise subsidiary in San Francisco.

To make it all work, GM announced late last year it’s partnering with Verizon Business to install dedicated 5G fixed mobile network technology at Factory Zero to help manage systems and equipment in the plant that rely on connectivity, such as robotics and automated assembly lines. “Much of the future of the automotive industry is going to be determined, and developed, right here in metro Detroit,” says Mark Reuss, president of General Motors.

Rounding out the Big Three, Fiat Chrysler Automobiles (now part of Stellantis) announced in 2019 a total investment of $4.1 billion through 2021 in five existing Michigan plants that’s expected to create nearly 6,500 new jobs. The company is spending $1.6 billion to convert the two plants comprising the Mack Avenue Engine Complex into the Detroit Assembly Complex – Mack, which will build the next-generation Jeep Grand Cherokee and an all-new three-row, fullsize Jeep SUV and plug-in hybrid models. The plant is the first auto assembly plant to be built within Detroit city limits in 30 years, and is expected to open this spring.

Next door, the company is investing $900 million in the Jefferson North assembly plant, to ready the facility to build the Dodge Durango and the current Jeep Grand Cherokee. Once the latter vehicle is redesigned, it will be produced at Jefferson North, as well.

FCA’s expenditures also extend to the suburbs at the Warren Truck, Warren Stamping, and Sterling Stamping plants. Based largely on FCA’s outlays, Detroit was selected as the No. 1 U.S. metropolitan area for foreign direct investment in 2020 by Site Selection magazine.

Apart from the automotive industry, multinational firms have been setting up shop in the region. A decade ago, Amazon was barely on the map. Today, the e-commerce giant has 13 locations in Michigan and nine in metro Detroit, including four fulfillment centers (Romulus, Brownstown Township, Livonia, and Shelby

Township), along with five delivery stations (Hazel Park, Sterling Heights, Romulus, Wixom, and Pontiac) where packages are sorted and loaded onto vehicles for delivery. Amazon also has two delivery stations and one fulfillment center in Grand Rapids, and a delivery station in Lansing.

The company’s Pontiac delivery station, located on the grounds of the former Pontiac Silverdome, has been in operation since last September. A fulfillment center where some employees will work alongside robots to pick, pack, and ship small items is under construction next door and is expected to open later this year.

Both facilities together comprise 3.2 million square feet of space.

More growth arrived with a 6-2 vote in October, when the Detroit City Council approved the $16-million sale of the former Michigan State Fairgrounds at 8 Mile Road and Woodward Avenue to real estate developers and investors Hillwood Investment Properties and Sterling Group, which intend to build an Amazon fulfillment center and replace a DDOT transit center. Officials say the entire project is expected to create 1,200 jobs.

Even longtime office and retail players are jumping into the industrial market. Bedrock, the real estate group led by Dan Gilbert, founder and CEO of Rocket Cos., is moving forward on the redevelopment of the former Sakthi Industrial Campus along West Fort Street. The nearly 37-acre project includes approximately 529,000 square feet of industrial and manufacturing space, 89,000 square feet of office and flex space, and more than 10 acres of land suitable for development. The property is strategically located four miles west of downtown Detroit, adjacent and to the north of the Norfolk Southern Rail Line, and near the future Gordie Howe International Bridge U.S. Port of Entry (2024 planned opening).

Meanwhile, in the heart of Detroit’s central business district, Bedrock is building a skyscraper on the site of the former Hudson’s department store at Woodward and Gratiot. The project, which broke ground in December 2017 and was to be the tallest building in Michigan until plans for an observation deck were scrapped last year, will comprise some 1.5 million square feet of space. Plans call for 400,000 square feet of offices, 225,000 square feet of residential space, 127,000 square feet allotted to event and meeting areas, and 285,000 square feet for a yet-to-be named hotel. Some 74,000 square feet of space is planned for retail and restaurant spaces, a food court, and outdoor gathering areas. Completion is slated for 2023.

“In the past year we’ve made significant steps in the continued construction of the Hudson’s site,” says Joe Guziewicz, Bedrock’s vice

Commercial Real Estate Statistics OFFICE Class A Metro Detroit

Class B Metro Detroit

Vacancy Rate (%)

Vacancy Rate (%)

2016 23.07%

2016

2020

$22.81

11.5%

Asking Rates ($)

Asking Rates ($) 2016

2020

24.84%

18.26%

2016

2020

2020

$17.92

$23.03

$20.29

Class C Metro Detroit Vacancy Rate (%) 2016

2020

24.84%

18.36%

Asking Rates ($) 2016

2020

$17.92

$19.18

Source: Colliers International

OFFICE CONSTRUCTION Under Construction 2016

2020

706,011 sq. ft.

2.46M sq. ft.

Completed 2016 505,273 sq. ft.

2020 273,967 sq. ft.

Source: Signature Associates

INDUSTRIAL Vacancy Rate (%) 2016 11.2%

2020 4.3%

Asking Rates ($) 2016 $4.00

2020 $6.56

Source: Colliers International

RETAIL Vacancy Rate (%) 2016 12.31%

2020 5.8%

Asking Rates ($) 2016 $16.10

2020 $16.20

Source: NAI Farbman

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president of construction. “In July, two cranes were delivered that allowed us to finalize work (underground) and prepare for vertical construction of both the tower and base. In December, we began a street-level concrete pour — a milestone that provided the first view of construction from the sidewalk. As we move into 2021, you’ll begin to see additional aboveground construction of the cores and steel structures for both the block and tower buildings.”

Moving north to Oakland County, demolition at the 110-acre site of the Palace of Auburn Hills, the former home of the Detroit Pistons, was recently completed, setting the stage for an injection of up to 1.6 million square feet of prime commercial space into the market over the next several years. The Pistons organization sold the property in 2019 to a joint venture involving team owner Tom Gores and Schostak Brothers and Co. in Livonia. Terms of the sale were not disclosed.

“The plan for that development is really corporate headquarters, office, R&D, light industrial, or any combination of those things,” says Jeffrey Schostak, president of Schostak Development. “It’s true that pure office deals are slower right now, but this market is still extremely tight.

If you’re just a regular office user you can find space anywhere, but if you’re a flex user with a need for office, R&D, light manufacturing, and some assembly component, you really don’t have a plethora of existing buildings out there.

COVID-19 clearly threw a wrench in our plans for 2020 for that development, but from what we’re hearing from the folks we’re talking to, there is activity out there.”

Schostak says he’s been speaking almost exclusively with large foreign firms that either have an existing presence in the Detroit area or are looking to relocate an R&D center here to support the auto industry. “We’ll hopefully be announcing a deal or two on the property in 2021,” Schostak says. “Ideally the first deal is one large user that would go likely on the southern half of the site, then we’d build north toward Harmon Road.”

One sign of confidence in the region’s industrial prospects is the number of projects being built with no tenant-in-waiting. “Almost everything we do is on spec,” says Susan Harvey, senior vice president of Ashley Capital, a commercial real estate investment company with offices in Detroit, New York, Atlanta, and Chicago. “Out of our 21-million-square-foot Michigan portfolio, 95 percent (was built) on spec.”

The transformation of the old Hazel Park Raceway into the 2-million-square-foot TriCounty Commerce Center is one of Ashley Capital’s spec projects. “The third building in the complex will be ready for occupancy in March 2021 and that will complete the site,” Harvey

says. “We’re negotiating leases in that building for about 550,000 square feet, and they’re almost out for signature.” In addition, two Ashley Capital properties totaling 930,000 square feet of space recently opened in Van Buren Township.

Harvey says Ashley Capital’s spec buildings are generally classified as bulk warehousing and distribution, but can also be adapted to light manufacturing. They’re typically designed to be “30 feet to 36 feet clear” — the height to which products can be stored on racking. This feature is a welcome change to the designs of the 1970s, when many Detroit-area warehouses were built, as it allows a more efficient footprint. “We also like to offer wide column spacing, and as many dock doors and outside trailer staging areas as the building design will allow,” Harvey says.

Ashley Capital’s local portfolio is 75 percent automotive-related, but a recent medical deal — and ever-aging baby boomers — could herald the dawn of a new industry sector in health care.

Indeed, a research report by real estate service

and investment firm CBRE forecasts that if President Joe Biden’s platform calling for $5.4 trillion in additional spending over 10 years is enacted, expanded health insurance coverage likely will drive demand for medical space closer to the consumer and spur the conversion of some retail space.

In addition, concerns over medical supplies from China, due to shortages that developed during the outbreak of COVID-19, are driving more spending in domestic production sources.

“Detroit was overlooked for a very long time as a place to do any good real estate development, but we’re seeing a lot more competition now,” Harvey says. “A lot of the speculative development that’s on the board is from out-of-state developers who have come in. They’re competing with us very successfully.”

Dallas-based Hillwood Development Co., which was founded by Ross Perot Jr., the son of the late H. Ross Perot, is partnering with Colliers International to develop the 4-million-squarefoot Pinnacle Landing Commerce Park in Huron

COURTESY OF FCA

Perspectives || Real Estate

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Real Estate || Perspectives

OFFROAD HERITAGE Employees at the new Detroit Assembly Complex — Mack, located on the city’s far east- side, celebrate the reveal of the 2021 Jeep Grand Cherokee L.

Township, located near Detroit Metro Airport.

While southeast Michigan’s industrial real estate market has enjoyed relative prosperity, the office and retail sectors are lagging. During the fourth quarter of 2020, according to CBRE, the metro Detroit office market posted 271,641 square feet of net negative absorption — only the second negative quarterly result since the fourth quarter of 2009. Net absorption is the difference between the commercial spaces vacated by tenants and the spaces taken up by them.

Commercial real estate firm Signature Associates, which is based in Southfield, reports that metro Detroit’s average direct vacancy rate for all office classes in the fourth quarter of 2020 was 18.99 percent. The same rate was 15.2 percent in the first quarter of 2019. Direct vacancy rates ranged from 10.7 percent in Ann Arbor to 26.54 percent in the Southfield-Bingham Farms area.

“Companies are choosing to delay major decisions on office expansions or relocations,” says John Boyd, executive vice president and principal at Signature. “It’s certainly typical for

companies to execute a short-term extension if their lease is coming up and (they’re considering) potentially downsizing their existing space.

If the vaccines are effective in the first six months of 2021, you’ll see a redeployment of people going back to offices, but it’s going to be more of a flexible work environment.”

A recent trend of “shared offices” has attracted WeWork, Regus, and Sevenco to the region, along with bolstering homegrown players like Bamboo, and Byte & Mortar. Regus has two locations in town, including at the Renaissance Center, where it has 80 private offices, eight coworking desks, and three meeting rooms. Sevenco, based in Irvine, Calif., opened a 21,000-square-foot location in Troy in late 2019 with a large enterprise suite, 80 private offices, and co-working spaces in the common areas. In addition to two downtown locations, WeWork has opened a shared space in the historic Cadillac Sales Center in Midtown, which was redeveloped by The Platform.

“We’re seeing companies that maybe just got

out of a multifloor lease in a large tower and they’re looking to downsize or they don’t want to get locked into a 10-year lease,” says Andrew Nadhir, Sevenco’s director of operations. “Our leases are typically signed for six months to a year, and occupancy ranged from 80 percent to 95 percent pre-COVID-19.” Sevenco’s tenants have included The Bank of England, ad agency BBDO Worldwide, and real estate firm The Woodbeck Team.

In a November post at AutomationAlley.com, Ron Goldstone, executive vice president at NAI Farbman, said the region’s retail sector took a “gut punch.” “Detroit retail is suffering under a similar set of circumstances as the rest of the nation, especially in urban centers,” he wrote.

“With less foot traffic downtown and fewer people shopping in person, we’re seeing something on the order of a 60 percent to 70 percent reduction in volume.

“Well-located, well-conceived, and well-designed neighborhood retail is generally handling the slowdown better than other retail segments.

The best regional malls, like the Somerset Collection in Troy, will power through. Some second-tier properties will survive, but there will be some attrition. Virtually no C-level malls will survive. Creative reuse will be essential, and owners and investors will need to find new uses like office, medical, industrial, and storage to transition or redevelop those properties. As a result, the post-COVID-19 retail landscape will likely feature fewer regional enclosed malls, and smaller and more creative retail and mixed-use environments.”

In the face of the hurdles posed by COVID-19, there are surprising bright spots. Against the bankruptcies and job losses, the U.S. Census Bureau reported in January 2021 that U.S. business applications for the fourth quarter of 2020, adjusted for seasonal variation, peaked at 1,115,984 — although this was a drop of 28.5 percent from the previous quarter. Michigan logged 32,590 business applications, seasonally adjusted, in the fourth quarter of last year, a 38.3 percent jump from year-ago results. For now it’s a waiting game, but some Michigan real estate executives feel positive about the recovery.

“Detroit has the best shot ever of becoming the lead city in the Midwest for places to do business,” says Andy Gutman, president of NAI Farbman, a full-service commercial real estate firm in Southfield. “We have highly educated people, an unrivalled workforce, available land that’s often properly zoned and connected to utilities, and schools dedicated to engineering and other high levels of education. It creates a workforce that makes us strong and competitive not only in the Midwest, but in the U.S. and across the world.”

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Feature || Nursing Homes

SYSTEM FAILURE

The mission of senior care facilities to ease residents’ twilight years turned into a nightmare after state leaders failed to adequately separate COVID-19 patients from healthy individuals.

BY ILENE WOLFF | ILLUSTRATIONS BY BRIAN BRITIGAN

W

hen COVID-19 started roiling through nursing homes last winter, Cecelia Payne had more at stake than most.

And her worst fears soon became reality.

Her husband, Arnold Brown, 78, died of COVID-19 on April 24, 2020, at McLaren Macomb Hospital in Mt. Clemens after being transferred there from the Martha T. Berry Medical Care Facility.

Brown, a former manufacturing tooling engineer before a stroke disabled him, had been in the Mt. Clemens skilled nursing facility since 2006. His roommate at the medical care facility died, as well. “I really do feel that he got it from a staff member,” Payne, of Macomb Township, says of her husband’s illness. “Especially when I learned his roommate had it, too.”

Kevin Evans, executive director of the Martha T. Berry Medical Care Facility, says he was saddened by Brown’s death. “I can’t say I’m sorry enough for the loss,” he says, noting the center has had no in-facility coronavirus transmissions since May 2020. “We were doing the best we could in a viral war zone, and we didn’t know enough to be as effective as we are now.”

One year after Gov. Gretchen Whitmer curtailed visits at nursing homes and other senior congregate care facilities across the state, the first of many steps enacted in an attempt to mitigate the spread of COVID-19, what have we learned?

Overall, it’s become abundantly clear that since Whitmer’s executive order was issued last

March 14, housing the oldest, sickest, and most frail Michiganders in group settings turned out to be super-spreader setups, and state leaders, along with the people responsible for running and overseeing such residences, were unprepared for a health crisis from a highly contagious, deadly disease.

Three days after the first confirmed case of COVID-19 in the state, Melissa Samuel, president and CEO of the Health Care Association of Michigan, recommended in a letter to the governor, congressional leaders, and department directors that “vacant, and new and unlicensed facilities” be used as “quarantine centers to avoid widespread infection inside of nursing facilities.”

A month later, at the direction of an executive order, the state moved to establish a system of regional hub facilities for infected residents.

Overall, 23,620 residents in long-term care settings in Michigan had contracted the virus and more than 5,420 had died from COVID-19 by the end of January. State officials said the numbers include those seniors who died while being treated at hospitals.

As of Feb. 1, deaths in long-term care settings — nursing homes, assisted living, homes for the aged, and adult foster care homes — have accounted for about one-third of the COVID-19 deaths in the state.

It’s not just in Michigan. Nationwide, 40 percent of COVID-19 deaths have occurred in nursing homes, even though they house less than 1 percent of Americans, according to the AARP Bulletin.

Senior care experts say Gov. Whitmer, state health officials, and nursing home operators must do a better job of keeping the elderly in

congregate care safe. In fact, the past year has demonstrated that good business practices apply in properly managing senior care facilities just as they do in corporate boardrooms.

Directives need to be clear and comprehensive; leaders must be accountable and deliver on promises; accurate, reliable data is critical to making good decisions; facilities should be run with a high level of service; and any plan’s success depends on scrupulous execution, as even the best strategy will fail when carried out haphazardly.

Former State Rep. Leslie Love can attest to the haphazard execution of good plans. Her mother had been living on a senior continuum-of-care campus for six years when Love testified before the Michigan Senate Oversight Committee last May. Her mother had her own bedroom and bathroom at a Green House home until the campus became a hub facility for COVID-19 patients discharged from hospital care. The hub model, devised by state officials, was created to provide post-acute care for seniors living in congregate care settings that were not equipped for that level of care.

As a result, Love’s mother was transferred out of her private room to another part of the campus, where she was assigned a roommate for the first time. Shortly afterward, the elder Love developed COVID-19. “She had had three negative test results prior (to that), and an X-ray,” Love testified. “I think it is a direct correlation to that mixed environment.”

A better solution would have been to have separate facilities specifically designated for COVID-19-positive people. The second best option would have been to set up separate

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Feature || Nursing Homes

CARE RELIEF ABOUT 15 YEARS AGO, ROGER MYERS WAS READY TO BREAK GROUND ON A replacement nursing home at the Village of Redford, a retirement community in Redford Township that was part of Presbyterian Villages of Michigan, where he’s president and CEO. He was in his office when a call from the village’s executive director changed the building plans — and Myers’ life.

“Some of my colleagues had heard about these Green Houses in Tupelo, Miss., (so they went there) and they called me from the airport and said, ‘We have to stop everything; we’re about to make a huge mistake,’ ” Myers recalls being told that day.

Myers says his colleagues also told him, ‘We’ve seen the future of nursing homes.’“ What the team saw at the Methodist Senior Services Traceway Retirement Community were nursing homes that looked like just that — homes. And that’s just one feature that makes them so different from traditional care facilities.

Traceway’s 10 Green House homes are part of the nonprofit Green House Project, currently a network of 300 radically noninstitutional eldercare environments in 32 states that are designed to look home-like and yet meet regulatory requirements. In a Green House home, each resident, or elder, has a private bedroom and bathroom.

Residents are attended to by a small number of medically qualified universal caregivers who not only help with personal care but also cook, do laundry, clean, and lead activities. In a typical nursing facility, different people from separate departments perform such tasks.

The private, personal accommodations and small number of caregivers may account for the relatively low number of COVID-19 infections in Green Houses nationally, and at the two homes at the Village of Redford that were built according to the new model.

At Green House homes, “… residents are one-fifth as likely to get coronavirus as those who live in typical nursing homes — and one-twentieth as likely to die from the disease it causes,” according to a Nov. 3, 2020, Washington Post article. In the six Green House home campuses in Michigan — Detroit, Grand Rapids, Holland, Kalkaska, Powers, and Redford Township — there were no coronavirus cases at the time of the article’s publication.

In one of the Michigan locations, in Kalkaska, there have been no coronavirus cases among residents throughout the pandemic (as of Feb. 1, 2021).

“I think it’s just less exposure to various people,” says Kelsey Hastings, co-owner of Advantage Management, which owns two Green House homes in Redford Township it bought from Presbyterian Villages. One of the Advantage homes has had no cases of coronavirus among its 10 residents.

Early in the pandemic, at the other Advantage home, a newly admitted person who was positive for the virus died. After his admission, five other residents became sick but recovered. The home has been COVID-19 free since April, Hastings says.

Across town at another Green House location, the Weinberg Residences at the Thome Rivertown Neighborhood in Detroit, six residents among 21 were stricken with the virus early in the pandemic and three died. As understanding of the coronavirus grew, things improved at Weinberg.

“We’ve been COVID-19 free since April, thank God,” says Green House guide Wenona Breazeale. At Green House homes, guides are part of management.

While the Green House homes model typically results in residents who are happier and healthier than people in more traditional facilities, according to the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, the setup also gives employees a tremendous amount of autonomy, Myers says.

At Weinberg, a group of about 19 universal caregivers, all of them certified nursing assistants, operate as a self-managed work team in charge of its own schedule and job assignments. Their base pay of $14-15 per hour is higher than the $11.50 average hourly wage offered in other long-term care facilities in the area, Breazeale says.

The autonomy and higher pay lead to greater job satisfaction and longevity among staff, which creates more stability and familiarity for the elders, she says.

— Ilene Wolff

units with dedicated staff, where “the staff that works with that population only works with that population,” Love said.

It wasn’t until September that Whitmer reacted to the problem by tightening the qualifications for nursing facilities that can accept COVID-positive patients, along with changing their designation from “regional hub” to “care and recovery center.”

Even with guidance from the state and federal government, however, some nursing homes are so poorly run or overwhelmed that it doesn’t seem to make a difference.

For example, state figures from Feb. 1 indicate Lakepointe Senior Care and Rehab Center in Clinton Township had 106 residents test positive for COVID-19, and 34 had died from the virus at the 134-bed facility. At Carriage House Nursing and Rehab in Bay City, which is licensed for 120 beds, 45 residents had tested positive and 11 had died, according to Feb. 1 state figures.

Deanna Mitchell, vice president of health policy for LeadingAge Michigan, a Lansing-based trade association for senior care services, including congregate care facilities, told the Senate Oversight Committee on May 20 that the statewide strategy for stopping the spread of COVID-19 in post-acute and long-term facilities was “quite fragmented” and that coordination needed improvement among state agencies, the governor’s office, and local health departments.

“We have members in several parts of the state who report widely varying guidance from different local health departments, and it’s very unclear when a problem arises in a region who the ultimate agency is for coordinating a resolution,” Mitchell said.

Especially confusing for association members licensed as homes for the aged and adult foster care, neither of which offers the level of medical care nursing homes do, was the lack of guidance from state officials about how to properly care for those seniors who had tested positive for COVID-19.

Unlike nursing homes, which are modeled after hospitals, homes for the aged and adult foster care facilities often lack the resources, skill sets, and structural capacity to dedicate space and personnel for COVID-19 care, Mitchell said. They’re often run as residential homes, and any medical advice would have been very helpful to them.

During an April 21 conference call, Michigan’s Health and Human Services department promised guidance for non-nursing home facilities, but as of May 20 Mitchell still had not received any help.

Meanwhile, in an executive order on April 15, Whitmer established a system of regional hubs among 21 nursing homes the state said were

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better equipped to isolate and care for COVID19 patients. “However, almost immediately after the issuance of the order, these facilities had identified that there really wasn’t a real place to put (those patients),” Mitchell said.

Over the following weeks, it became clear to Mitchell’s members that hospitals would only admit patients who needed acute care, while the hubs could accept discharged COVID-19 patients and affected residents from other facilities that couldn’t properly care for them. However, among the 21 facilities selected by the state, nearly half had below-average quality ratings from the federal government.

At the same time, the Whitmer administration paid regional hubs $5,000 per bed in the program, and $200 per day for occupied beds.

Before the pandemic began, Mary Gilhuly thought she had the perfect solution for care for her mother, Carol, when the 91-year-old family matriarch agreed to move from her Oak Park home to assisted living at St. Anne’s Mead in Southfield.

Things didn’t work out at St. Anne’s after a couple of months, so Gilhuly started shopping for a new place for her mom to live. This time, on the recommendation of a friend, she looked for an adult foster care home.

Gilhuly is one of thousands of Michiganders who needed to find a safe place that’s the right fit for a loved one who can no longer live alone.

Difficult to begin with, the task of finding the right place has become harder because of the pandemic’s rampage through congregate senior care locations.

As COVID-19 spread, shopping for a safe place was made especially challenging because of a lack of information from state regulators about incidences of the disease in some senior congregate-care settings, including adult foster care and homes for the aged.

It wasn’t until November that state regulators addressed the problem. The Michigan Department of Health and Human Services began requiring homes for the aged and larger adult foster care facilities to start providing weekly reports on COVID-19 diagnoses and deaths, according to Kate Massey, senior deputy director of the department’s medical services administration.

That was welcome news to Josephine Messelmani, vice president of long-term care services for the Detroit Area Agency on Aging. “Awesome,” she said on hearing the news. “I believe in full transparency, full disclosure.”

There was already a requirement in place for reporting, but compliance was lax. “We’ll be moving toward more enforcement, data validation, and web posting of facility-specific information in the coming weeks,” Massey said in an

interview before the change occurred.

Initially, the numbers were incomplete because the state health department had data from only about one-quarter of such congregate care facilities, public information officer Bob Wheaton confirmed. He said the state didn’t have the “bandwidth” to validate all of the data submitted, which they suspected contained errors.

“I think what you see is a public health system that was strained for the appropriate resources to have automated systems in place to collect information and use it,” says Janet Olszewski, who was director of the department from 2003 to 2010, when it was called Community Health for Michigan. “In the early days of my tenure, we had significant funding to invest in preparedness systems which included disease surveillance … a lot of that funding has waned since 2010.”

Compounding the problem were the lower levels of reporting requirements for homes for the aged and adult foster care compared to skilled nursing facilities, she says. “In a pandemic, suddenly a need for their data ramps up and they were like everyone else, suffering from staffing shortages, et cetera.”

Hoping to increase reporting rates, the state has pared down the weekly reporting requirements from the 40 pieces of information the health department previously required — and often didn’t receive — to just 10 items. “We’re only collecting information that’s relevant and

that we would use, and the public might use,” says Erin Emerson, director of the Office of Strategic Partnerships and Medicaid at Michigan’s health department.

As Gilhuly found out when she was shopping for congregate care for her mother, facilities can house anywhere from less than a handful of people to hundreds of individuals in one location. To complicate things, the resident population typically has several COVID-19 risk factors: being 65 and older, lifestyle diseases, and other common late-in-life conditions.

Today, those shopping for a skilled nursing facility can check the state’s health department website for coronavirus diagnoses and COVID-19 deaths at facilities that house the elderly.

Prior to November, those interested in an adult foster care home or a home for the aged were left to do their own research when trying to assess a facility’s safety because the state still hadn’t collected, verified, and put data online from the more than 1,350 congregate care facilities it licenses.

After DBusiness submitted a Freedom of Information Act request, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services provided some data, even though it was incomplete. As of Aug. 30, the department had received reports of 205 resident coronavirus cases and 39 COVID19 resident deaths from adult foster care facilities; 451 cases and 186 deaths from homes for the aged; and 179 cases and 82 deaths from

“IN THE EARLY DAYS OF MY TENURE, WE HAD SIGNIFICANT FUNDING TO INVEST IN PREPAREDNESS SYSTEMS WHICH INCLUDED DISEASE SURVEILLANCE …

A LOT OF THAT FUNDING HAS WANED SINCE 2010.”

— JANET OLSZEWSKI

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Feature || Nursing Homes

assisted living facilities.

Assisted living facilities, which aren’t licensed by the state, are no longer required to report, according to health department spokeswoman Lynn Sutfin.

A clear picture of all that is going on in these facilities is still emerging. For example, Wheaton, Sutfin’s colleague, wrote after the FOIA request was submitted in September: “To piggyback off the FOIA response, I wanted to be sure to let you know that, due to inconsistent reporting by facilities, the data being provided does not paint a complete picture of COVID-19 cases and deaths.”

He said the department knew some facilities weren’t reporting. “For those that are, we haven’t done any true data validation. But given our experience with the nursing home data, we have reason to expect some confusion around data definitions and data quality issues as a result,” he said.

Having complete numbers is important because the public and health departments in Michigan’s 83 counties rely on the state health department for accurate records, according to county public information officers in Macomb and Oakland counties.

Data literacy expert Kristin Fontichiaro, a clinical associate professor at the University of

Michigan School of Information in Ann Arbor, likes what she sees at the top of the state health department’s updated long-term care data page, including explanations about data reporting and validation, as well as definitions of the various eldercare licenses. “One thing people (often) do is they look at the chart or the table and don’t realize right away (that they should) look at the meta data (definitions and explanations),” she says. “I think what they’re trying to do is be very clear.”

That doesn’t mean the display couldn’t be improved.

Fontichiaro says it would also be helpful to know how many residents are in one bedroom at each site, and to group together facilities that are in one location. For example, there’s no way of knowing that the skilled nursing facility Care & Rehab Center and Eva’s Place, a home for the aged, both at Glacier Hills Senior Living Community in Ann Arbor, are on the same campus.

“I’m not saying the data isn’t accurate,” Fontichiaro says. “I’m saying there are other ways to make it more useful.”

Fontichiaro warns that, sometimes, there can be deliberately misleading data presentations. In Georgia, for example, a graph from the state’s Department of Public Health showed a

decline in cases in a bar chart by mixing up times and locations.

On the horizontal x-axis, the graph began on April 28, went back in time to April 27, then jumped two days ahead to April 29, according to Business Insider. The date-hopping continued along the vertical y-axis. The vertical colored bars — with each color representing a county — were arranged in different orders for each date.

When examined closely, the graph seemed to bend both time and place to achieve a clean, descending-staircase effect. “I think what we’re seeing is a collision between data and politics,” Fontichiaro says.

Her sentiment resonates with Brian Lee, executive director of Families for Better Care, an advocacy group in Austin, Texas, that’s focused on nursing homes and other long-term care settings. He’s tracked data posted across the country and believes pressure from the nursing home industry has prompted some states to keep their numbers hidden.

“It’s about liability protection of an industry more than anything else,” Lee says. “I think it’s a real disservice to the families, and they are desperate for information.” Massey and Emerson, from the Michigan health department, say they haven’t been lobbied by the nursing home industry.

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Notwithstanding validation to ensure accuracy, the usefulness of senior congregate care COVID-19 data posted by different states varies.

Florida, for example, the No. 2 state in the nation for percent of population age 65 or older, posts cases and deaths for skilled nursing and assisted living facilities, and for licensed group homes, but Lee says it’s not of very high quality.

It’s also hard to get a comprehensive, overall view of COVID-19 in Florida’s congregate care facilities because the data is site-specific or date-specific, with long columns of numbers or bar charts and no totals for either.

“I take it with a grain of salt what they publish,” he says. “There’s a very broad chasm between what Florida is publishing and what CMS (Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services) is posting.”

Florida’s numbers were only made more suspect when a state data scientist left her job in May, claiming she was told to report incorrect information. That woman is now facing legal action from the state.

On the other hand, New Jersey has good information, Lee says.

The New Jersey Department of Health publishes a “DATA Dashboard” with information from nursing homes, assisted living, dementia care homes, comprehensive personal care homes, developmental centers, and residential health care facilities licensed by the state. Longterm care data is self-reported daily by the facilities to the department’s Communicable Disease Reporting and Surveillance System, according to an email from a department spokeswoman.

“The COVID-19 dashboard was created by the state Department of Health and first posted March 12 to provide updated, transparent information on cases, hospitalizations, and deaths in long-term care facilities,” she wrote.

“It continues to evolve, with the addition of a dashboard on the state’s contact tracing efforts and a dashboard on confirmed outbreaks in K-12 schools.”

While public leaders work to improve their response to the pandemic, Michigan’s health department, like its counterpart in New Jersey, has come up with a plan to make COVID-19 data from adult foster care facilities and homes for the aged more reliable and transparent.

There are still plenty of problems with both procedures and data within congregate care facilities in Michigan, and while it’s too late for the tragic loss of Payne’s husband and other affected seniors, at least people like Gilhuly can now tap out a request on their computer and get some information they need to help keep their loved ones safe.

WHAT IS SENIOR CONGREGATE CARE IN MICHIGAN? There are a number of types of congregate care for senior citizens in Michigan. Here’s how the state defines them:

ADULT FOSTER CARE

Older residents may need adult foster care services because of the physical frailties of age or mental disabilities. Residents in adult foster care don’t require continuous nursing care unless they’re in hospice. Settings range from homes in neighborhoods to more institutional locations. The state licenses these facilities according to size: congregate homes with more than 20 beds, large group homes with 13 to 20 beds, medium group homes with seven to 12 beds, small group homes with one to six beds, and family homes with one to six beds. COVID-19 data from medium and small group homes isn’t posted online by the state Department of Health and Human Services out of regard for patient privacy.

ASSISTED LIVING

Assisted living is strictly a marketing term. Assisted living facilities are not licensed or regulated by the state.

HOMES FOR THE AGED

Residents of these types of facilities may need some assistance due to the physical frailties of age. Similar to adult foster care, residents in these homes don’t require continuous nursing care unless they’re in hospice. The term “Home for the Aged” means it’s a supervised personal care facility that provides room and board in addition to supervised personal care (cuing, prompting, reminding or assistance with eating, toileting, bathing, grooming, dressing, transferring, mobility, medical management, keeping appointments, and awareness of a resident’s general whereabouts). These facilities typically house 21 or more unrelated, nontransient individuals 55 years of age or older. Homes for the aged also include supervised personal care facilities for 20 or fewer individuals 55 years of age or older if the facility is operated in conjunction with and as a distinct part of a licensed nursing home. A “room” could be a bedroom, an apartment, or a suite.

MEMORY CARE

There is no license or regulation in Michigan for memory care facilities, which care for people with Alzheimer’s disease and other related illnesses.

SKILLED NURSING FACILITIES

A nursing home is a facility — including county medical care facilities — that provides organized nursing care and medical treatment to seven or more unrelated individuals suffering or recovering from illness, injury, or infirmity. A nursing home, county medical care facility, or hospital long-term care unit that’s state-licensed can be federally certified to participate in Medicare/Medicaid.

— Ilene Wolff MARCH - APRIL 2021 || DBUSINESS.COM 49

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Century Club || Feature

——_

;

Operating a business for more than 100 years takes luck, ingenuity, and steadfast determination. But the real skill that enhances operational longevity comes in successfully passing an enterprise from one generation to the next.

By Ilene Wolff

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Solutions

Feature || Century Club

Troy | Employees: 350 | Revenue: NA

ometime after Harlem Ives became a partner in Rose’s Rat Exterminator Co. in 1932, he started scheduling routine fumigation services with his clients, rather than waiting for a severe problem to occur. Why, he reasoned, should the factories and food production facilities he serviced completely shut down when their infestations got so bad that exterminators had to use extreme measures that would kill anything that was alive?

Ives was obviously on to something, and his preventive service strategy enjoys widespread use among industries of all types today.

That kind of innovation has helped keep Rose, since renamed Rose Pest Solutions, in business for 161 years. The Ives family has run the business for the past 89 years and is currently in its third generation of leadership, with Russ Ives as CEO and Jim Ives as president. A fourth generation holds management and in-house counsel roles.

Like Harlem, successive leaders haven’t been shy about adopting new pest control measures.

Two more recent innovations focus on a problem that seems to arise every few years or so in residential settings: bed bugs.

About a decade ago, Rose started using dogs to detect bed bug infestations. The “Rose Noses” and their handlers are recertified yearly and trained to detect live eggs in addition to the pesky bugs. Several years after establishing its canine unit, Rose started using heat to eradicate bed bugs.

“We decided we wanted to get into it because our entomologists believe it’s the best way,” Jim says. “I think it’s that kind of thing that helps us stay relevant.”

When it comes to termites, Russ says the company was one of the first to use bait — material that tricks worker termites into taking insecticide

PEST MEASURES Rose Pest Solutions in Troy helped introduce preventive measures in the 1930s to alleviate major infestations of rodents, insects, and other predators, a practice that's still ongoing. Below is an earlier office in Detroit.

back to the underground colony to eliminate breeders — rather than pumping gallons of pesticide around the foundation of a building to destroy the wood-eating pests.

Just as insecticide fumes can creep into the tiniest of cracks in a building, innovation permeates the thinking of the leadership at Rose, including how the enterprise is managed.

In one instance, the company brought in a business process engineering consultant who worked to actively involve staff in decision-making, rather than merely taking steps mandated by leadership. The company subsequently changed its billing and computer systems as a result.

“You have a tendency in a family business to be autocratic,” Jim says.

In addition, starting with Russ and Jim’s generation, children in the family have felt no pressure from their elders to join the company. Both Russ and Jim say they worked elsewhere for a time before signing on fulltime at Rose in 1978 and 1981, respectively, although as teens both worked summers doing warehouse work and outdoor maintenance.

Taking it a step further, if a family member becomes part of the company, none of the Ives reports to another relative, and managers are empowered to discipline and terminate even employees with bloodlines to Harlem and his son, Bill Ives, who is Russ and Jim’s father. In fact, early on, Jim was almost fired for taking too much time away from his workday to hang out with his gregarious grandfather.

“My boss didn’t take too kindly to that and he let me know,” Jim says.

Before Bill retired in 1995, he managed the company’s expansion with additional locations in Michigan, Indiana, and Ohio through internal growth and the acquisition of other pest control businesses.

Rose also grew by adding services. In addition to bugs and rodents, it offers animal and bird management for outdoor critters who seek refuge in big box stores and factories, along with bioremediation for the microscopic pests that thrive in the fats and oils lining the drains of restaurant and food handling operations.

But diversification only goes so far. “We’re very broad spectrum within the context of our industry,” Russ says.

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Golf Club Century Club || Feature

Detroit | Employees: 145 (summer) Budget: NA

wo businessmen — one who witnessed Detroit’s ascendancy amidst the growth of the auto industry, another alive during the city’s hopeful 21st century rebirth — have figured prominently in the history of the Detroit Golf Club.

More recently, Dan Gilbert brought the inaugural Rocket Mortgage Classic to the club in 2019, followed by the first annual hosting of the golf competition in 2020. The Rocket Mortgage Classic is the first PGA Tour event ever in the city, and delivers much more than prestige and a chance to play the Donald Ross-designed courses.

“It helps the community directly (through charitable donations),” explains Keith Studzinski, historian of the Detroit Golf Club and a past president. “That’s why the members are doing it.”

Studzinski says the event raised $1.2 million for Detroit-area charities in 2019 and $2.7 million in 2020, when the competition was held during the COVID-19 pandemic without public ticketholders.

Participants in the Rocket Mortgage Classic play on DGC’s two 18-hole courses, created by the noted golf designer, and enjoy the amenities of an Albert Kahn-designed clubhouse, thanks to the leadership of another businessman and politician: William R. Farrand.

Driving wealth through his piano and organ business, Farrand enlisted nine friends in 1899 to help form a golf club. The group initially rented a 45-acre plot of farmland near Woodward Avenue and Six Mile Road, built six holes, and charged a membership fee of $10. Annual dues were another $10.

By 1900, the course had been expanded to nine holes, and by 1916 the club had its famed 18-hole courses. Standing between the seventh and eighth fairways on the North Course is an

STEADY GRIP With two, 18-hole courses at the Detroit Golf Club — North and South — and the first tees located together behind the Albert Kahn-designed clubhouse, hitting the first drive can be a daunting challenge, as shown during an opening round in 1949.

old, gnarled oak tree reportedly bent as a sapling by Native Americans to use as a marker on a trail between Detroit and Pontiac.

Also in 1916, the club hired Donald Ross’ brother, Alec, winner of the 1907 U.S. Open, as head professional. Other notable head pros were to follow.

After Alec Ross came Horton Smith, the inaugural Masters tournament winner in 1934 (he won The Masters again in 1936). Next up was Detroit native Walter Burkemo, who had won the 1953 PGA Championship at the nearby Birmingham Country Club. George Bayer, a four-time PGA Tour winner, also held the job.

Whether by writ or custom, membership was initially limited to white men, but women were allowed at the club in 1905 and the first woman president, Nancy Clavel Forte, was elected in 2000. The exact year women were permitted as members may be lost to history.

No less a figure than the late Mayor Coleman A. Young broke the color line at the club and was admitted under a complimentary social membership (with no golf privileges) in 1986. That same year, Walter C. Watkins — a Black bank executive — joined with a full membership.

Through the years, a variety of notable Detroiters have been members, including Henry Ford and his son, Edsel; Horace Rackham, a philanthropist who donated $100,000 for the construction of the two 18-hole courses; Michigan poet laureate Edgar Guest; Mayor Dennis Archer; football Hall of Famer Jerome Bettis; Kid Rock; and WDIV TV4 newscaster Rhonda Walker.

In 2020, the clubhouse underwent $4.5 million in renovations, part of a larger package of updates totaling $9 million. “We’re looking at how much we can bite off next,” Studzinski says.

While the club was used fairly regularly last summer despite the pandemic, the members saw fit to invest in the latest technology. Now anyone can play the course’s 36 holes to their hearts’ content — the video game PGA Tour 2K21 added the Detroit Golf Club as an add-on download late in 2020.

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& Millwork Feature || Century Club

Trenton | Employees: 160 | Revenue: $90M

n 1900, as natural gas and steam began to flow through a network of pipes to heat city buildings, German immigrant Nicholas August Mans sold and delivered coal and peat out of the downriver community of Trenton. “He was a very shrewd businessman, and frugal,” says great-grandson Doug Mans. “He would collect the ashes from the coal he had sold and make soap out of the pot ash.”

That business acumen and frugality continues today at Mans Lumber & Millwork, the current iteration of the company Nicholas established at the start of the last century.

“Part of the reason we’ve survived both the Great Depression and the great housing recession (during the latter half of the 2000s) is due to the philosophy of making smart growth decisions, leaving money in the business for a rainy day, and always leaving something better than you found it,” says Mans, president of Mans Lumber & Millwork. “I believe each generation has taken this to heart and tried to leave the company better for the next generation.”

Currently, Mans has locations in Ann Arbor, Birmingham, and Canton Township, in addition to its Trenton headquarters. Besides lumber and custom millwork, the business offers kitchen and bath design and remodeling through two showrooms; decking, windows, doors, and flooring; an installed products division; equipment rental; and financing in partnership with a lender.

In addition to Doug, family members in the TOOL WORKS business include Chris, Jim, and Pete Mans, as Nicholas August Mans took his well as Anna Mans Motschall — the first woman initial trade of selling coal and in the family to join the company. peat throughout the region and set the foundation for Some of Doug Mans’ “smart growth deciMans Lumber & Millwork, a sions” include the acquisition of Ypsilanti-based multifaceted remodeling and Washtenaw Door & Trim in 2018, an expansion construction enterprise in into Ann Arbor in 2019, and the acquisition of Trenton that serves metro Detroit and Ann Arbor.

Legendary Millwork of Troy last year.

In 2010, Mans brought National Lumber, formerly of Warren, into the fold. “National Lumber was more of a strategic partnership,” Doug says.

“During the housing depression of 2005-2010, all lumberyards were struggling to find revenue. Jim Rosenthal (president of IMG Management Group and now managing partner of Mans) and I started discussing ways of helping each other and decided working together was the best recipe for success. Jim and his partner, Alan Strickstein, joined our executive team, and in 2021 (they’ll) be starting their 12th year (here).

“We’ve always wanted smart growth, and (we) never chased expansion just for more sales. It had to be a good fit for our vision and allow us to move into either markets or product offerings we weren’t currently in.”

Doug took the lead in the family concern when his dad, Nick Mans, and Mike Mans, his uncle, retired in 2004. “In title I’m president, but all owners have equal voices,” he says.

As happens in many family businesses, Doug joined the company while in high school, although his earliest memory of the enterprise may have been when the Trenton location burned in the 1970s and his mom drove the family to the blaze to watch the local fire departments fight it.

During his teen years, Doug swept sheds and stacked lumber. He spent summers making deliveries and waiting on customers. “It was important to learn the business from the ground up and learn as many of the positions as possible within the organization,” he says.

Each family member has the option of joining the company, but the cutoff age for signing up is 25 years old. “It’s about sweat equity,” Doug explains.

“When you’re 21 and 22, and working hard and building the company, it wouldn’t be right if someone was 32 and decided to join when others have been working hard all those years.”

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Hospital Century Club || Feature

Detroit | Employees: 33,000 | Revenue: $6.5B (Henry Ford Health System)

hy did a car guy like Henry Ford want to start a hospital?

“You know, that’s actually been researched and I’ve had some personal conversations with the Ford family about that, and at the end of the day he felt that Detroit needed a hospital for what he called ‘the everyday man,’ ” says Bob Riney, president and COO of the hospital’s parent company, Henry Ford Health System in Detroit.

After the establishment of Ford Motor Co. in 1903 — it was one of about 200 automakers that were active in Detroit between 1900 and 1920 — Ford watched as the city’s population burgeoned.

Mindful of human well-being, he reasoned that Detroiters old and new would need health care.

“One of his quotes that I think about probably 50 times a year was the quote he made at the groundbreaking when he said, ‘Detroit doesn’t need another hospital. It needs a hotel for sick people,’ ” Riney recalls. “I remember how ahead of the time he was to make that statement about health care needing to be more socially oriented and more like a hotel than a hospital — because, of course, that’s what we’ve been spending our days doing, trying to find that right blend between having the services of a hotel but recognizing we’re a very serious hospital.”

Ford’s words came back to those who knew about them when, in 2009, the system opened the wellness-oriented Henry Ford West Bloomfield Hospital. Gerard van Grinsven, president and CEO of the new complex when it opened, was hired away from the Ritz-Carlton in Dearborn (now the Henry Hotel), where he served as general manager. Rather than a sterile aesthetic, he oversaw the design of what can best be

HEALTH QUARTERS Henry Ford Hospital in Detroit, which opened on Oct. 1, 1915, was one of the first health facilities in the nation that incorporated a closed staff of employed physicians, following the lead of the Mayo Clinic in Rochester, Minn.

described as a northern Michigan lodge set amid woodlands and a pond.

“We don’t take the common path often,” Riney says. “One of the things (we were cited for) when we won the Malcolm Baldridge National Quality Award (in 2011) is that you don’t just perfect the path that’s there; you create a new path.”

Riney, who joined Henry Ford in 1978 and has worked in nearly every business unit of the system, says he’s always admired the organization’s commitment to the community, its pursuit of diversity, and its passion for being on the leading edge of transformation.

He says the organization prides itself on the kind of innovation that led to the West Bloomfield hospital, not to mention patient care advancements like building a facility with private and semiprivate rooms instead of wards.

Other advances throughout the years include turning Henry Ford Hospital into an influenza ward during a pandemic (1919), repairing abdominal aortic aneurysms (1952), establishing a drive-through polio vaccine program in a parking garage (1962), installing Michigan’s first CT scanner (also 1962), performing living donor liver transplants (2000), and conducting clinical trials for the novel coronavirus vaccine (2020).

Among Ford Hospital’s administrative and academic achievements are adopting a closed-staff model for doctors from the start, opening a nursing school in 1925, establishing a medical journal in 1953, adopting automation in the form of computers in 1962, opening a simulation center for training in 2007, and establishing an innovation center in 2011.

The organization also is passionate about the legacy of its founder, his brand, and his family.

Although there are no requirements on either side to do so, the health system maintains a close connection with the Ford family. There has always been a Ford on its board, Riney says.

The current family member on the board is Lynn Ford Alandt, Henry Ford’s great-granddaughter. Through the years, the family has not only participated in governance, it has sought medical care at the hospital and made substantial donations to fund patient care and research.

“We take the DNA of Henry Ford very seriously,” Riney says. “What I mean by that is it’s not lost on us that we were founded by one of the world’s greatest innovators.”

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Feature || Century Club

Lincoln Motor Co. Dearborn | Employees: 187,000 Revenue: $156B (Ford Motor Co.)

S

oul singer James Brown owned one. So did Elvis Presley and Frank Sinatra. Elizabeth Taylor had one that was painted to match her eyes.

Architect Frank Lloyd Wright considered it “the most beautiful car in the world” and bought two. President John F. Kennedy was riding in one that horrific day in Dallas.

The Lincoln Continental, led by the design influence of Edsel Ford — son of automotive pioneer Henry Ford — from the 1930s until his death at age 49 in 1943, was the height of luxury from American carmakers with its V-12 engine, sweeping lines, and sumptuous appointments.

“Father made the most popular car in the world,” Ford said of the Ford Model T. “I want to make the best car in the world.”

Initially, there was no assembly line. Each Lincoln was handmade to Edsel Ford’s specifications.

“In any Lincoln Motor Co. history, he was the rock star,” says Ted Ryan, archives and heritage brand manager for Ford. “He was the one who brought in (yacht designer) Bob Gregorie to design the Continental, although Gregorie used to say the design for the Continental was sitting in Edsel’s head and the two of them just worked to get it out.”

By the beginning of 1939, as work on the first prototype car, then called the Lincoln-Zephyr Continental, neared completion, Edsel liked it enough to order two more for his sons, Henry II and Benson, according to Ford’s website. With the 1941 model, Zephyr was dropped from the name and the car was known simply as the Lincoln Continental (later designated Mark I).

When the Mark II was introduced in 1955, it retained the standards of design and excellence envisioned by Edsel.

In fact, the Continental was selected and

ABE'S AUTOMAKER When Henry Leland started a company in 1917 to build V-12 Liberty aircraft engines, he named it after President Abraham Lincoln. Three years later, Lincoln began producing cars, including the 1922 L-series Touring Sedan.

displayed by the Museum of Modern Art in 1946 as one of eight cars epitomizing design excellence.

The original Lincoln Motor Co. had humbler beginnings before it became the “bling” in the Ford empire. It was rooted in founder Henry Leland’s love for country, and fighting to win World War I. “He was passionately patriotic — thus the name Lincoln, after President Abraham Lincoln (for whom Leland had voted),” Ryan says. “They actually didn’t build the first car until 1920.”

Leland had set up in an existing plant at 41331 Holden St. in 1917, just south of Henry Ford Hospital, to build V-12 Liberty engines for fighter planes during the war under a $10-million government contract. He quickly realized the facilities were too small and built a new factory on Detroit’s west side at Livernois and Warren avenues.

After the war, having built 6,500 Liberty engines, Leland retooled the plant to manufacture automobiles. Leading his reinvented business wasn’t meant to be for Leland, though, and the company sought bankruptcy in 1922. Enter Henry Ford, who acquired the automaker for $8 million.

Ford had initially offered $5 million for the company, whose assets were estimated at twice the eventual sales price, but a judge blocked that bid.

Ford reportedly made his low-ball offer to get back at Leland for creating Cadillac Automobile Co. from the scraps of the failed Henry Ford Co., which preceded Ford Motor Co. Cadillac was created after Leland, then principal of Leland and Faulconer Manufacturing Co. in Detroit, was hired to value the assets of a car company Ford had abandoned in a 1902 investors’ dispute. Rather than recommend a sale, Leland — known as the Master of Precision — convinced the remaining investors to continue automobile manufacturing using his engine. The company was folded into General Motors in 1909.

After Leland sold Lincoln, he and his son, Wilfred, continued to run the automaker for a few months until June 10, 1922, when Ford asked for Wilfred’s resignation. Both father and son walked out.

Almost 100 years later, the 2020 model year was the last for the Continental, and passenger cars have since given way to more profitable SUVs with names that evoke adventure — Aviator, Corsair, Nautilus, and Navigator.

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2020 Was the Year of Holding On to Clients

2021 WILL EMERGE AS THE YEAR OF THE HUNT

HOW DOES YOUR TEAM STACK UP IN THE HUNT FOR NEW CLIENTS? Learn How Competitor Organizations Are Finding New Clients!

Garry Wineberg_FP_DB_0321.indd 1

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DBRIEF THE RELATED COS. HEADQUARTERS

New York, N.Y. BUSINESS UNIT

Real estate investment, development, and management REAL ESTATE PORTFOLIO

$60+ B FOUNDER AND CHAIRMAN

Stephen M. Ross EMPLOYEES

3,000 REVENUE

$10.6B (2020) Source:DBusiness research

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Real Estate || Cover Story

How a friendship forged at the University of Michigan between a budding billionaire and a star student set the stage for a $60-billion real estate portfolio built on a foundation of diversity and inclusion.

THE

ROSS EFFECT S

BY TOM MURRAY

philanthropic gift — $100 million to develop the U-M/Detroit Center for Innovation on the 14-acre site of the former Wayne County jail, located at the southeast corner of I-375 and Gratiot Avenue.

The project is a collaboration between Related and Dan Gilbert’s Bedrock Real Estate Partners, which specializes in the strategic development of urban cores. Gilbert’s initial commitment to downtown Detroit came in 2010, when he consolidated the suburban locations of Quicken Loans Inc. (now Rocket Cos.) — the country’s largest home mortgage lender — and established its corporate headquarters for 1,700 employees at One Campus Martius in the center of the Motor City’s central business district.

In the decade since, Gilbert has committed nearly $6 billion to acquiring and developing more than 100 properties in downtown Detroit (as well as Cleveland) totaling more than 18 million square feet of space. Along with more than three dozen other Gilbert-related entities, more than 17,000 employees from the Rocket Family of Companies work in downtown Detroit. Gilbert and Ross have previously joined philanthropic forces for Detroit’s benefit, donating $10 million in 2016 to the Wayne State University Law School.

RELATED COS.

tephen M. Ross is best known as chairman of The Related Cos. in New York City, which he founded in 1972 and grew into one of the most prominent real estate development firms in the world, employing approximately 3,000 people and developing or acquiring some $60 billion in mixed-use, residential, retail, and office properties across the globe.

But Ross is also acclaimed for his gener- WOLVERINE PROUD osity to the University of Michigan in Ann Detroit native Stephen M. Ross, founder and chairman of The Arbor, his alma mater. By February 2020, Related Cos. in New York, has when Ross had already donated $378 mil- invested close to $500 million in lion to U-M, he announced yet another southeast Michigan.

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Cover Story || Real Estate

NEXT GENERATION Above, a rendering of the planned U-M/Detroit Center for Innovation. Ross (below) greets U-M students, during a “Welcome Home” event in 2013.

delivered in ways that meet the needs of a very diverse community of students, and to really become a pipeline of talent that enables the city of Detroit to achieve its potential.”

Ross’ munificence on behalf of U-M can be traced back to his roots in his childhood neighborhood on the city’s west side, near Six Mile and Livernois, in the mid-1940s. His uncle, the late Max M. Fisher, was a successful industrialist and philanthropist, making a fortune in oil and real estate.

“His gasoline company sponsored all the sporting events,” Ross recalls. “He had the best tickets for the Tigers, Lions, and Red Wings at that point, and I used to go to all the games with him.”

All those thrilling experiences paled after the Saturday afternoon his parents took their son to Ann Arbor for his first U-M football game. “I fell in love with the place,” he says. “It was always a dream to go there.”

He was only a middle school student at Hally Elementary on Grove Street, but Ross quickly became a regular passenger on the train that ran on game days from Detroit’s Michigan Central Station to Ann Arbor. His dream of going to U-M gained momentum as he moved on to Mumford High School — but then, in the spring of his freshman year, his father moved the family to Florida to take a new job.

“I didn’t want to leave,” Ross says. “I loved Detroit. I had a lot of great friends. In those days, especially, who knew what the outside world was about?”

Ross enrolled at Miami Beach Senior High School

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

As the pair move to ground-up development, the first phase of the U-M/ Detroit Center for Innovation (DCI) will feature a 190,000-square-foot glass-fronted research and graduate education building designed by renowned architectural firm Kohn Pedersen Fox. The space will be designated for U-M students in automotive mobility, artificial intelligence, sustainability, cybersecurity, fintech, and other technology-related fields.

Groundbreaking is expected to take place this year and the project should be completed by 2023.

The educational campus at I-375 and Gratiot will be complemented by mid-rise residential buildings for U-M graduate students, a business incubator and accelerator space, and a hotel in the former Detroit Police Headquarters just west of the site.

“Detroit’s a great city and has always been one of the leading cities in this country,” Ross says. “It’s gotten to a place where it’s really in a position to grow, and it needs that next step to create more jobs. What the DCI project will do is attract people to Detroit — students who will go to school there — and, just as importantly, it will attract businesses to recruit that talent. The school, capitalizing on the University of Michigan’s outstanding reputation in business, engineering, computer science, and so many other areas, will cultivate talent and train students for the jobs of the future.”

Scott DeRue, the Edward J. Frey Dean at the U-M Ross School of Business, says the university’s commitment to the DCI and to the city of Detroit is unwavering.

“It’s really building on a long history of commitment and engagement that the University of Michigan has had in the city,” DeRue says. “The DCI is really reimagining education for the future of work and the future society that we all aspire to. It’s rethinking how education can be conceived and

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Real Estate || Cover Story

STEPHEN M. ROSS GIVING COMMITMENTS TO THE UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN 2003 A $5 million lead gift for the Stephen M. Ross Academic Center, providing academic support services and study space on the athletic campus (Rocket Co’s Dan Gilbert gave an additional $5 million).

2004 A $100 million gift to update facilities and endow operations for the business school, which was renamed the Stephen M. Ross School of Business.

2013

THE DETROIT CENTER FOR INNOVATION

A $100 million gift for the Stephen M. Ross Athletic Campus and $100 million to further develop the Ross School of Business campus.

and was more determined than ever to attend Michigan. “And then I didn’t get in,” he says, laughing. “But it wasn’t a shock to me. I wasn’t a good student in high school.”

The tall, inquisitive student spent the first two years of his collegiate career at the University of Florida, improved his grades, and transferred to U-M in time for his junior year. He graduated in 1962 with a bachelor’s degree in business administration.

“Michigan gave me the confidence to be able to grow and know what I could accomplish (with hard work),” he says.

“When I was there, Michigan was — and still is today — one of the leading universities in this country. It gives you the tools to succeed, puts you in such a unique environment when it comes to creating enthusiasm for learning, and helps guide you along the path for whatever you end up doing in life. The school gives you the Midwestern work ethic, and basically teaches you that with hard work you can succeed.”

After graduating from U-M, Ross attended Wayne State University Law School in Detroit, earning a juris doctor in 1965. From there, he set his sights on a master’s of law in taxation program at New York University, and earned a degree in 1966.

Returning to Detroit following graduation, Ross began what appeared to be a comfortable career as a tax attorney at Coopers & Lybrand, now PricewaterhouseCoopers, or PwC. But just two years later, fidgety and bored, he

2017 A $50 million gift to the Ross School of Business for a student success initiative, faculty support fund, and student investment fund.

2019 A “major gift” to establish the University of Michigan/Detroit Center for Innovation. A partnership between The Related Cos. and Bedrock will co-develop the 14-acre site at 1400 S. Antoine St., located at the southeast intersection of I-375 and Gratiot Avenue in downtown Detroit, into a $300-million, 190,000-square-foot research and education center operated by U-M.

OTHER MAJOR GIFTS OVER THE YEARS INCLUDE: •

U-M football stadium expansion project.

• Scholarship support for student athletes.

• Henry Pearce Endowed Scholarship in the College of Literature, Science, and the Arts.

• Related Scholars Fund in the Ross School of Business, to attract and support students from diverse environments who are underrepresented in business leadership.

Total commitments to date exceed $478 million.

Sources: University of Michigan, DBusiness MARCH - APRIL 2021 || DBUSINESS.COM 61

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impetuously decided Wall Street was where he was supposed M GO BLAU to be. It turned out it wasn’t. “By the end of 1970 I was fired Jeff Blau was hired by Ross following a referral from U-M from my second job,” Ross says. “I thought I was professor Peter Allen. Today, as unemployable.”

CEO of the company, Blau Pondering his future, he had an idea for a business, told oversees a $60-billion portfolio. his mother about it, and asked her to loan him $10,000.

“She had confidence in me,” he says. “I mean, I had three degrees at that point in time. I told her I didn’t want to go out and get another job. I wanted to try and set up my own business.”

Using the loan to live on, Ross finalized a business plan for a novel idea he’d been working on in his spare time. Applying his knowledge of federal tax law, he set up Related Housing Cos. to finance and develop government-assisted, multifamily housing for long-term investment. It didn’t take long before clients bought in as his entrepreneurial skills emerged. “I was earning $25,000 as a salary when I was working on Wall Street,” Ross says, “and I went to $150,000 in that first year. And then I probably made over $500,000 the next year.”

He’s done alright ever since. The most recent 400 List in Forbes magazine ranked Ross No. 74, with a net worth of $7.2 billion. He’s at the very top of the benefactors list at his alma mater in Ann Arbor.

Ross’ first significant gift to U-M was a tidy $100 million in 2004, to be

used toward a new building and endowed operations for the business school, which was promptly renamed in his honor. In 2013, Ross circled back with a $200-million gift, half of which was earmarked for the further development of a state-of-the-art collaborative learning environment on the Ross School of Business campus. The remaining $100 million was targeted to the Stephen M. Ross Athletic Campus, transforming facilities and resources for the 900-plus student athletes who participate on the school’s 31 teams.

Sports run in Ross’ blood. In 2008 he acquired a 50-percent ownership stake in the Miami Dolphins football team, along with Dolphin Stadium (now Hard Rock Stadium), and neighboring land from AutoNation founder Wayne Huizenga, for $550 million. A year later, Ross purchased another 45-percent interest in the team from Huizenga, bringing the total value of the deal to $1.1 billion. Today, the Dolphins franchise is valued at $2.9 billion, according to Statista.

Ross’ love of the game, though, began at the University of Michigan. Ever eager to make an impact on campus, in the fall of 1988 he was invited by Peter Allen, a professor

RELATED COS.

Cover Story || Real Estate

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UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN

Real Estate || Cover Story

specializing in real estate at U-M’s business school (still years away from being named for Ross) and a long-standing real estate developer in Ann Arbor, to participate in a real estate forum for his students. The forum also featured several other well-established guest lecturers.

“Stephen was the keynote speaker for the forum, and he asked me right afterward, ‘Who’s the best student in your class?’ ” Allen says. “I turned around and I saw Jeff (Blau), and I waved for him to come over.”

Blau had already impressed Allen, and not only because he was the only undergrad in the class. Blau had also delivered an assignment that was far superior to the work of any of Allen’s graduate students.

“Jeff stood out remarkably from all the grad students,” Allen recalls. “I mean, he got an A+ in the grad class, and it was clear that he had an extraordinary mind for the complexities of real estate development. He was a senior, and I remember saying, ‘Jeff, I’d love to hire you. Would you come work for me?’ He says, ‘No, I want go back home to New York.’ It was about the time that we had the real estate forum. I told Stephen, ‘Here’s the best kid in my class; you ought to hire him.’ ” Ross and Blau sat down and soon were engaged in deep conversation. “I guess we hit it off,” Blau says. Eager to bolster the favorable first impression he sensed he’d made, he followed up accordingly. “Stephen had an assistant at the time. Her name was Joanne. I kept calling and calling to see when Stephen might be coming back to Ann Arbor, and she called me one time and tipped me off that he was going to be (there) the following weekend, and that I should try to bump into him.”

Blau, who would go on to graduate from U-M in 1990 with a bachelor of business administration degree, not only figured out how to “bump into” Ross that weekend, but parlayed the encounter into what he delights in referring to as “the plane story,” which developed at the end of his visit as Ross was about to return to New York on his private jet.

“I grew up in New York, right?” Blau says. “So I said to Stephen (that) I had to be there to see my family, and would he let me ride back with him? He said, of course. By the time we landed in New York, I had a job offer.”

Blau spent the next summer as an intern at Related. By the fall, he planned to return to business school but wasn’t sure if he wanted to work at Related fulltime once he got his degree. “I grew up in a real estate family,” Blau says. “My father was a contractor and developer. I was working for one of the real estate companies in Ann Arbor, converting houses to student apartments, and I had a publishing business on campus. I’d always been an entrepreneur.”

Now he was suddenly hedging. After stalking Ross, impressing him with his doggedness, talking his way onto his private plane, and getting that job offer, Blau wondered if going to work for Related would mean losing the individuality he cherished. That’s when Ross reminded Blau that being an entrepreneur in Ann Arbor is vastly different than starting similar enterprises in New York City.

“And then there was his famous line,” Blau says, chuckling at the still-vivid memory, “which was, ‘You know, if you’re half as good as you think you are, it will be my job to

keep you here.’ ” Ross’ pitch clearly worked; Blau not only stuck around for the next 30-odd years, but is now CEO at Related and Ross’ second in command.

“The reason I have this job today is because of Joanne,” Blau says. “Stephen didn’t know until many, many years later. After we got to New York on that day, I turned right around and got on a commercial flight right back to Detroit. I didn’t really have any reason to come to New York, other than to sit on the plane with him.”

Ross chuckles as he confirms Blau’s recollection. “I didn’t know that there was no reason for why he had to get back to New York,” he says. “It just shows me that Jeff is always thinking. It says a lot about Jeff, and he hasn’t changed a bit.”

As CEO, Blau is responsible for Related’s strategic direction, the pursuit of new development opportunities, corporate acquisitions, and financing activities across all of the business platforms, as well as the overall management of the firm. “I think the key for the company is how we bring together entrepreneurs who ultimately would be unlikely to stay in a corporate setting,” he explains.

Which, of course, is exactly the position Blau felt he was in all those years ago, before that life-changing chat with Ross. “That’s really what we’ve figured out, and I think it’s a little bit of our secret sauce. If you speak to our lead partners, developers, and all these men and women, (they all) could be on their own. But they choose to be here because they can act like entrepreneurs, kind of run their own deals, participate in the profitability of the deals, and have the benefits of the resources of a larger organization behind them. So everybody is thinking that way, right? To take risks. But don’t fall off the cliff.”

While it took Blau time to buy into the Ross philosophy of how entrepreneurship can thrive in a corporate environment, he shares his boss’s unbridled passion for their alma mater. “Being in Ann Arbor was one of the highlights of my life,” Blau says. “I don’t know anybody who went to Michigan and didn’t think it was the best point in their life.”

“The Ross School was really on the leading edge of embracing what technology could enable in terms of reimagining education ... We’re the first Top 10 business school to launch an online MBA

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Like Ross, Blau has shown his appreciation for U-M LUCK OF THE WOLVERINES with his checkbook: Jeff T. Blau Hall was dedicated on the Ross receives a special recognition at U-M’s Big House Ross school campus in 2016, the result of a fundraising during the “Under The Lights II” effort triggered by Blau’s $10-million contribution. football game on Sept. 7, 2013, What’s more, last summer he and Ross jointly commit- vs. Notre Dame. U-M won, 41-30. ted another $6 million to the Ross School of Business to help further its commitment to inclusion through the Blau Initiative for Diversity in Real Estate and Infrastructure. Its focus is on students from underrepresented backgrounds, and sparking their interest in business and investing well before attending college by offering learning experiences and internships in real estate and investing.

In addition, the Related Scholars Fund makes attendance at U-M and Ross more affordable via scholarships.

“These are all things we’ve been working on for many, many years at our company,” Blau says. “It wasn’t like the George Floyd incident kind of woke us up to that topic. If you look at the numbers of our employees and the percentages, it really speaks to that. Providing opportunity for and investing in minority-owned businesses, recruiting talent from local communities, our commitment to affordable housing — all of that has really been part of our DNA for many, many years.

“If you go to a REBNY (Real Estate Board of New York) dinner, I don’t know the number, but it’s like 90 percent white male. So it shows that the industry needs change, right? It’s not going to change overnight. But if people as young as in high school are informed what real estate’s all about and can have the opportunity to go to a school like Michigan that’s inclusive and is pushing to increase diversity, then over time I think the makeup of the industry could change for the benefit of everybody.”

The gift from Ross and Blau, and the creation of the Blau Initiative at the Ross School, dovetailed neatly with a Commitment to Action program that had already been introduced at the Ross School by Dean DeRue last summer. The offering is focused on introducing or improving programs

pertaining to diversity, equity, and inclusion.

“We were entering year five of a five-year strategic plan,” DeRue says. “We made a lot of progress with our student leaders, alumni, faculty, and staff. So we renewed and reinvigorated that commitment to take a hard look at our policies and practices and how we operate the school, to make sure that we’re a diverse, equitable, and inclusive community.”

But DeRue is quick to point out that the Ross Business School, much like Related, had already taken early and significant steps in the areas of diversity and accessibility, long before the arrival of COVID-19 and the furor over the George Floyd incident.

“The Ross School was really on the leading edge of embracing what technology could enable in terms of reimagining education,” DeRue says. “We’re the first Top 10 business school to launch an online MBA, and we’re leveraging technology to make our world-class business education more accessible, more affordable, more personal, and more flexible. The silver lining of the pandemic, in terms of higher education broadly and certainly at the University of Michigan and the Ross School of Business, is we’re building capabilities that will enable us, post-pandemic, to serve new and different learners in ways that historically we may not have done.”

The prospective students DeRue refers to will not only be beneficiaries of the DCI; they’ll graduate within one of the world’s great brain centers — Michigan has the largest concentration of engineers, technical centers, manufacturers, and production facilities (per capita) in the country. All of which is sweet music to the ears of Peter Allen.

“It’s a wonderful teaching tool,” he says. “There are 90 graduate programs at U-M and there’s got to be 10 or 20 that are centered around the Detroit situation and trying to learn from it in terms of public policy, human behavior, transportation, and all the things about the city. My students have heard me say for 20 years Detroit is the most undervalued big city in the world, on the planet. And Stephen and Jeff, Scott, and Dan Gilbert and his team are connecting all the dots to bring it all alive.”

Apart from the benefits of alignment in purpose, it takes an individual to light a spark and carry an idea through to fruition. Over the course of his professional career, Ross has proven himself to be singularly adept at connecting all the dots and piecing together the intricate puzzles of his numerous complicated projects. But he makes this one sound stunningly simple.

“This is about inclusivity,” he says. “We want to remove obstacles and barriers and make sure that everybody has an opportunity to succeed. The key is that businesses will be attracted to set up shop in Detroit because of the presence of all this talent and these future leaders. And they’ll recruit here, and people will want to live and stay here because of the lifestyle in southern Michigan. In many cases, there will be students who want to stay and build their own businesses. This is very similar to how Silicon Valley in California grew.”

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P R O M OT I O N A L CO N T E N T

TAX STRATEGY Q&A

As the World Turns,

SO DO TAX IMPLICATIONS. WHAT’S AHEAD FOR YOU

THIS LAST YEAR SHOOK US ALL, BOTH MENTALLY AND EMOTIONALLY AND POSSIBLY PHYSICALLY BECAUSE OF COVID. Additionally, many of us were also affected financially — and we look to 2021 for a sense of stability and calm.

With the balance of power, more financial changes are expected on the horizon.

How much change and how it will affect you now and in the coming years depends on where you fall on the financial spectrum.

A simple Google search will bring up a number of articles that outline President Biden’s proposed tax plan, but it could be months before any of these policies are approved, and they may not all pass without some adjustment. If you’re concerned

ExpertQATax_section_DB_0321.indd 1

that you, your family, or your business could be adversely affected, the best thing you can do right now, is be prepared.

Whether you’re considering your personal finances or your company’s, seeking out professional guidance is the most practical first step you can take — and, sooner rather than later. If you’re wondering if this the right time to sell your business or what will happen with your estate in the event of your passing — or if you need to restructure your investments — read on to see what the experts are saying. Then, connect with your legal counsel, tax accountant, estate planner, or financial adviser to devise a secure plan for your future.

2/5/21 10:35 AM

P R O M OT I O N A L CO N T E N T

TAX STRATEGY Q&A Q: What are federal estate and gift taxes and how do they work?

A: A transfer of assets upon death triggers the federal estate tax question — also known as the “death tax.”

The estate tax only applies to the portion of an individual’s post-death estate’s value that exceeds the tax exemption amount. The passing of the Tax Cuts and Jobs Act served to double the exemption amount for federal estate tax from $5.45 million to $11.18 million for individuals and from $11.9 million to $22.36 million for married couples. These exemption levels were increased for inflation in 2019 and 2020, reaching $11.4 million and $11.58 million, respectively. However, this increased estate tax exemption bubble is only applicable from 2018 through 2025.

To prevent individuals from simply transferring assets prior to their death to either extinguish or minimize federal estate tax consequences, the U.S. Congress enacted the federal gift tax in 1932. The gift tax applies to transfers of assets made during a person’s life. In 2020, the federal gift tax provided for a lifetime exemption amount of $11.58 million — the same exemption afforded to post-death estates. Similarly, any lifetime gift exceeding $11.58 million in value will be taxed at the corresponding estate tax rate, which is 40 percent of the total amount exceeding the exemption. The value of the gift received, however, is considered to be non-taxable income to the recipient.

Ryan P. Bourjaily

Associate Plunkett Cooney Trusts & Estate Planning Practice Group 38505 Woodward Ave., Ste. 100 Bloomfield Hills, MI 48304 248-901-4000 plunkettcooney.com rbourjaily@plunkettcooney.com Advertisement on page 17

Q: What should businesses owners know in regards to tax changes for 2021?

A: With President Biden’s tax plan going into effect, corporate and capital gains taxes are likely to go higher. What we don’t know is how much and when. With this in mind, we encourage business owners to connect with their trusted advisers, whether it’s an attorney, estate planner, wealth manager or tax accountant to understand the implications of these changes and decide

if now is the right time to sell their business. If so, working with a trusted adviser to design a succession plan is essential to ensure a smooth sale of their business. As a Detroit-based private equity firm, Huron Capital doesn’t provide tax advice, but we do provide liquidity and growth capital solutions for business owners seeking a value-added partner.

Jim Mahoney

Managing Partner Huron Capital Partners, LLC 500 Griswold St., Ste. 2700 Detroit, MI 48226 313-962-5800 huroncapital.com info@huroncapital.com Advertisement on page 21

Q: What will President Biden’s proposed tax plan mean for my personal taxes?

A: As he campaigned for the presidency, Joe Biden proposed several changes to personal taxes. While his plan has often been summarized as one that raises taxes on high-income households, he also proposed expanding benefits for child and dependent care, providing credits for homebuyers and renters, and much more.

The following is a summary of just a handful of the significant proposals President Biden has made regarding personal taxes.

• Raise the maximum tax rate on individuals to 39.6%.

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• Limit the tax benefit of itemized deductions for upper-income individuals.

• Raise the maximum long-term capital gains rate for those with incomes above $1 million.

• Increase Social Security taxes for upper-income individuals.

• Increase childcare credits to a maximum of $8,000 for one child and $16,000 for two or more children.

• Create a new refundable tax credit of $15,000 for first-time homebuyers.

For a more comprehensive summary of potential tax plans, consult with your tax or business adviser.

Vito P. Gioia

Michigan Market Manager & SVP Key Private Bank 248-204-6561 key.com/getthere vito_gioia@keybank.com Advertisement on page 6

2/5/21 10:35 AM

Exec Life

INSIDE || EXECUTIVE FASHION SPRING/SUMMER 2021 | RETURN ON INVESTMENT | PRODUCTION RUN | OPINION

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A

Exec Life || Spring/Summer Fashion

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Spring/Summer Fashion || Exec Life

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Exec Life || Return on Investment

FAMILY TRIBUTE Rob, Whitney, Juelle, Fred, and Cameron Fisher toast Fisher Vineyard’s opening of Calistoga Estate in Napa Valley on its first day of harvest in October 2019.

Savoring Success Coach builders at the outset of the auto industry, part of the Fisher family pulled up their Detroit roots and headed west on a new adventure crafting premium wines. story behind every wine. Slow down and savor that time. I think for my parents it was all about slowing down.”

Rob’s father, Fred, is the grandson of Charles T. Fisher, one of the seven Fisher brothers who in 1908 founded the original family enterprise — Fisher Body Co. in Detroit. They would go on to build millions of automotive bodies for General Motors, each one adorned near the front door with the telltale “Body by Fisher” imprint, GM’s first mark of excellence.

When the time came for Fred to attend college, he may well have been resigned to ultimately joining the family business, but not along the traditional path. “We were a big Catholic family in Michigan, and many (of us) went to Catholic schools like Georgetown and Notre Dame,” Fisher says, “but my father decided he wanted to go to Princeton. I think that was sort of his version of a black sheep move.”

Fisher describes his dad as a “quantitative numbers guy,” whose focus at Princeton was to be a civil engineer. Then came business school, and another choice for Fred Fisher.

“He tells the story of how he decided between business schools at Harvard and Stanford,” Fisher says, laughing. “The first page of Stanford’s brochure was dedicated to the sun and weather patterns in Palo Alto. And he knew Boston was like hell freezing over (during the winter months). And he concluded that if what he wanted to do was learn, he would learn better in a freezing environment. So he went to Harvard. I mean, that’s his version of pragmatic thinking.”

Fred earned his MBA in 1956, followed by a stint in the U.S. Army, part of which he served in Germany. “And it was on leave from the Army,” Fisher says, “when he was in the lake region between Switzerland and Italy, that he fell in love with wine and the notion of mountain-grown wines.”

FISHER VINEYARDS

C

heck out virtually any review of Fisher Vineyards and the results are invariably similar: The winery, located in Santa Rosa, Calif., is renowned for producing premium varietals — but unlike many of its competitors, it operates with what appears to be a willful resistance to the spotlight.

“We do win some competitions,” says Rob Fisher, general manager of Fisher Vineyards, “but we don’t make our wines for that purpose.

As we’ve worked through this over the decades, we think our mission and our wines are entirely about enriching life.”

That perfectly captures the essence of the vision Fisher’s parents shared when they decided to get into the winemaking business. “They didn’t come to Napa to be scored on wine,” Fisher says. “They did it as a sort of enrichment, a confirmation of their own life view. There’s a

BY TOM MURRAY

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Return on Investment || Exec Life

Fred finished his enlistment, returned home to Detroit, and worked at GM for several years before heading west to California, where he spent time as a management consultant. From there, he ran a container leasing company in San Francisco, which is around the time he met a young lady named Juelle Lamb on a blind date.

They’ve been together ever since.

“They were set up as mixed doubles tennis partners by a mutual friend, a classmate of my dad’s from Princeton,” Fisher says. “My mother had a finance degree and was the first woman hired into the research retail sector at Bank of America in the 1960s.”

Fred and Juelle quickly discovered their backgrounds in business and finance weren’t all they had in common.

“They shared this mutual growing disinterest in the service industry, and an interest in making a tangible product,” Fisher says. “I think the through line from Fisher Body was my dad’s unwavering respect and appreciation for the handcraftsmanship, innovation, and pioneering spirit. That just ran so deep from his own grandfather’s experience.”

In 1973, the couple quit their jobs and Fred purchased 100 acres in the rugged terrain of the Mayacamas Mountains between Napa and Sonoma. The property was remote, lacking water, electricity, and even a suitable access road.

“I think the assumption is, yeah, they must have been free spirits, but ‘free spirit’ probably leads to the wrong impression,” Fisher says. “The reality is both of them are exceedingly just very practical people.”

The enterprising couple forged ahead, enlisting a team of neighbors, builders, and enthusiastic supporters to help build a rustic cabin and clear enough land to plant a

vineyard. Two years into their project, they were still officially just dating.

“As I understand it,” Fisher says with a chuckle, “my mother had received a job offer in New York. And so she asked my dad, What do you think? Are we going to get married? And his version of a proposal was to say, Yeah, what are you doing next weekend? Let’s get married. And a couple of weeks later, they did.”

The ceremony took place in what became known as the Wedding Vineyard on the Mountain Estate, a 10-acre plot that’s particularly special for the family: The vines planted there in 1973 yielded grapes that contributed to the winery’s first bottling six years later — a Cabernet Sauvignon. Today, weddings at the first vineyard are limited to family members.

“On the business side, from sunup to sundown, we’re dedicated to farming, growing, and producing world-class wines, which leaves little room for event-type tourism, though we do offer a limited number of private tasting visits by appointment each day,” Fisher says.

Yet another example of the sensible, hands-on approach the founders share emerged as the family began to expand with the arrival of Rob and his two sisters. “Looking around in the late ’70s, my mom was really disappointed with what school options were available. So she got together with two other friends and founded a school,” Fisher says.

That was in 1983, and today the nationally acclaimed Sonoma Country Day School is still going strong. So are Fred and Juelle, but they’ve happily turned over the bulk of daily operations to Rob, along with sisters Whitney, a winemaker who oversees all aspects of vineyard management, and Cameron, who handles sales and marketing.

In addition to the original Mayacamas Mountain Estate vineyard and winery in Sonoma County, in 2019 the Fishers opened the doors to a new winery on their Calistoga Estate in Napa Valley, firmly rooting the family in two regions that are globally renowned for producing exceptional wines.

“We’re not making inexpensive wines,” Fisher concedes, “but one thing that carries through is fair pricing. We’re in the top dozen or two dozen producers in Napa and we deliver our flagship Napa Cabernet at the current retail of $125 (a bottle). Believe it or not, that’s viewed as a value from the leading wine critics in the world. We’re competing with wines that are priced up to $750 or $1,000 a bottle, and we hold (our) price.”

How the Fishers manage to do that starts in the dirt, literally. “When we think about what it takes to make great wine, you can only do it with a great vineyard,” Fisher reveals. “You can never make great wine out of average grapes.”

Or without money. The financial commitment is enormous. “There isn’t a two- or threeyear period that goes by that we don’t have a major, major capital commitment (to make) in carving vineyards, building our business, and reinvesting in quality.”

The emphasis of quality over quantity remains the high-bar standard, and it was set by Fred and Juelle from their very first days in the winemaking business.

“Maybe that comes out of my dad’s experience with the industrialism of Detroit,” Fisher says.

LIGHT AND SOIL Set high in the Mayacamas Mountains, Juelle and Fred Fisher’s newly planted Wedding Vineyard in 1973. Steeply terraced rows of Cabernet Sauvignon vines, planted in 1998 on Fisher Vineyard’s Mountain Estate.

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“He was always chasing after the Fisher Brothers’ original inspiration, which was craftsmanship, and he always reminisces about the love they had to start with for these handcrafted wooden carriages.”

Fisher Vineyards Coach Insignia Cabernet celebrates the spirit and history of the family. Before arriving in Detroit, Fisher’s ancestors built horse-drawn carriages in Norwalk, Ohio, located roughly halfway between Toledo and Cleveland.

“We think of Coach Insignia as our father’s namesake wine, because that brand pays real homage to the old Fisher Body business and refers to the insignia of the Body by Fisher (adorned with an ornate coach),” Fisher says.

“He wanted to use that moniker to represent our flagship wine from our Napa vineyards.”

All three of the Fisher siblings have their own namesake wines: A 2018 Chardonnay is produced by Whitney’s Vineyard, there’s a red simply labeled 2018 Cameron, and Rob’s 2016 Merlot comes from the vineyard identified by his initials, RCF. But the family is clearly most excited about their Unity line, which combines grapes from the Napa and Sonoma vineyards, as well as other nearby growers — the offerings include Rose, Chardonnay, Pinot Noir, and Cabernet Sauvignon.

“Unity is a really special brand,” Fisher says.

“Our parents actually trademarked the name in

the late 1990s because they had this feeling that togetherness is what it’s all about. I mean, wine brings people together, and the production theory behind that wine is give the winemaker the ability to bring these great sources together.

Good things happen when you have unity, and it kind of translated to the winemaking.”

These days, communal unity has been limited by outside forces. COVID-19 has put an end to the usual winery tours and tastings that are a staple of the Sonoma and Napa Valley regions.

“When people come and visit, it’s wonderful, but we can deliver curated tastings to an audience around the country that we didn’t used to be able to do,” Fisher explains. “We can touch a lot more people on a Zoom virtual tasting, when people want to get a dozen friends, family, or colleagues together and sit and taste and talk about wine.”

COVID-19 has also brought friends and families together in ways that beforehand perhaps weren’t priorities, or certainly as frequent, providing occasions and opportunities that align perfectly with everything that first lured Fred and Juelle Fisher to the Mayacamas Mountains.

“It’s certainly true that the pandemic has led us all, on some level, to regain an appreciation for home cooking, as well as the way wine can enhance even simple meals (by) slowing the pace or the race to eat and move on,” Fisher contends.

“We aim for each of our wines to enrich those occasions, complimenting food with flavors that can transport (people) to another place or another time, or simply offering another dimension to savor with each other. “(On) nearly every occasion, colleagues, friends, and family from around the country are simply overjoyed to see one another raising glasses to toast, immersing their senses, and indulging in the diversion — all of which offers us a great sense of accomplishment.”

FISHER VINEYARDS

Exec Life || Return on Investment

TERROIR TIES Fred Fisher peers over the first harvest in 1977, eager to create what’s likened to “poetry in a bottle.” Above, Fisher and his son, Rob, in 1984.

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Exec Life || Production Run

BUSINESS BOOST Jack Fallon launched a vitamin company in his basement and has since built it into an $800-million global enterprise.

Value of Vitamins

Total Life Changes emerges from a Chesterfield Township basement to become a nutrition supplement powerhouse.

J

ack Fallon, founder and CEO of Total Life Changes, a nutritional supplement company, says he was trying to figure out a better way to make a living for almost the entire 12 years he was building seats for Ford Escorts and Focuses at the automaker’s plant in Chesterfield Township.

“I quickly realized that wasn’t for me,” says Fallon, who went to work for Ford right after graduating from East Detroit High School in 1991. “I hired in with about 25 guys who were about the same age as me. We hung out before work and after work. We had a lot of free time, so we all picked up a trade on top of working at Ford. I picked up network marketing, which is our business model.”

Following in the footsteps of well-known companies like Amway, Mary Kay, Tupperware, and Herbalife, which depend on independent

BY TIM KEENAN |

MATTHEW LAVERE

distributors, Total Life Changes got its start in 1999 in Fallon’s basement.

Since that time, TLC, as the company is known, has evolved from a $10,000 sideline with four employees to an enterprise that sold $800 million in nutritional supplements in 2020, employs more than 400 people, and has 200,000 distributors, half of whom operate in the U.S. “We’re probably 95 percent women as far as distributors,” Fallon reports. “They do home parties. They sell online.”

To serve the 100,000 international distributors and facilitate product delivery to 150 countries, TLC has two facilities each in the Dominican Republic, Columbia, and Ecuador, and one each in Russia, Peru, San Salvador, Ukraine, Mexico, Hong Kong, Thailand, the Philippines, Guatemala, and Ghana.

“I launched (TLC) and quickly made every mistake you can make and then made some

more,” Fallon says. “While I was still working at Ford, we’d do TLC at night in the basement, shipping product and taking customer service emails and phone calls.”

Before it even got to that point, Fallon says he was learning important lessons in how to operate a business, including how to get the first batch of product to send to distributors.

The first two manufacturers he called to produce his initial offering, a liquid multivitamin called NutraBurst, required minimum orders of 5,000 to 20,000 units. “There was no way I could do those types of numbers,” he says.

The third call he made was to a smaller manufacturer in Utah, who agreed to formulate the product and produce it in an affordable volume for Fallon. “I offered to send half the money up front and the other half when sales came in,” he recalls. “He took a gamble, created it for me, and that’s how we got started.”

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Production Run || Exec Life

NutraBurst, which Fallon says tastes like liquified children’s vitamins, is still TLC’s second best-selling product.

In addition to the manufacturer in Utah, which specializes in liquid nutrition products, TLC utilizes companies in Texas and Wisconsin to produce powdered offerings. It also maintains a few other manufacturers, just in case. “You always have to have a backup manufacturer,” Fallon says. “In 2020, we had a manufacturer go out of business due to COVID-19.”

Fallon got his first taste of the network marketing business as a distributor for the Southfield-based American Communications Network, which sells utility services. Once he started TLC, however, he admittedly had a lot to digest.

“I had to learn about merchant (credit card) processing, shipping/receiving, customer service, and the whole industry of product manufacturing,” Fallon says. “Merchant processing is an entity in itself. You’ve got to learn how to play by their rules and leverage them against each other. That was a giant learning curve.”

Fallon recalls one incident, following a particularly good week of sales, when his merchant processor held up 70 percent of his transactions because TLC had exceeded its run allotment. “I had to take out a second mortgage on my house because they were literally going to wipe us out.”

TLC was still working out of Fallon’s basement in 2008 when annual sales reached $100,000, but then came the global financial crisis. TLC had just introduced a new product — Iaso Tea, an all-natural detox and cleanse — that now is the company’s best-seller.

“When we came out with the detox tea and started to get more sales, we understood the business and how to run the business and deal with manufacturing and merchant processing,” Fallon

recalls. “The neighbors who were still around were wondering what was going on when big trucks would unload pallets. It was chaos. We probably had 15 to 20 people in my basement on a daily basis, staying until midnight. We had to get the heck out of there, that’s for sure.”

From there, Fallon moved TLC into a 3,000-square-foot warehouse in Chesterfield Township later in 2008. TLC currently occupies three facilities along 26 Mile Road in Ira and Chesterfield townships. A new 100,000-squarefoot facility is planned for the same area and slated to open in 2022.

“Space is the feature we need,” Fallon says.

“Only about 34 percent (of our operations) will serve as office space.”

TLC’s top three products — Iaso Tea, NutraBurst, and NRG, an appetite-suppression energy capsule — account for 75 percent of the company’s revenue. TLC also offers products that promote full-body nutrition, weight management, energy and fitness, hair and skin care, relaxation and relief, and women’s health.

Fallon says the future of TLC rests on the idea the world is becoming more united.

“If you travel internationally, you’ll find that we’re moving toward becoming one world,” he says. “Where I see TLC fitting into that one world is that technology is going to enable us to speak the same language, and do business freely and easily. Technology is pushing people and governments to be one world. With the human touch behind that technology, using the technology, you’re part of a community.”

THE RUNDOWN

Bottles of TLC NutraBurst multivitamins sold in 1999

TLC revenue in 2020

HEALTHY HAVEN Total Life Changes offers vitamins, weight-loss supplements, coffees, teas, essential oils, hand sanitizer, skin care products, diffusers, and more.

Countries with TLC customers

Percentage of TLC distributors who are women

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Exec Life || Opinion

Empowering Employees Continuous training is the key to growing a residential property management team, or any business or organization.

T

BY LESLIE L. ETTERBEEK

he multifamily property manage- overall business, that sense of ownership trickles ment industry offers a great career down to the customer. In turn, by offering conalternative for an array of ser- tinuous training for employees, onboarding new vice-oriented professionals, espe- workers will be that much more seamless.

As this industry has changed, it’s become cially those who are displaced and may have previous hospitality, retail, or service clear that property management team roles are ideal for: field experience.

• Recent graduates who like complex chalDuring the COVID-19 pandemic, many people lost their jobs, changed their living arrange- lenges and dealing with people.

• Hospitality professionals from hotels, restauments, or spent more time at home than at a work environment. As a result, resident needs at rants, and other service industries who have multifamily communities became more com- been displaced due to the pandemic.

• Professionals with experience in manageplex, putting new pressures on property manment, operations, service, and sales. agement companies.

• HVAC technicians, plumbers, carpenters, To meet these emerging trends, the apartment industry requires a new type of team that and electricians.

Within the property management industry, includes property managers, leasing agents, technicians, maintenance professionals, and a wide range of skills is required. What’s more, hospitality experts. The new and ever-changing establishing and ensuring best practices will environment has also opened a wide range of op- become even more critical in the years ahead portunities for people starting their careers or as the number of multifamily properties grows and the competition rises. looking for a new challenge.

“CREATE A CULTURE These guiding principles could The key to longevity in any THAT ENCOURAGES work in almost any industry. business is knowing how to enrich STAFF TO DEVELOP IN They include: employees as part of a winning THEIR ROLES, COMMIT • Customer Service culture. It starts with instilling a TO STAYING ON, AND Skills: A property team must passion for catering to people in GROW WITH THE treat every resident living in a their homes — which, today, often ORGANIZATION.” community as an important double as their work environment. Access to a high level of services is vital to the living environment at every multifamily community, and has become even more important as people suddenly find they need access to a printer or faster internet speeds.

One challenge in serving residents is that each property is diverse with different layouts, demographics, rent scales, amenities, and employees. Today, the ability to cultivate the strength of every aspect of the business as an integral component of the property management team is what drives overall success.

The resident experience is ultimately delivered by the employees, but it can’t be a onesize-fits-all approach. The drive to share best practices and emerging trends with the entire team, while encouraging new ideas and resident feedback, are the foundation of success.

If employees are mindful of the fact that every decision and action they make enhances the

commit to staying on, and grow with the organization. Promote training programs and create opportunities for talented people to leverage and expand their expertise.

• Team Orientation and Organization: Build a team that is diverse, inclusive, and supportive. If your team is fulfilled, residents will feed off the positive energy.

Whether it’s the property management business, a retail store, or a restaurant, offering continuous training programs will improve an organization’s overall value, help engage and draw more satisfied employees, and, most importantly, provide customers with positive and memorable experiences that can be shared with others.

“customer.” Responding quickly to issues and delivering service with a smile are essential.

• Empathy: It’s important to understand the “shoes” of the customer. A Wi-Fi problem may not seem catastrophic, but if a resident has a work project deadline, it can be critical.

By putting oneself in the “shoes” of a resident, a property management team is better able to deliver best-in-class services.

• Excellence in Communication: Property management professionals must be comfortable speaking, writing, and interacting both in person and online. Candor and transparency have become increasingly important to consumers.

• Selling Abilities: Interpersonal and virtual experiences online are crucial for creating valuable and long-lasting relationships.

• Loyalty and Longevity: Create a culture that encourages staff to develop in their roles,

LESLIE L. ETTERBEEK is president of LR Management in Troy, a woman-owned residential multifamily property management business serving Michigan since 1989.

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From the Top || Top Undergraduate Business Schools

Top Undergraduate Business Schools in Metro Detroit

OAKLAND UNIVERSITY ROCHESTER HILLS Undergrad programs: Bachelor’s degrees in accounting and finance, actuarial science, economics, management and marketing, management information systems, and operations management. Also home to the Southeastern Michigan Economic Data Center and Center for Data Science and Big Data Analytics. oakland.edu/business; 248-370-3285

BAKER COLLEGE ALLEN PARK, AUBURN HILLS, CLINTON TOWNSHIP, FLINT, PORT HURON | Private, Not-for-profit Undergrad programs: Bachelor’s and 4+1 accelerated BBA/MBA degree programs including accounting, business administration, finance, human resource management, information technology, logistics, marketing, nursing, and more.

Over 40 programs are offered 100 percent online. Transfer students can apply at no cost. baker.edu; 855-487-7888 CLEARY UNIVERSITY ANN ARBOR, HOWELL Private Undergrad programs: BBA programs including promotion management, business analytics, corporate accounting, and more. cleary.edu; 800-686-1883 EASTERN MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY YPSILANTI Undergrad programs: BBAs in accounting, computer information systems, entrepreneurship, finance, general business, international business, management, accounting information systems, and marketing. (Certificates in business analytics, finance, web, and mobile technologies.) emich.edu; 734-487-2344

HENRY FORD COLLEGE DEARBORN Undergrad programs: Associate degrees in 150 programs including business, health sciences, nursing, STEM, and liberal arts fields.Bachelor’s degree in culinary arts. hfcc.edu; 800-585-HFCC LAWRENCE TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY SOUTHFIELD | Private Undergrad programs: BSBAs with concentrations in accounting, finance, general business, marketing, information technology, and more. ltu.edu; 248-204-3160 MACOMB COMMUNITY COLLEGE CLINTON TOWNSHIP, WARREN Undergrad programs: Associate degree in business administration is available. macomb.edu; 866-MACOMB1 MADONNA UNIVERSITY LIVONIA | Private Undergrad programs: Bachelor’s degrees in accounting, computer technology, international business and economics, human resources management, marketing, management information systems, and more. madonna.edu; 734-432-5354

AFTERMARKET FOCUS Northwood University in Midland offers auto aftermarket studies.

MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY EAST LANSING Undergrad programs: Bachelor’s degrees in accounting, finance, hospitality business, human resource management, marketing, management, and supply chain management. broad.msu.edu; 517-355-7605 NORTHWOOD UNIVERSITY MIDLAND | Private Undergrad programs: Bachelor’s degrees in accounting, advertising and marketing, aftermarket management, automotive marketing management, entrepreneurship, e-sports management, economics, computer science, cybersecurity management, finance, health care management, hospitality management, operations and supply chain management, sports management, and more. northwood.edu; 800-622-9000 OAKLAND COMMUNITY COLLEGE AUBURN HILLS, FARMINGTON HILLS, ORCHARD RIDGE, ROYAL OAK, SOUTHFIELD, WATERFORD TOWNSHIP Undergrad programs: Associate degrees in business administration, computer

ROCHESTER UNIVERSITY ROCHESTER HILLS | Private Undergrad programs: Bachelor’s degrees in accounting, management, computer information systems–programming, nonprofit management, health care management, and sports management. Computer information systems, management, and strategic leadership are offered in RU’s accelerated degree completion format. rochesteru.edu/business; 248-218-2000 SCHOOLCRAFT COLLEGE LIVONIA Undergrad programs: Associate degrees in accounting, general business, business information technology, human resource management, computer information technology, supply chain management, real estate property management, and more. schoolcraft.edu; 734-462-4426 UNIVERSITY OF DETROIT MERCY DETROIT | Private Undergrad programs: BBAs in accounting or general business, with concentrations in accounting, business law, decision sciences, finance, human resources, international business, management, marketing, and sports management. Students can qualify for an accelerated, five-year BSBA/MBA program. udmercy.edu; 313-993-1245

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN ANN ARBOR Undergrad programs: Bachelor’s in accounting, business economics and public policy, finance, business law, business communication, management and organizations, and technology and operations. michiganross.umich.edu; 734-764-1817 UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN DEARBORN Undergrad programs: BBAs with majors in accounting, digital marketing, finance, general business, human resource management, information system management, marketing, small business management, and supply chain management. umdearborn.edu/cob; 313-593-5460 WALSH COLLEGE TROY | Private Undergrad programs: Online and on-campus bachelor’s programs in accountancy, accounting processes, finance, general business, information technology, management, and marketing. walshcollege.edu; 800-WALSH-01 WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY DETROIT Undergrad programs: Bachelor’s degrees with concentrations in accounting, finance, global supply chain management, information systems management, management, and marketing.

Additional coursework available in entrepreneurship and innovation, and sports and entertainment management. ilitchbusiness.wayne.edu; 313-577-4505 Sources: Listings reflect programs offered by a college’s business school, where such business schools exist. This list does not include certificate programs or minors. All universities are public unless otherwise noted.

COURTESY OF NORTHWOOD UNIVERSITY

information systems, culinary arts, health care administration, international commerce, management development, and more. oaklandcc.edu; 248-341-2000

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Top Graduate Business Schools || From the Top

Top Graduate Business Schools in Metro Detroit BAKER CENTER FOR GRADUATE STUDIES AUBURN HILLS | Private Graduate programs: MBA degrees in accounting, business administration, business intelligence, information systems, finance, health care management, and more. Doctor of Business Administration and MBA degrees are offered 100 percent online. baker.edu; 855-487-7888 CLEARY UNIVERSITY DETROIT, HOWELL | Private Graduate programs: MBA and MA degrees are offered 100 percent online. Master’s degree focuses include analytical efficiency, e-learning design and instructional technology management, financial planning, health care leadership, and more. cleary.edu; 517-338-3315 CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY ANN ARBOR | Private Christian University Graduate programs: Online degrees include a doctorate in business administration (DBA), master’s in business administration (MBA) with 15+ concentrations to specialize in, and a master’s in leadership. cuaa.edu/business; 877-289-1897

COURTESY OF CONCORDIA UNIVERSITY

EASTERN MICHIGAN UNIVERSITY YPSILANTI Graduate programs: MBA with 14 different areas of specialization; MS degrees in accounting, finance, human resources/org development, information systems, integrated marketing communications, and taxation. emich.edu/cob; 734-487-4444 LAWRENCE TECHNOLOGICAL UNIVERSITY SOUTHFIELD | Private Graduate programs: MBA program is offered both online and on campus with concentrations in business analytics, cybersecurity, finance, information technology, marketing, and project management. Students also have the option to pursue a general MBA degree where they can choose any combination of three graduate-level elective courses, providing the broadest range of knowledge. ltu.edu; 248-204-3050

MADONNA UNIVERSITY* LIVONIA | Private Graduate programs: MBA certifications offered in cost management, criminal justice leadership, information technology management, and more. MSBA courses offered in management studies and various leadership disciplines.

Courses also available online. madonna.edu; 734-432-5354 MICHIGAN STATE UNIVERSITY EAST LANSING Graduate programs: MBA programs offered in person, online, or hybrid. Full-time MBA programs in accounting, finance, marketing, and business analytics.

Executive education: Executive MBA offered in Troy and East Lansing one weekend/month in Lansing and online. A wide range of non-degree, open-enrollment programs are available, specializing in business tools and techniques, finance, leadership, and more.

Full-time MBA: 517-355-7604 Weekend MBA: 517-355-7603 Executive education: execed. broad.msu.edu; 517-353-8711 NORTHWOOD UNIVERSITY – DEVOS GRADUATE SCHOOL MIDLAND | Private Graduate programs: Accelerated, online, and evening MBA programs; MS in organizational leadership; MS in business analytics; MS in finance; and a Doctor of Business Administration are offered. devos.northwood.edu; 800-622-9000 OAKLAND UNIVERSITY ROCHESTER HILLS Graduate programs: Online and on-campus master’s programs include 100-percent online MBAs, part-time MBAs geared for working professionals, weekend executive MBAs for experienced professionals, master’s in accounting and Master of Science in information technology management with optional specializations in business analytics and information security management. Graduate certificates in business essentials, business analytics, finance, and information security management.

Executive education:

STUDY BREAK The atrium at Concordia University in Ann Arbor.

UNIVERSITY OF DETROIT MERCY DETROIT | Private Graduate programs: An MBA program geared toward working professionals is offered evenings and weekends, and may be completed in one year with a full-time class schedule.

Concentrations include business administration and health services administration.

Certificates in ethical leadership and business turnaround management are offered. Dual degree programs are also available. business.udmercy.edu; 313-993-1245

open-enrollment programs designed to develop individual specializations and strengthen organizations.

MBA: michiganross.umich.edu; 734-615-5002 Executive education: michiganross.umich.edu/ programs/executive-education; 734-763-1000 UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN DEARBORN Graduate programs: Earn master’s degrees with courses available weekday evenings, online, or through a combination of the two. MBA and MS programs are offered in accounting, business analytics, finance, human resource management, international business, information systems management, marketing, and supply chain management. umdearborn.edu/cob/ grad-programs; 313-593-4776

UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN ANN ARBOR Graduate programs: Full-time MBA program; part-time evening, online, and weekend MBA programs; and an executive MBA program are available in Ann Arbor. The school also offers master’s degrees in management, accounting, and supply chain management.

Executive education: There are a wide range of customized and

WALSH COLLEGE TROY | Private Graduate programs: Online and on-campus master’s programs including a Master of Business Administration (MBA), four MBA dual degree programs, a cyber MBA, the Walsh/Kettering tech MBA, and MS degrees in accounting, data analytics, finance, information technology, management, marketing, and taxation.

WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY DETROIT Graduate programs: MBAs offered part time and evening with 13 concentrations available online or on-site in accounting systems, entrepreneurship and innovation, sport and entertainment management, and health care supply chain management. The school also offers master’s degrees in accounting, finance, data science and business analytics, and automotive supply chain management. Ph.D.s are also available. ilitchbusiness.wayne.edu; 313-577-4511

Career-advancing educational opportunities available both online and at various on- and off-campus locations.

MBA: oakland.edu/business; 248-370-3287 PACE: oaklande.edu/pace; 248-370-3177

Executive education: Custom training including professional development, test prep, and continuing education for business certifications. walshcollege.edu; 248-823-1600

Sources: Listings reflect programs offered by a college’s business school, where such business schools exist. This list does not include certificate programs or minors. All universities are public unless otherwise noted. *Did not respond to requests for information, reflects information from 2019.

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From the Top || Top Circuit Court Judges and Home Builders

Top Circuit Court Judges in Metro Detroit

(as selected in DBusiness’ 2021 Top Lawyers survey)

Wayne County – Detroit

Oakland County – Pontiac

Hon. Edward Ewell 3rd Circuit Court

Hon. Melissa A. Cox 3rd Circuit Court

Hon. David A. Groner 3rd Circuit Court

Hon. Dana M. Hathaway 3rd Circuit Court

Hon. Bridget M. Hathaway 3rd Circuit Court

Hon. Lita M. Popke 3rd Circuit Court

Hon. Kathleen M. McCarthy 3rd Circuit Court

Hon. David J. Allen 3rd Circuit Court

Hon. Martha M. Snow 3rd Circuit Court

Hon. Carla G. Testani 3rd Circuit Court

Hon. Charles S. Hegarty 3rd Circuit Court

Top 20 Home Builders in Metro Detroit 5. MJC COS. 46600 Romeo Plank Rd. Ste. 5 Macomb 48084 586-263-1203 Permits: 154 Permit values: $41.2M

9. CLEARVIEW HOMES 811 E. South Blvd.

Ste. 100 Rochester Hills 48307 248-275-6992 Permits: 93 Permit values: $20.1

2. LOMBARDO HOMES 13001 23 Mile Rd. Ste. 200 Shelby Township 48315 586-781-7900 Permits: 540 Permit values: $148.1M

6. ALLEN EDWIN HOMES 2186 E. Centre St. Portage 49002 269-321-2600 Permits: 149 Permit values: $30.2M

10. TROWBRIDGE HOMES 2617 Beacon Hill Dr. Auburn Hills 48326 248-373-2440 Permits: 61 Permit values: $19.7M

7. ROBERTSON BROTHERS HOMES 6905 Telegraph Rd. Ste. 200 Bloomfield Hills 48301 248-505-0686 Permits: 146 Permit values: $25.5M

11. MONDRIAN PROPERTIES 50215 Schoenherr Shelby Township 48315 248-680-9074 Permits: 65 Permit values: $18M

4. M/I HOMES OF MICHIGAN 1668 S. Telegraph Rd., Ste. 200 Bloomfield Hills 48302 248-221-5000 Permits: 238 Permit values: $61.4M

80 DBUSINESS || March - April 2021

8. INFINITY CONSTRUCTION SERVICES 42400 Grand River Ave., Ste. 112 Novi 48375 248-449-5372 Permits: 133 Permit values: $20.3M

Hon. Mary Ellen Brennan 6th Circuit Court

Hon. Rae Lee Chabot 6th Circuit Court

Hon. Nanci J. Grant 6th Circuit Court

Hon. Shalina Kumar 6th Circuit Court

Hon. Phyllis McMillen 6th Circuit Court

Hon. Julie A. McDonald 6th Circuit Court

Hon. Victoria A. Valentine 6th Circuit Court

(Ranked by 2020 permit value)

1. PULTE HOMES 2800 Livernois Bldg. D, Ste. 320 Troy 48083 248-647-2750 Permits: 652 Permit values: $174.79M

3. TOLL BROTHERS 28004 Center Oaks Court Ste. 200 Wixom 48393 844-838-5263 Permits: 217 Permit values: $72.6M

Hon. Kameshia D. Gant 6th Circuit Court

12. CAPITAL CONSTRUCTION GROUP P.O. Box 1702 Brighton 48116 248-595-6719 Permits: 59 Permit values: $16.3M

13. WADE JURNEY HOMES 41210 Bridge St. Novi 48375 248-621-2895 Permits: 100 Permit values: $15.3M 14. ACADIA HOME BUILDERS 55110 Wolverine Dr. Macomb 48044 586-789-9123 Permits: 44 Permit values: $15M 14. MITCHELL BUILDING CO. 1500 Fountain View Dr. Brighton 48114 810-227-2785 Permits: 62 Permit values: $12.7 16. BIG SKY DEVELOPMENT 10524 Grand River Ave. Brighton 48116 810-459-3400 Permits: 34 Permit values: $9.2M 17. NEWMARK HOMES OF MICHIGAN 20383 Hall Rd.

Macomb Township 48044 888-963-9627 Permits: 30 Permit values: $9.1M 18. MHT HOUSING 32600 Telegraph Rd., Ste. 102 Bingham Farms 48025 248-833-0550 Permits: 25 Permit values: $6.5M 19. HRS COMMUNITIES 23370 Commerce Dr. Farmington Hills 48335 248-615-1313 Permits: 28 Permit values: $6.3M 20. BLAKE ANTHONY HOMES 4952 Dewitt Rd. Canton Township 48188 Phone: NA Permits: 30 Permit values: $5.86M Source: Home Builders Association of Southeastern Michigan

Top Mortgage Lenders || From the Top

Top 10 Mortgage Lenders in Metro Detroit

1. ROCKET MORTGAGE CO. 1050 Woodward Ave. Detroit 48226 800-610-5499 quickenloans.com Top local executive: Dan Gilbert, founder and chairman Total residential loan volume (2020): $213B (3Q)* Total residential loan volume (2019): $145B Number of loans closed (2020): NA Number of loans closed (2019): NA 2. UNITED WHOLESALE MORTGAGE 585 South Blvd. E Pontiac 48341 855-888-8737 unitedshore.com Top local executive: Mat Ishbia, president and CEO Total residential loan volume (2020): $182.5B Total residential loan volume (2019): $107.7B Number of loans closed (2020): 561,119 Number of loans closed (2019): 339,171 3. TOWNE MORTGAGE CO. 2170 E. Big Beaver Rd., Ste. A

Troy 48083 888-778-9700 townemortgage.com Top local executive: Mark Janssen, CEO Total residential loan volume (2020): $2.5B Total residential loan volume (2019): $906.2M Number of loans closed (2020): 11,001 Number of loans closed (2019): 5,185 4. MORTGAGE 1 INC. 43456 Mound Rd. Sterling Heights 48314 866-532-0550 mortgageone.com Top local executives: Mark Workens, CEO; Rick Holcomb, president Total residential loan volume (2020): $2.27B Total residential loan volume (2019): $1.2B Number of loans closed (2020): 11,618 Number of loans closed (2019): 7,100 5. SUCCESS MORTGAGE PARTNERS 1200 S. Sheldon Rd., Ste. 150 Plymouth 48170

734-259-0880 successmortgagepartners.com Top local executive: Allison Johnston, president Total residential loan volume (2020): $2B (est.)

Total residential loan volume (2019): $1.4B Number of loans closed (2020): NA Number of loans closed (2019): 7,013 6. JOHN ADAMS MORTGAGE CO. 25800 Northwestern Hwy., Ste. 110 Southfield 48075 248-208-3902 johnadamsmortgage.com Top local executive: Larry Bsharah, president Total residential loan volume (2020): $814.5M Total residential loan volume (2019): $454M Number of loans closed (2020): 3,292 Number of loans closed (2019): 1,994 7. ROSS MORTGAGE CORP. 2075 W. Big Beaver Rd., Ste. 700 Troy 48084 248-968-1800

rossmortgage.com Top local executive: Tim Ross, CEO Total residential loan volume (2020): $543M Total residential loan volume (2019): $402.9M Number of loans closed (2020): 2,060 Number of loans closed (2019): 2,125 8. CAPITAL MORTGAGE FUNDING 17170 West 12 Mile Rd. Southfield 48076 248-569-7283 lowrateonline.com Top local executive: Harry J. Glanz, president and cofounder Total residential loan volume (2020): $477.7M Total residential loan volume (2019): $320.4M Number of loans closed (2020): 2,033 Number of loans closed (2019): 1,727 9. ANDERSON FINANCIAL GROUP INC. 2950 W. Square Lake Rd., Ste. 102 Troy 48098 248-952-5248

PRIDE OF PONTIAC United Wholesale Mortgage recently became a public company.

andersonfinancialgroup.com Top local executive: Mike Anderson, president Total residential loan volume (2020): NA Total residential loan volume (2019): $271M Number of loans closed (2020): NA Number of loans closed (2019): 978 10. HORIZON FINANCIAL GROUP A division of First Securities Financial Services 30150 Telegraph Rd., Ste. 320 Bingham Farms 48025 248-538-7162 horizonfinancialgroup.com Top local executive: Joshua M. Rubin, president Total residential loan volume (2020): $114M Total residential loan volume (2019): $83.4M Number of loans closed (2020): 454 Number of loans closed (2019): 304 * 2020 results out on Feb. 25 Source: DBusiness research

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Closing Bell || Film

Celluloid Service Starting more than a century ago, Detroit’s automakers commissioned thousands of films that rivaled Hollywood’s output through the 1950s. in 1956 it was relocated to Ford’s World Headquarters in Dearborn.

“Their motion picture department was one of the largest studios outside of Hollywood,” says a blog on the National Archives website. Releasing new films every week, Ford reached up to 12 million viewers in theaters across the United States and in France, Mexico, and Japan. At first the films documented company products and processes, but they soon covered topics of general interest. A charming 1920 feature, “Playthings of Childhood: The Doll’s House,” leads viewers through the assembly of wooden dolls.

It wasn’t long before others exploited the power of the medium. Founded in 1926, Ross Roy Communications in Detroit enjoyed an enduring relationship with Chrysler, providing marketing services. Its signature training films relied on “Tech,” an animated figure.

“The film’s plotline would nearly always run the same way,” writes a collector on an enthusiasts’ website. “It would start out with a shop manager seeing a junior mechanic puzzled over something. The senior tech would begin instructing him, and then Tech would appear, seated on a Plymouth’s fat fender and butting into the conversation.”

General Motors turned to the Jam Handy Organization located a few blocks east of the

MODERN TIMES Edsel Ford, Charlie Chaplin, and Henry Ford pose in front of machinery in 1923 at Ford’s headquarters in Highland Park.

automaker’s then headquarters in Detroit’s New Center for the 1936 classic, “Master Hands,” presented by Chevrolet. Cinematographer Gordon Avil —who already had Hollywood credits on “Billy the Kid” and “The Champ” — documented foundrymen and patternmakers at work. For music, the Detroit Philharmonic Orchestra performed Samuel Benavie’s vigorous original score.

Packard Motor Car Co., meanwhile, kept producing films until its demise in 1956. “Demonstrate with a Plan,” a filmstrip by Wilding Picture Productions, used professional voice talent to compare buying a car without taking a test drive to going on a blind date. “A prospect may have to live with a blind-date car for a long time and risk a large investment,” the narrator concludes.

By the 1960s, Detroit’s film output was winding down, due in part to the growing popularity of television. In 1963, Ford donated its films from 1914 to 1945 to the National Archives.

Today we can view them online. Films on behalf of other automakers are also available, serving as a testament to the ambition and technical expertise that put Detroit on celluloid strips as well as getting us down the road.

WALTER P. REUTHER LIBRARY, ARCHIVES OF LABOR AND URBAN AFFAIRS, WAYNE STATE UNIVERSITY

A

s an aspiring actor, Bill Bixby worked as a lifeguard at a Los Angeles hotel in 1959 when, as the story goes, a Detroit advertising executive spotted him and offered him a chance to appear in an industrial film. It led to enough work that Bixby called the films “motion picture summer stock,” drawing a comparison to the theatrical standby that kept actors going year-round in repertory productions throughout the country.

Bixby went on to star in several TV series such as “My Favorite Martian” and “The Courtship of Eddie’s Father,” making his name known far and wide. He’s perhaps the most notable crossover between Detroit and Hollywood. The Motor City and Tinseltown were both on a torrid pace of filmmaking through the mid-20th century, when automakers and their ad agencies produced thousands of films that promoted products, educated dealers, and instructed mechanics.

Ford Motor Co. kicked things off in 1914 by having its advertising department acquire a movie camera. The Photographic Department allotted 24 employees to the production of motion pictures and still photos at the company’s Highland Park headquarters. In the 1920s, the department moved to the Rouge works, and

BY RONALD AHRENS

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