Designation Detr@it

Mission:

It's Time For
Us To Engage
With Detroit!

Revitalize
Detroit

Dan Gilbert talks about his plans
for Downtown. Next up: retail.

Dan Gilbert and his
associates are not a
proxy for Jewish com-
munity involvement.

Arthur Horwitz

Sandra Svoboda I Special to the Jewish News

F

Publisher and Executive Editor

filling Downtown Detroit with
people — his employees,
recent graduates of Michigan
.
universities and other residents
and workers — is the first phase of
Dan Gilbert's overall plan that is well
under way.
By the estimates of Gilbert, who
is the founder and leader of Rock
Ventures, Quicken Loans and sev-
eral other companies, about 10,000
workers fill offices around Campus
Martius on Woodward Avenue just a
few blocks from the city's Riverfront.
Most of them work for his com-
panies, specifically Quicken Loans,
which moved thousands of workers
from the suburbs to the city begin-
ning in 2010. The residential mort-
gage company is currently doing $4
billion a month in residential mort-
gages, according to Gilbert.
Other people working Downtown
are employees of businesses that
have leased space in buildings owned
by Gilbert's companies. Still others
work elsewhere but live in the resi-
dential space that's 98 percent oc-
cupied in the refurbished buildings.
His companies currently have about
1,000 job vacancies — mostly in tech-
nology work — and those workers,
when hired, will join the Downtown
workforce.
Soon, Gilbert said, residents of and
workers in Detroit's Downtown will be
able to ride light rail from the River-
front to the New Center area. He's an
investor in that project and gives it a
"95 percent" chance of happening in
the next two or three years.
What's missing in the area currently
is shopping, Gilbert admits, but he's
got a plan for that too: Downtown

Chase Building near Campus Martius

Dan Gilbert

residents and workers will soon be
strolling between retail stores that he
is looking to bring to the first floors
of numerous buildings he owns along
the Woodward Corridor. Bringing
shopping destinations to Detroit's
Downtown is among his priorities for
this year.
And, they'll be protected by the
new security cameras his team moni-
tors from an operations center set

SPONSORED SECTION BY: Quicrii&kiii.tm,yk

Engineered to Amaze'

up in one of his
buildings.
It's all part of a
strategy aimed at
making Detroit's
Downtown core a
vibrant, profitable
place to work,
live and visit.
"We can lead
this initially,"
Gilbert said. "But
we want to make
it much bigger
than us and show
that people can
come here, work
here, play here,
be safe here and
be very excited
about it. That
was the theory,
and we decided
we're going to do
it. We're going to
go for it."
Gilbert outlined
how he's fulfilled
his vision thus far
and how he's tak-
ing the next steps
in a meeting last
month with five
leaders from Michi-
gan ethnic and minority newspapers
and Dr. Hayg Oshagan, president of
New Michigan Media, the network of
ethnic and minority media in the state.
In attendance were Elias Gutierrez,
president of the Latino Press; Arthur
Horwitz, president of Renaissance
Media, which publishes the Jewish

When the founding advi-
sory board members of New
Michigan Media, a network
of ethnic and minority media
across the state, met recently
with Rock Ventures Chairman
Dan Gilbert, their collective
interest went beyond an update
on his companies' growth plans,
efforts to reshape Detroit's busi-
ness culture and recruitment of
young, tech-savvy talent.
Those who live and breathe
the real transformation that
is taking place along the
Woodward Corridor from
the Riverfront to New Center
recognize that Gilbert's bold
investments can pay multiple
dividends ... for Gilbert and
his investors, for other real
estate developers, for the city's
revenue-generating base and for
well-educated young adults who
are drawn to dynamic urban
cores to work, live and play.
However, the spillover bene-
fits for Detroit's struggling resi-
dential neighborhoods and the
aging inner-ring of suburbs that
surround the city have not been
fully communicated and, as a
result, are often misunderstood.
It's hard to explain property
tax abatements for Downtown
development when the lights
haven't been working on your
street for months, the heat in

Revitalize Detroit on page 3

Engage on page 6

June 21 2 012 1

