Crain's Detroit Business, April 10, 2023, issue

TOWERING RENEWAL

Wraps taken off lush, $300 million-plus renovation of downtown’s Book Tower

BY | KIRK PINHO

Apartments are now pre-leasing in the Book Tower and Book Building redevelopment on Washington Boulevard downtown.

With prospective residents inquiring about the 229 units and some nishing touches being put on the landmark property as part of a $300 million-plus redevelopment, members of the media were taken through portions of the rehabbed building which has been under renovation since 2016.

In addition to the residential portion, there is a 117-unit Roost apartment/hotel concept, which was announced in 2021, plus about 52,000 square feet of retail and o ce space. ere is also an indoor-outdoor lounge, 3,000 square feet of co-working space and a large atrium with a 1920s skylight with 7,000 glass jewels and 6,000 glass panels. In addition, there are 300 parking spots and plans for a Japanese restaurant with a sake bar, executives with Dan Gilbert’s Bedrock LLC real estate company said Tuesday morning.

e developer did not announce an opening date for the hotel or restaurant or put a time on when the apartments would be leased.

Weed bribery case unlikely to be the end

Michigan’s early cannabis landscape spurred temptation

BY DUSTIN WALSH

e federal corruption charges announced ursday against former Michigan House Speaker Rick Johnson and three others likely signal a beginning, not an end.

e charges levied against the defendants, who have all accepted plea deals, highlight the early troubles of launching the state’s legal marijuana industry — when eager cannabis startups looking for quick licensure were pitted against a new, overwhelmed state agency with a political board.

Matthew Schneider, former U.S. attorney and partner at Detroit law

rm Honigman LLP, told Crain’s the case, which is still ongoing, is likely to lead to more indictments.

“ is is just the start,” Schneider said. “While normally this threshold of a bribe isn’t brought to charges, the circumstances make this an interesting case. e head of this board held power, and even though the threshold was low, they will and should still get scrutiny.”

e indictments are a side e ect of a sometimes chaotic, sometimes political beginning to Michigan’s legal cannabis industry.

“ e way this industry started, it felt like a gold rush,” said Denise Pollicella, founder and managing partner of Cannabis Attorneys of Michigan, which got its start well before cannabis sales occurred in the state.

Developers eye former golf courses for homes

Surplus of greens amid shortage of housing

BY RACHEL WATSON

GRAND RAPIDS — Developers across West Michigan are seizing a prime opportunity to turn the region’s abundance of golf courses into badly needed housing.

Long considered a golf mecca, Michigan is third in the nation behind California and Florida for the number of golf courses, with 738 public courses as of the end of 2022, according to the National Golf Foundation. According to Pure Michigan, the state’s travel bureau, about 115 of those golf courses are on the west side of the state.

But due to a decline in interest

CONVERSATION

MORE ON GRAND RAPIDS

West Michigan looks to lure tech workers in bid to build a hub.

Starts on Page 8

in the sport, driven by generational shifts in leisure pursuits, the number of Michigan golf courses has fallen signi cantly since the state hit a peak of nearly 1,000 courses in 2000.

Golf’s regression may represent an opportunity for developers, as Kent County in particular looks to close a housing gap of nearly 35,000 units by 2027.

See GOLF on Page 17

CRAIN’S LIST General Motors tops list of largest employers in Michigan. Page 13

A large skylight from the rst oor of the Book Tower downtown.

The Book Tower/Book Building redevelopment features (from top) 117-unit Roost apartment/hotel concept with a series of furnished unit layouts, a restored elevator, and a kitchen in a model apartment unit. | PHOTOS BY KIRK PINHO/ CRAIN’S DETROIT

Rick

THE WEEK IN REVIEW, WITH AN EYE ON WHAT’S NEXT NEED TO KNOW

site beginning at noon and lasting through the end of the day.

WHY IT MATTERS: It’s the rst festival allowing the legal consumption of cannabis approved by the city of Detroit.

 MOODY’S UPGRADES DETROIT’S CREDIT RATING

She started the job last Monday, lling the role left by Teri Behrens when she retired after 14 years with the center, including four in the top job.

 TECHTOWN, PARTNERS LAUNCH MOBILITY ACCELERATOR

THE NEWS: TechTown Detroit has received some major funding as it works to help local mobility startups scale up. e nonpro t entrepreneurial hub has received $12.4 million to help launch the Mobility Accelerator Innovation Network as one of six components of the U.S. Economic Development Administration’s Global Epicenter of Mobility initiative.

WHY IT MATTERS: e MAIN program will help Detroit stay at the forefront of innovation in the mobility sector as the region transitions to a new electri ed, autonomous and connected reality, TechTown CEO Ned Staebler said a news release. 

DETROIT OKS CANNABIS CONSUMPTION FESTIVAL

THE NEWS: e 420 Cannabis Music Festival will take place April 29 at 2000 Brooklyn St. and adjacent areas. e indoor/outdoor event will allow for the consumption of cannabis on-

THE NEWS: e city of Detroit had its bond rating upgraded by the credit rating agency Moody’s Investors Service, its second upgrade in two years.

WHY IT MATTERS: e city’s Ba1 credit rating is its highest from Moody’s since January 2009. Moody’s also said it has a positive outlook for Detroit.

 GRAND VALLEY’S JOHNSON CENTER NAMES NEW HEAD

THE NEWS: Lesley Slavitt, an Illinois native with nearly three decades of experience in philanthropy and higher education, was named the next executive director of the Dorothy A. Johnson Center for Philanthropy at Grand Valley State University.

WHY IT MATTERS: Slavitt joins the Johnson Center as it is celebrating its 30th anniversary. e center conducts research on donor-advised funds, giving circles and international philanthropy, and it also o ers professional development options.

 REPARATIONS LARGELY SUPPORTED, SURVEY FINDS

THE NEWS: Results from a University of Michigan survey show broad support for addressing racial inequalities in Detroit — including some form of reparations. e survey, conducted last summer by the University of Michigan’s Detroit Metro Area Communities Study and the Center for Racial Justice, with support from Poverty Solutions, shows 63 percent of Detroit residents support reparations and 70 percent say addressing racial inequality should be a high priority for elected o cials.

WHY IT MATTERS: e survey results back up a 2021 election where Detroiters overwhelmingly supported the creation of a reparations task force. Its rst meeting will be April 13 at 4 p.m. in the council auditorium at the Coleman A. Young Municipal Center in Detroit.

NONPROFITS

Wayne Metro opens shelter for individuals in Downriver

 Wayne Metropolitan Community Action Agency and ChristNet on Tuesday opened a $3.6 million overnight shelter for individuals experiencing homelessness, the rst such center in the Downriver area. e 7,952-square-foot overnight shelter at 1230 Coolidge in River Rouge was funded by Wayne Metro, ChristNet, the Michigan State Housing Development Authority and Wayne County. It’s the site of a long-vacant former youth center and it will be a recon gurable space, meaning the facilities can be used as a community space during the day and a shelter for about 30 people overnight.

“ is partnership between Wayne Metro and ChristNet ensures that everyone seeking emergency shelter can receive whatever assistance they need, and be treated with the care, compassion and dignity they deserve,” ChristNet co-founder the Rev. Geo Drutchas said in a statement.

e need for emergency shelter is clear, with current demand at four times the number of available beds.

e building has undergone $3.4 million in complete interior and exterior renovation work. It will be available 24/7 every day of the year as a step toward dealing with the overwhelming need for housing, Drutchas said.

The new overnight shelter in River Rouge will be a recon gurable space, meaning the facilities can be used as a community space during the day and a shelter space for about 30 individuals overnight. WAYNE METROPOLITAN COMMUNITY ACTION AGENCY

Crain’s honors the heroes of health care. They might be a clinician or researcher that discovers breakthroughs in medical care, a chaplain comforting struggling patients or an administrator who cuts costs while improving the quality of care.

Slavitt

PRESERVING THE PAST

Historic Indian Village home renovation becomes couple’s labor of love

Kristin Cravens-Hutton looked forward to cooking her rst family meal in her new kitchen.

On the surface, that might not seem like a big deal. But it’s a signi cant milestone given that the Detroit resident hasn’t had a functional kitchen in the Indian Village home she’s owned for four years with her husband, David Hutton.

Yet it’s still just one milestone in what Cravens-Hutton, 53, said she expects will be a nearly 15-year project to fully restore the 5,600-square-foot Craftsman-style home that’s well over a century old and still lacks basics such as electricity in some rooms.

COURTS

New rules crack down on junkyards, auto shops

Residents’ complaints led to changes

ARIELLE KASS

Detroit residents’ concerns about a concentration of auto sales, repair shops and junkyards contributing to blight led to new rules that will severely reduce business owners’ ability to open new car-related facilities in the city.

e changes mean more distance between places with auto-related uses, more limits on where they can go in Detroit and heavier nes for illegal activity when those rules aren’t followed.

e new regulations went into effect March 8, but date back to a 2019 moratorium on new auto uses, said Jamie Murphy, a city planner. at moratorium limited new or expanded junkyards, towing yards, auto repair shops, auto sales, used tire sales and scrap tire processing as residents complained about the blighting inuence they had on neighborhoods across the city.

“For some reason, there are a lot of poorly operated ones in the city,” she said. “I can’t think of a nice junkyard.”

“ is house has taken over our lives in ways I would have never expected,” Cravens-Hutton told Crain’s in an interview and tour of the home on Burns Street, near the increasingly popular West Village neighborhood on Detroit’s east side.

Hutton is a Louisville native and Cravens-Hutton hails from Little Rock, Ark. e couple — who met in the U.S. Army — moved to metro Detroit for work in the defense sector in 2010, at the tail end of the Great Recession. At rst they settled in Royal Oak, but eventually found themselves drawn to Detroit.

While existing legal uses won’t have to change because of the new rules, those that are grandfathered in to areas where they wouldn’t be able to operate if they tried to open now won’t be able to expand their facilities. e businesses can be sold and continue to operate as-is, though, even with the new limits.

Among the changes are regulations that require at least 1,000 feet between car-related uses and more restrictions on what business zoning categories will allow for new automotive uses, New car lots are no longer allowed in what’s known as a local business district, also called B2 zoning, said Rory Bolger, a city planner/zoning specialist in Detroit.

Additionally, many of the automotive uses now have to be at least 100 feet away from a residentially zoned lot.

Lawsuit looks to turn UWM ‘All In’ success against mortgage lender

A new ling in a lawsuit brought by a Florida mortgage broker states that the increasing market share of United Wholesale Mortgage serves as evidence of the Pontiac-based company’s monopolist tendencies.

e wholesale mortgage company (NYSE: UWMC) last year emerged as the nation’s largest lender in terms of volume, overtaking cross-town rival Rocket Mortgage.

at growth, and the way that UWM CEO Mat Ishbia has touted it, proves the company has a “dangerous probability of achieving monopoly power,” according to a proposed

supplemental complaint led late last month in a Florida federal court by attorneys for e O’Kavage Group LLC, an independent mortgage broker based in St. Augustine, Fla. e initial complaint by O’Kavage was brought nearly two years ago, in the wake of Ishbia announcing the so-called “All In” initiative in which he barred independent mortgage brokers who wish to do business with UWM from working with Rocket or Madison, Wis.-based Fairway Independent Mortgage Corp. ose companies were doing damage to the wholesale channel, Ishbia has claimed.

“Ishbia recently attributed UWM’s

growth in share to his ultimatum that brokers cease using Rocket and Fairway in order to use UWM, because under those circumstances, brokers felt they had to choose UWM,” the supplemental complaint states.

A federal judge in Florida recently ordered the parties to identify a mediator for the case.

UWM, in its most recent earnings report in early March, touted that the company had achieved 11 percent total market share in the industry and 54 percent market share of the wholesale channel, where UWM has long been the dominant lender.

While the renovation of their Indian Village house is an enormous undertaking, Dave Hutton and Kris Cravens-Hutton (with cat Cletus) say they have no regrets about where they chose to plant their roots. | NIC ANTAYA/CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS

After two years of searching for a house to buy in Detroit’s historic neighborhoods, Dave Hutton and his wife Kris Cravens-Hutton fell in love with this one on Burns Street in Indian Village. NIC ANTAYA/CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS

NICK MANES

NICK MANES

Ross, Ilitches seem to be eyeing a big bank o ce tenant in District Detroit

e Ilitch family and Stephen Ross may have tipped their hand a little bit on the o ce users for the District Detroit project.

In a document submitted to the Detroit City Council, the Ilitch family’s Olympia Development of Michigan and Ross’ Related Cos. have identi ed some very speci c job titles as being employed in the new o ce space: “Loan o cers, bank tellers, loan interviewers/clerks, customer service representatives, claims adjusters, insurance claims clerks, sales agents, software developers, computer systems analysts, mechanical engineers, management analysts and o ce clerks.”

Kirk PINHO

I’m interested in all of them, but in particular, the rst several seem to very clearly be identifying a bank tenant.

No one is saying publicly the bank user Olympia and Related are targeting, but there has been behind-thescenes chatter for months that Dallas-based Comerica Inc. (NYSE: CMA) may be in the running.

A spokesperson for Related said the joint development team with Olympia does not comment on prospective tenants. Representatives for Comerica did not comment.

Comerica would make sense for a host of reasons.

First of all, clearly Comerica and the Ilitch family have a long-standing relationship and ties. Just look at the name of the stadium where the Detroit Tigers opened on ursday.

It would also make sense from a real estate perspective, given what Mike Ritchie, executive vice president and head of national and specialty businesses for Comerica, told me in a September interview.

At the time, Ritchie was announcing a new 340,000-square-foot o ce lease in Farmington Hills.

“ e whole point for us doing this, and we’ve been on this journey for

awhile, but we really believe in having beautiful, modern, high-touch, high-collaboration space,” Ritchie said. “We have the opportunities to convert our facilities into that kind of setting so it’s attractive for people to come in, well lit, the best technology we can possibly o er, good amenities, and that’s what this will be.”

Comerica’s existing downtown Detroit building at 411 W. Lafayette Blvd. doesn’t strike me as being the most contemporary.

But a spi y new Ross-built o ce tower in front of the baseball stadium that bears the bank’s name? at seems to t the bill of “beautiful, modern, high-touch, high-collaboration space.”

And on the developer side of the equation, Ross and Ilitch aren’t exactly known for hating their money. It wouldn’t make a whole lot of sense to come out of the ground with a new o ce tower if you don’t have a tenant — and a big one — in the bag. at was true prior to the pandemic, when few spec o ce buildings were built in the years leading up to it, and it’s even more true today, when remote work remains popular and doesn’t appear to be going away any time soon.

If Comerica is, in fact, heading to a new Ross/Ilitch o ce tower, I suspect the bank would put its current downtown Detroit operation up for sale, as it did with the suburban buildings in Auburn Hills and Livonia.

e Detroit building at 411 W. Lafayette Blvd., is about 398,000 square feet.

New brokerage rm

Sylvan Lake-based Cohn Commercial Properties, run by Harry Cohn, has joined SVN as a local a liate.

Now operating as SVN | Cohn Commercial Properties, the brokerage rm works in areas like retail, o ce, multifamily and industrial.

“With SVN we gained expanded visibility and marketing dexterity to deliver the best value possible no matter the geography or asset class,” Cohn, who founded his company in 2013, said in a press release. “We now not only reach a business owner across town but an investor across the globe.”

SVN is based in Boston and worked on $21.1 billion in sales and leases last year, according to the release.

Contact: kpinho@crain.com; (313) 446-0412; @kirkpinhoCDB

Developers building new FedEx facility next to Detroit Metropolitan airport

A joint venture that’s been active in industrial and warehouse development has quietly started a new $423 million project at Detroit Metropolitan Airport in Romulus.

Dallas-based Hillwood Enterprises LP and Detroit-based Sterling Group have kicked o construction on a new consolidated building for FedEx Corp. slated to be about 250,000 square feet at the southeast side of the airport.

An electronic presentation prepared by FedEx advisers Kroll LLC for the city of Romulus says that the Memphis-based freight and transportation company is consolidating two of its facilities because of a Federal Aviation Administration-mandated taxiway realignment plan causing the loss of a McDonnell Douglas MD-11 aircraft gate as well as capacity con-

straints at its existing space.

e 12-page presentation says FedEx would enter into a 30-year lease valued at $1.1 billion over its term in a 302,613-square-foot building and maintain 380 employees with an average wage of $25 per hour. Randy Wimbley, a spokesperson for the Wayne County Airport Authority, said it is leasing the land to FedEx.

An executive for Sterling Group did not respond to a text message seeking

comment last week.

e presentation from Kroll, based in New York City, says FedEx has three facilities on the airport property: A 71,000-square-foot inbound package sorting and vehicle maintenance facility, which is being consolidated; an 81,000-square-foot outbound package sorting facility, which is also being consolidated; and a 56,000-squarefoot heavyweight freight sorting facility, which will remain unchanged.

e construction cost includes both the price tag for building the new facility ($328 million, including soft costs and nancing costs); as well as new equipment, furniture, vehicles and other expenses ($95.4 million).

Construction is expected to wrap up in Q1 2025, the document says.

Contact: kpinho@crain.com; (313) 446-0412; @kirkpinhoCDB

A conceptual rendering of future o ce and retail developments along Woodward Avenue adjacent to Comerica Park in the District Detroit. | ILITCH COMPANIES

KIRK PINHO

Construction

| MICHAEL NAGLE/BLOOMBERG

Fix a ordable housing crisis with these housing options

Iread with great interest the recent Crain’s editorial (“Rent control in Detroit just doesn’t add up,” Feb. 6, 2023) and accompanying stories about the deepening crisis in Michigan’s housing market.

ese pieces each passed over the valuable role that manufactured housing can play in solving this problem that otherwise threatens to stem Michigan’s future growth.

State leaders and the Michigan Manufactured Housing Association can work together to provide quality, a ordable housing options in communities across the state for current residents and anyone looking to move to Michigan.

e power of being live and in-person

Spring is here and along with the annual feeling of renewal comes the hope that in-person events will continue to recover what was lost in the pandemic.

e Tigers returned to Comerica Park a few days ago. Bruce Springsteen recently played to a packed Little Caesars Arena. And later this month the Michigan Panthers of the revived USFL will make their debut at Ford Field.

More than three years after the pandemic wreaked havoc on our lives and brought unprecedented disruption to in-person gatherings, there are certainly signs of normalcy as we move down the path of recovery.

One segment, however, that has been slower to bounce back is the performing arts.

While many Detroit-area organizations have seen vast improvement in attendance, and the accompanying revenue from ticket sales, many performing arts organizations are still shy of their 2019 pre-pandemic levels. ere are a few theories why, Crain’s Detroit senior reporter Sherri Welch recently wrote. One is that many of us have gotten comfortable, perhaps a little too comfortable, with being entertained at home via streaming programs. Another is that people are waiting to buy tickets or avoiding full-season subscriptions, worried they might get sick or some other complicating factor will come up that could a ect their attendance.

“ e issue of re-engagement for so many arts groups is one that continues to evolve,”

Detroit Opera President and CEO Wayne Brown told Welch.

While health and safety of course are paramount, we encourage patrons of the performing arts to re-engage with these organizations. eir vibrancy is critical to the fabric of the quality of life and economic vitality of Southeast Michigan.

In the area of conventions and corporate events, many of Michigan’s largest facilities are seeing a similar trend. Locations such as Huntington Place and Suburban Collection Showplace are pointing to strong areas of growth, Crain’s Detroit reporter Rachel Watson noted for a recent story on that industry.

While Huntington Place’s revenue last year was well below 2019 levels because fewer manufacturers participated in the North American International Auto Show, some non-automotive conventions were big hits. ree tech-related events broke non-auto pro tability records in 2022: a 3D printing conference called RAPID + TCT hosted by the Society of Manufacturing Engineers, the Automate show by A3, and KubeCon, the Cloud Native Computing Foundation’s annual conference.

“In 2022, coming out of the pandemic, we had the three most pro table (non-auto) shows in the history of the convention center, so there was some real great progress from that standpoint, and then certainly those shows are scheduled to come back (in future years),” Claude Molinari, president and CEO of Visit Detroit, told Watson.

Indeed, this is a sign of hope for the future. In an age of Zoom calls and AI chatbots, still nothing beats in-person, human connection — whether it’s attending the Detroit Opera or learning about 3D printing.

ere are brand new, available manufactured homes for sale in clean, safe, welcoming communities all over Michigan, starting at less than $75,000, with ample nancing and warranties available. ese homes are built with the same materials as site-built homes, only in a controlled environment, where construction quality is superior to what can be done outdoors. Since 1976, construction of these homes has been regulated by stringent federal laws ensuring their quality. Further, new homes are constructed in a manner that their appearance is compatible with local architecture and can be essentially indistinguishable from site-built homes.

Our cities, suburbs and even rural areas are facing the same housing con ict as the rest of the country, and it’s one driven by a lack of a ordable, quality renting and ownership options. is is an issue of simple supply and demand.

ere just isn’t enough supply to meet the existing demand. It’s a problem that state leaders know well, as the governor’s “Statewide Housing Plan” lays out goals of making tens of thousands of new homes available to Michigan families over the next few years to keep up with demand, fuel growth, and address this crisis.

State policy should be aimed at setting up our state for long-term growth and success, and Michigan should always be a place where everyone can a ord to live, work, and raise a family. Policymakers should not be seduced by the false promises of Not In My Backyard acolytes, who claim that placing new burdens on developers and the construction industry will somehow lift all boats. Research shows that again and again, rent control and other anti-supply policies lower overall property values while discouraging homeownership.

Even worse, sometimes zoning restrictions speci cally exclude manufactured homes in a local community, ensuring that people wishing to live in that community will be forced to pay arti cially high prices for no good reason.

e last thing we need is more government crackdowns on housing supply. When it’s been tried in markets large and small all over the country, so-called rent control has shown time and again that it only exacerbates a housing crisis. You don’t x a supply-side problem by cracking down on the available supply — but that’s exactly what new government mandated limits on rent would do.

Michigan’s manufactured housing industry is helping build toward the governor’s goals by providing thousands of new homes for families every year, even through the height of the pandemic. e manufactured housing industry provided 12,404 new homes in Michigan since January 2020, despite many local governments standing in the way of the development of these critically needed housing options with restrictive zoning policies. ese aren’t just rental opportunities. Manufactured homes provide a ordable homeownership opportunities for families all over this state — thousands more, every year.

e biggest thing the state can do to spark even more of this kind of growth and address the housing crisis is to incentivize local governments to embrace pro-growth zoning policies to attract more housing options.

In order to address a ordability and increase the available housing supply, we need to relax zoning restrictions to help our state grow, increase homeownership equity across race, ethnic and socio-economic groups, and increase homeownership among low- and middle-income households. at’s how we build a state where everyone can a ord to live and thrive.

DANIEL SAAD/CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS

ONE SEGMENT THAT HAS BEEN SLOWER TO BOUNCE BACK IS THE PERFORMING ARTS.

JOHN D. LINDLEY

John D. Lindley is president and CEO of the Michigan Manufactured Housing Association.

‘There is no communist plot’: Gotion responds to criticism

Firm plans to build battery parts plant near Big Rapids

BY KURT NAGL

Gotion Inc.’s top North American executive said Wednesday that the Chinese company is targeting July to start construction on a planned $2.4 billion battery parts plant in the Big Rapids area.

But rst, the company and local ofcials supporting it are hoping to allay worries ranging from impact on the local water table and environment to ties to the Chinese Communist Party.

Chuck elen, Gotion’s North American vice president, tackled the CCP claims at the outset of a virtual panel discussion Wednesday evening focused on answering questions submitted by residents.

“ ere is no communist plot within Gotion to make Big Rapids a center to spread communism,” elen said on the call. “Never in my time with this company have I ever heard anybody mention anything about a party a liation.”

e planned factory, which would produce anode and cathode materials for lithium-ion batteries in electric vehicles, has become a lightning rod for criticism since being announced last year. Gotion’s plant, along with Ford Motor Co.’s $3.5 billion battery plant with Chinese giant Contemporary Amperex Technology Co. Ltd. in Marshall, have stoked political tension from Lansing and Washington, D.C., to Beijing.

Wednesday’s panel discussion was initially planned to be in person but was changed to a virtual meeting because of safety concerns, underscoring how tense the situation in Mecosta County has become.

Jim Chapman, supervisor of Green Township, where the 2-millionsquare-foot plant would be erected, said he has received death threats over his support for the project and its promised 2,350 jobs.

“Right now, there’s so much misinformation out there, you would not believe what I’m having to deal with,” Chapman told Crain’s ahead of the panel discussion.

While the discussion took place, demonstrators took to a sidewalk in front of Ferris State University’s campus with signs protesting the battery plant, according to videos posted on Facebook by Randy Guppy Sr., who has been outspoken against the plant.

elen sought to dispel the claim that Gotion must carry out the Communist Party agenda. Critics have raised questions about the company’s articles of association, which state as of July: “ e Company shall set up a Party organization and carry out Party activities in accordance with the Constitution of the Communist Party of China.”

elen said those terms apply to parent company Gotion High-Tech Co. Ltd. but not the North American subsidiary established in California in 2014, which is building the plant near Big Rapids.

elen said he will serve as plant manager overseeing operations and that parent company chairman and president, Zhen Li, has entrusted him to run it.

“He’s never ever made reference to

a communist ideal or directive,” elen said of Li. “He has my trust. I think he’s an honest man.”

In an attempt to clear the air, Gotion applied for a review by the Committee on Foreign Investment in the United States — the same national security review demanded by Big Rapids Township, which has since been cut out of the project footprint due to opposition from board members.

e CFIUS review is being funded by Gotion, elen said. All the documentation needed for it will be submitted to the federal government by Friday, with a response due 30-45 days later.

“We will obey their conclusion and comply with their ndings,” elen said.

Over the past month, the Gotion plan went from being seemingly on the rocks to even bigger than anticipated. elen has stressed that it is still not a done deal. e Michigan Senate Appropriations Committee must still give nal approval for $175 million in state incentives for the project.

e company surveyed 44 locations around the U.S. before landing on the Big Rapids area site.

Contact: knagl@crain.com; (313) 446-0337; @kurt_nagl

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Gotion Inc.’s original plan for a $2.4 billion EV battery parts factory near Big Rapids includes four buildings spanning 2 million square feet. The company is considering growing the planned footprint to roughly 3 million square feet. | GOTION INC.

CRAIN’S MICHIGAN BUSINESS: GRAND RAPIDS

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PAGE 10

TAPPING WORKERS FOR TECH

Grand Rapids looks to attract talent and supportive ecosystem to transform into tech hub

GRAND RAPIDS — West Michigan leaders and startup founders know that turning the region into the Midwest’s leading tech cluster might start with a marketing plan, but it can’t end there.

In September, e Right Place, West Michigan’s largest economic development agency, announced a 10-year plan to make greater Grand Rapids the Midwest’s leading tech cluster by increasing the skilled talent pool, attracting new residents and bolstering the business ecosystem.

e goal is to attract 2,000 workers from outside the region, reskill 6,000 people there and educate 12,000 to meet the demand for talent.

A task force — comprised of industry and academic leaders and convened by e Right Place — wants the tech sector to make up 10 percent of the region’s total labor force by 2032, which also means adding 20,000 tech jobs to the existing sector that currently employs about 33,500 people.

It starts with promotion

Hello West Michigan, a Grand Rapids-based talent attraction and support organization, launched an ad campaign last year, inviting displaced tech workers from the East and West coasts to consider West Michigan for their next home and career destination.

Executive Director Rachel Gray said the campaign targeted “potential boomerangs — people who went to Michigan colleges and who are in IT elds or tech elds” — and employees of speci c companies. Hello West Michigan has directed LinkedIn ads at laid-o workers from companies such as Peloton, Twitter, Amazon and Meta, the latter of which laid o 11,000 workers last fall and announced another 10,000 cuts in March.

e campaign promoted the organization’s Re ink West Michigan

events, annual mixers for former residents home for anksgiving to network and learn about current career opportunities.

Gray said it’s hard to say how much of the event attendance was driven by the ad campaign. But she envisions the campaign expanding to other social platforms as part of the organization’s outbound marketing strategy.

But she is aware of the challenges. When marketing the region’s cultural amenities and low cost of living, Hello West Michigan bumps up against an issue that is especially acute amid West Michigan’s population boom: the housing shortage.

“ ose are deep and complex issues that won’t get solved overnight,” she said, adding that the issue is being addressed. (More on who’s working to solve the issue on Page 9.)

An aerial image of downtown Grand Rapids

Developers assess task of closing West Michigan housing gap

Some say the challenges of delivering a project hamper the ability to meet growing demand

RACHEL WATSON

GRAND RAPIDS — As West Michigan tackles an ambitious plan to make itself the leading tech hub in the Midwest, developers question whether they can build enough housing in the booming region to accommodate a potential in ux of workers.

e population of greater Grand Rapids grew by 9.2 percent from 2010 to 2020 and is expected to grow by another 18,000 residents (2.7 percent more than in 2020) by 2027, according to an updated housing assessment released in February.

at population growth is good news for the region’s economy — especially when population growth in Michigan is nearly at and many state counties lost residents.

Yet, some question whether builders can keep up with demand.

e task force behind the new tech strategy aims to grow West Michigan’s technology workforce by 20,000 workers over the next decade. ey want 10 percent of that total to be new residents.

It’s hard to say how many of those tech sector employees would physically move here with remote work still popular. But groups like talent marketing organization Hello West Michigan are promoting the region’s quality of life and cost of living to former residents and laid-o tech workers from the East and West coasts.

Randy elen, president and CEO of e Right Place, spearheaded the plan. elen said many factors, not just the population boom, contribute to the housing crisis.

e wrong solution, he said, is being less ambitious about job growth. Rather, regions with declining and stable populations rarely draw new housing investments.

“Fundamentally, the way to solve the housing problem is to build more housing,” he said, adding that groups like Housing Next are convening stakeholders across the spectrum to work on the issue.

The drive to build

Ryan Talbot, owner of Birmingham-based Talbot Development, said regional growth spurred him to invest in a 72-unit apartment project in Grand Rapids that’s breaking ground this spring.

“It’s a great market. e people seem friendly. e restaurants are great. You can walk a lot of places. I’m totally not surprised there’s net migration coming in, and I love the plans that are in the future for the city,” he said.

“I think bringing in a lot of tech talent makes a ton of sense, and I’m very optimistic for the future of Grand Rapids.”

At the same time, Talbot is skeptical that developers can increase the housing stock quickly enough with all of the headwinds in play.

“ e arc of delivering a project can be two to three years very easily. And you’re talking about 10,000 units in the pipeline right now with a need of about 30,000 — so, tripling the pipeline? It’s a really Herculean task to try to build that many units that quickly,” he said.

He said West Michigan needs

more than interested developers.

“You need the (general contractor) infrastructure. You need the bandwidth at the city to process that many permit applications. ere are lots of constraints along the way that you might hit when you try to triple (production).”

Economic imbalance

One obstacle to luring more builders and a supportive infrastructure is interest rates.

“Over time, a market supply ultimately nds an equilibrium with demand,” Talbot said. “But I don’t think we’re going to see that equilibrium for quite a while.”

Je Olsen, a partner in Grand Rapids-based Olsen Loeks Development, agreed there’s an economic imbalance keeping the community from closing the housing gap. Olsen Loeks is building a $62-million, 16-story tower downtown with nearly 200 apartments and condos.

He said another issue is with the continued shortage of construction workers.

“While the supply chain seems to be coming back in line, and we have some feedback that in ation is starting to come into check, the one prob-

lem that isn’t showing signs of improvement is access to skilled labor,” he said.

“ at becomes the key problem for developers to solve. Once we get past supply chain and interest-rate hurdles, we still need to have access to a skilled labor force that can deliver the product.”

e residential tower, called Studio Park, was planned well before the pandemic hit and the housing gap worsened, Olsen said. His rm is also investigating multiple other urban and suburban sites where it could build more multifamily housing.

Not working in a vacuum

Local government o cials are making a concerted push to lessen the housing problems. For example, Grand Rapids supported 762 new housing units in 2022, up from 137 in 2021. But more will be needed as costs continue to rise.

“ e housing shortage is unlike anything we’ve seen in recent history, and it’s going to take intentional e ort from the development community, local government, city (and) state o cials to help create the balanced economic platform to allow meaningful progress to be made in

this area,” Olsen said.

Grand Rapids-based Victory Development is building the 120-unit Victory on Leonard apartment complex in Grand Rapids and is planning projects for 280 Ann St. NW and Celebration Village, said Brian Hamrick. He and his partners plan to add 1,000 units in the Grand Rapids area within the next few years. With what’s in their pipeline, they’re about halfway there.

ey are inspired by various assessments, such as RentCafe’s periodic look at the hottest rental markets in the country. Its most recent report put Grand Rapids in fourth place and helped build interest from out-of-market investors who can help nance projects. Combined with traditional lending sources and government incentives, this makes projects more doable, Olsen said.

However, there’s still the question of how to physically get the projects built.

“With Victory Development Group, we just run our numbers under the current situation and see if we can get it to work,” Hamrick said. “(But) it gets tricky because of that labor shortage and supply shortage and material costs.”

Two of Hamrick’s Victory Devel-

Victory Development Group partner Brian Hamrick is one of the partners behind the planned 250-unit Celebration Apartments project on Grand Rapids’ northeast edge. | LOTT3METZ ARCHITECTURE

Housing Next’s September 2022 assessment of Kent County housing:

 813: The approximate number of housing units available for purchase. That’s only a one-month supply.

 2.1 percent: The vacancy rate in the county that has 764 vacant rentals.

 4 percent to 6 percent: The vacancy rate considered healthy in a balanced market.

 There are 10,237 units in progress at last count. That includes about 32 multifamily rental communities, eight senior living properties and 44 for-sale housing projects currently in the Kent County development pipeline.

 The number of units in the works is considerably shy of the 35,000 new units experts project the county will need by 2027. To meet that need, developers must more than triple production over the next few years.

opment partners co-own Honor Construction, which has “a deep bench” of reliable vendors and subcontractors to get projects across the nish line, he said.

Talbot, the Birmingham developer working on Hillcrest Apartments across town, said his approach is to nd a local general contractor with good relationships with subcontractors “and the ability to get people to show up.” He’s currently working with Pinnacle Construction on the Hillcrest project.

Still, Hamrick knows developers who are putting projects on pause while they wait for interest rates and labor costs to come down.

As the supply gap widens, stakeholders say it will be crucial for everyone in the region to step up.

“And it’s important for everybody to do their part to continue to attract… workers to do the work and people to come in for entertainment and travel and tourism,” Hamrick said. “If we can continue to work collaboratively with all these groups, we’ll continue to see growth and success in the greater West Michigan region.”

Contact: rachel.watson@crain.com

(989) 533-9685; @RachelWatson86

Birmingham developer Ryan Talbot said he builds smaller and more e cient units to make them cost-e ective and relatively a ordable. He said the cost to build will be one of the biggest hurdles to overcome if Grand Rapids is to triple production by 2027. |

PINNACLE CONSTRUCTION

Founder expands Etsy-like app for farmers, gardeners, buyers

Farmish helps users buy and sell homegrown produce, eggs, garden supplies and more

RACHEL WATSON

GRAND RAPIDS — When Terra Osman launched Farmish to help hobby gardeners connect with customers, she hardly imagined having almost 200,000 users and launching a paid membership version of the app a year later.

Osman, a web developer and hobby gardener living in suburban Grand Rapids, launched Farmish on the App Store and Google Play in March 2022. Her idea for the platform arose during the pandemic when she noticed an uptick in households wanting to buy local. At the same time, millions of U.S. residents were taking up hobby gardening.

She created Farmish to bring the demographics together. The app helps users buy and sell homegrown produce, backyard chicken eggs, garden supplies, plants, trees, honey and more. They can search for items they want to purchase or sell and schedule a meetup to complete their transactions offline.

Within the first week of launch, Farmish had 1,000 users. Six months later, by September, it had 100,000 users from all over Canada and the U.S. Most live in the South, which has a longer growing season than Michigan, Osman said.

Room to grow

After participating in Spartan Innovations’ third Grand Rapids-based Conquer Accelerator co -

hort for three months last year, Osman received $45,000 in funding from Red Cedar Ventures.

Spartan Innovations called Farmish the perfect fit partly because Osman’s ideas are highly scalable, and she’s teachable.

“She really checked a lot of boxes for us and for what we’re looking for (with) companies,” said Tom

Stewart, assistant director of venture acceleration with Spartan Innovations, which spun out of Michigan State University’s school of agriculture.

Rather than hiring staff with the funds, Osman contracted Holland-based software development company Collective Idea to help improve the app. As of last month,

nearly 200,000 users a week were employing the platform.

Now, Osman is preparing to launch a $29-a-month or $299-a-year Market Membership that will let farmers and gardeners create public, branded storefronts, build a following, add unlimited listings and receive referral rewards. She plans to add in-app

transactions and a handmade market later this spring.

“I want to do for farmers and gardeners what Etsy has done for crafters and build a path for users to go from interest to hobby to side hustle to building a business,” Osman said.

Pandemic drove growth for video-hiring platform Wedge

Technology allows job applicants to create pre-recorded video submissions with resumes

RACHEL WATSON

GRAND RAPIDS — When remote hiring and technology adoption accelerated in human resource departments nationwide, Grand Rapids-based Wedge got a huge boost.

Matt Baxter was a junior at Hope College in Holland when he witnessed HR employees physically calling candidates to screen them during the hiring process. e process was a time-consuming step Baxter knew could be eliminated with the help of technology.

He founded the video-screening platform Wedge in 2015. Now the company has a team of 14 remote workers and an o ce Baxter leases in the Grand Rapids Innovation Park. e platform allows job applicants to create pre-recorded, one-way video submissions to supplement their resumes and give hiring managers a better sense of applicants’ personalities and quali cations.

With a $159-$199 a month subscription, HR departments can invite job candidates to upload a video at no cost. e software integrates with many of the applicant tracking systems that HR managers already use and provides feedback and tracking.

Since its founding, Wedge has raised about $6 million in investment funding from Michigan Capital Network, Michigan Rise, Northgate Holdings and other private investors.

e company is in talks to close another funding round with an undisclosed investor.

“We’ve been growing a lot, which has been a blast,” Baxter said. “It’s really expanded to a broader, robust hiring platform beyond just video screening — but certainly still with an emphasis on video.”

Brett Logan, owner and CEO of Grand Rapids-based Immaculate Flight, is one of Wedge’s investors.

Immaculate Flight cleans and details private aircraft in 10 states. Logan thought of Wedge two years after seeing Baxter make a pitch at a Grand Angels meeting Logan attended to explore becoming an angel investor.

“We were going through a lot of growth in our company and trying to do a lot better, and I told my HR director, ‘I think maybe we could use their o erings to help us get through candidates quicker,’” he said.

Logan met with Baxter and ended up becoming both a customer and an investor.

at was three years ago. Since then, Logan said, his company has nearly doubled its headcount because Wedge saved Immaculate Flight’s HR team time during the screening process.

Logan also appreciates that Wedge integrates with his company’s JazzHRapplicant tracking system.

“ e more they integrate with, the more it will be easier for clients all over the place to start using the service,” he said.

Pandemic-related growth

Wedge especially took o during the pandemic, when companies were shifting to remote work and adopting new technologies at an unprecedented rate, Baxter said. He said Wedge saw about 500 percent growth per year over two years, although he didn’t disclose revenue gures.

“Quite frankly, I think (the pandemic) was like one of the biggest ‘spur-ons’ for our business because everything shifted toward remote, which was obviously huge. ...it sort of forced the function of a lot of organizations that were hesitant, that said, ‘Oh, we didn’t use video before, but now we need to use video.’ So, we certainly saw growth — a spike that’s continued and de nitely hasn’t plateaued in any capacity,” he said.

Interest in Wedge has “forced” the company to move fast, even as companies begin returning to the o ce because the software can save HR teams time during pre-screening.

Over the past year, Wedge started signing global and franchise clients like Goodwill Industries and Chick- l-A.

The app Farmish lets users search by location as well as by listing to nd homegrown produce, eggs, plants, honey and more. | FARMISH

“I WANT TO DO FOR FARMERS AND GARDENERS WHAT ETSY HAS DONE FOR CRAFTERS AND BUILD A PATH FOR USERS TO GO FROM INTEREST TO HOBBY TO SIDE HUSTLE TO BUILDING A BUSINESS.”

—

Terra Osman, founder, Farmish

Employers send a link to job candidates who can then upload a video. | WEDGE

See FARMISH on Page 11

FARMISH

From Page 10

“I think (users) are looking to build a brand versus just make an occasional sale. at may be hobby gardeners, that may be someone working toward more of like a market gardener or interested in selling wholesale (or to) local retailers. But I think it’s still within the hobby gardener area, especially for content creators. People who are ... building a brand outside of their individual community,” she said.

Stewart said there also are opportunities to grow Farmish through corporate partnerships with grocery chains like Meijer, Kroger or Whole Foods.

“All of these stores right now are trying to nd ways to incorporate local produce at their regional stores. If she was able to provide a vehicle for that, that would be critical, and I think it could do really well,” he said.

First, Stewart said, Osman will need to gure out how to make her revenue model sustainable. Similar apps use a transaction fee-based model, but Osman hypothesized from the beginning that fees would be a turno to users in farming where margins already are slim.

“She’s got to prove some traction for big corporates like that to be interested, so that’s another step we’re going to be working on,” Stewart said.

Growing attention

When global supply chain issues or unforeseen circumstances like avian u cause shortages or price spikes in the grocery aisle, Osman said Farmish is a great resource.

At the end of January, the company got a bump from an article on All Recipes proclaiming Farmish was, at the time, one of the cheapest places to buy eggs in the U.S., second only to Dollar General. Newsweek then picked up the coverage, and the media attention snowballed.

Osman said egg sellers saw a bump.

“A few weeks ago, I connected with a user a little bit north of where I live. ey had been posting on Facebook for quite a bit, and it just wasn’t working. But she joined Farmish, and they sold over 20 dozen eggs within a week,” Osman said.

e company aims to raise another $500,000 in seed funding to keep the platform’s momentum going.

It’s an exciting time to connect with a new generation of growers for whom technology and farming are naturally intertwined, Osman said.

“Most of our users are under 44, so they grew up using Instagram and Facebook to connect with people,” she said. “It was only natural that they had tried (social media) to connect with local farmers, but those platforms aren’t built that way. ey restrict a lot of content, especially when it comes to selling homegrown food or food of any kind. It was just a natural transition for people to (try an app) that still felt familiar but solves the problem for them.”

Contact: rachel.watson@crain.com (989) 533-9685; @RachelWatson86

WEDGE

From Page 10

“So many franchises are small businesses or midsize businesses; once one uses it, (others) typically follow suit. So, it just helps us grow quite a bit faster,” Baxter said.

Wedge has been especially successful in helping restaurants and retailers nd job candidates for customer service roles. ough they might not have much to show on paper regarding work history, they can shine in the videos.

In December, Wedge integrated “self-serve” QR code scanning that allows restaurants to use the same technology used with contactless

menus to allow applicants to scan and then upload their application videos.

“ at’s where we’ve seen a lot of success,” he said.

Fueling the talent pipeline

Baxter said it’s been fun to be part of Grand Rapids’ growing startup scene as a creator of high-tech, highwage jobs, with salaries ranging from $60,000 to $240,000 per year, and on the receiving end of city resources — from Start Garden and Spartan Innovations to the investors taking notice of West Michigan tech founders.

“It’s been awesome to be a part of the tech ecosystem, both from a growing company (standpoint) and

with some great talent that we can pull from in that capacity. But then on top of that, just as an entrepreneur, I think rubbing shoulders with other entrepreneurs who are, quite frankly, wrestling with just as many challenges as successes — there’s a lot you can work through together,” he said.

“We’ve gone through some of the challenges and headaches, the funding rounds and just what the market’s bringing, and being able to come alongside entrepreneurs earlier in their careers, I love being able to o er some of that wisdom, both good and bad.”

Contact: rachel.watson@crain.com (989) 533-9685; @RachelWatson86

“IT’S BEEN AWESOME TO BE A PART OF THE TECH ECOSYSTEM, BOTH FROM A GROWING COMPANY (STANDPOINT) AND WITH SOME GREAT TALENT THAT WE CAN PULL FROM...”

—Matt Baxter, founder and CEO, Wedge

TECH HUB

From Page 8

It takes a village

Word of mouth from residents and user-friendly hiring processes from employers would also attract recruits.

Terra Osman, founder of Farmish, a mobile app that connects hobby farmers and gardeners to local customers, said outsiders need to hear about success stories from Grand Rapids.

“When other people look at what’s already worked, they look at the West Coast. ey look at maybe New York,” Osman said.

And Gray suggested that businesses examine how they can support hires relocating from another region and make it easier on them.

From storytelling to systems change

Startup founders already based in West Michigan echo the vision of e Right Place’s plan to build an “ecosystem” because, they say, there’s more to developing a tech hub than recruiting workers.

Osman, who runs Farmish as a sole proprietor in partnership with a software development contractor, said support services and funding are key. She would like to see formalized matchmaking opportuni -

ties for founders.

“I see a lot of much earlier-stage companies who need almost a CTO role,” Osman said. “ ere are a lot of people like myself — I built the rst version of the app and launched it on my own.”

She said Grand Rapids doesn’t need to recruit advisers from the West Coast to get startups to the next scalable point.

“ at type of talent exists in West Michigan. Connecting those di er-

ent groups of people right where we are is going to be really impactful to the whole community.” (Read more about Farmish on Page 10.)

Ashlea Sou rou, who recruited her workers from West Michigan, said the area already has a solid tech talent pool, but it needs more wraparound services for founders.

She receives guidance from e Right Place’s Tech Council to run Kentwood-based SxanPro, which has patented scanning technology that

helps hospitals manage their inventory. (Read about SxanPro on this page.)

e council helps her understand what she needs from Brightly, her Grand Rapids-based software development contractor. It also advised her to hire a product owner and solution specialist — job titles she hadn’t heard of previously.

“Having that ecosystem is great,” Sou rou said. “When you’re a founder of a company, you often feel like

you’re on an island by yourself. It’s not that you necessarily are, but you’re trying to be all the things. You’re the product developer. You’re the marketing person. You’re the sales arm. You’re the CFO. at’s regardless of the company that you’re in or regardless of the industry.”

Having an “ecosystem” of supportive companies — like accounting or consulting rms — can help founders create and follow a roadmap for success that would help them scale and grow more quickly.

en, “we can be really laser-focused on the products that we’re trying to build,” Sou rou said.

Matt Baxter, founder and CEO of one-way video interviewing platform Wedge, said becoming a tech hub starts with attracting anchor companies that draw talent, capital investment and complementary companies. (Read about Wedge on Page 10.) “ e more ‘FOMO’ that exists, the more ‘We want to be a part of this culture,’ the more it grows,” Baxter said. “All of a sudden, checkbooks open up, talent starts moving in, and people start changing career paths to enter that space.”

Still, that takes time. Time for young entrepreneurs to age, fail, learn and pay their experiences forward to the next generation.

“ ose are all things that factor into making this place grow,” he said.

Contact: rachel.watson@crain.com (989) 533-9685; @RachelWatson86

Inventory tech and $3M power SxanPro health care startup

RACHEL WATSON

GRAND RAPIDS — ree years ago, Ashlea Sou rou saw an opportunity to develop a barcode scanning app that manages hospital surplus inventory, and she seized it. e result was SxanPro, a company that’s been pro table from day one.

Sou rou graduated from Western Michigan University in 2006 and started her career at Stryker Corp., a Kalamazoo-based medical device manufacturer. After a stint in new product sales, she worked in the division that remanufactures surplus single-use devices to sell to health systems at a lower cost and divert waste from land lls.

In 2014, Sou rou founded her reuse company Retegrity Solutions to resterilize and resell expired medical devices for operating rooms, catheterization labs and radiology departments.

But Sou rou ran into a problem without an easy solution when Retegrity began helping hospitals o oad extra supplies resulting from physician departures, product conversions or hospital closures.

“We would have to manually go in and write down all of the di erent products to help them sell them because ...you have to have expiration dates, lot numbers. We’d have to make sure they hadn’t been recalled, that they were in date. I had just had my second son, and so I was like, ‘I’ve got to speed this process up. I can’t be away from home for weeks,’” Sou rou said.

When she couldn’t nd a shortcut to the solution, she created her own: an app that would scan the unique device identi ers on medical supplies.

A UDI is a Food and Drug Administration-required barcode, similar to the universal product code (UPC) printed on retail store items. Among other places, UDIs are included on patients’ electronic medical records so patients can

SxanPro’s product family

 SAM (Simple Asset Manage) helps clients digitally track and manage assets.

 XCHG uses JUDI (Just the Unique Device Identi er)-captured data and SAM to transfer inventory between locations.

 MRKT is an auction and purchasing platform for supplies and instrumentation.

 The company’s newest product is LINK, which helps hospitals use asset data to quickly locate expired products or those that need to be recalled.

be noti ed if there is a product recall.

In 2019, Sou rou developed the idea for Just the Unique Device Identi er or JUDI and worked with an app developer to build a prototype. Her hospital clients started testing it and found it worked beautifully.

Supply chain leaders started thinking of more applications for her technology. So, Sou rou sold Retegrity and launched Kentwood-based SxanPro with the initial JUDI product just before the pandemic in 2020. She now holds two patents — one for scanning technology and one for pop-up recall alerts.

“( e pandemic) was a crazy time to launch anything in health care,” she said. “ e bene t was we actually were able to come alongside some hospitals

that … had all of this overstock. ey had all this PPE, and they didn’t have a good way to manage it.” SxanPro technology helped them manage stock at o site warehouses.

A time-saver with data analytics functionality

Now, the JUDI app is mostly used in interventional radiology cath labs, operating rooms and anatomic pathology labs. Users can inventory products in all the procedure areas of a 600-to-800bed hospital within two days using the app, where the process might have taken weeks before JUDI existed, Sou rou said.

Still, Sou rou believes SxanPro’s big-

gest value proposition is analyzing the data it collects.

“We start saying, ‘OK, well, if you know that products have expired or are going to be short-dated, you’re probably not using them. Let’s compare that to your purchasing history or your usage history. Maybe (then), we can start removing those products,’ which ultimately reduces the cost of patient care for hospitals (and) saves them money,” Sou rou said.

From baby to adolescence: SxanPro’s still growing

Grand Rapids-based Brightly handles software development for SxanPro, which employs 10 — from data analysts

to supply chain experts to account managers to product owners. And the company recently closed on $3 million in private equity capital raised from Golden Vision Capital Americas to support future growth.

“ e majority of hospitals are really struggling with their margins,” said Lauren Palazzolo, vice president of GVC Americas. “So, there’s a greater need to manage and control costs. It’s solving a meaningful problem that hospitals have really struggled to get their arms around.”

SxanPro has customers around the country, including Corewell Health. And Palazzolo wants to see its tech adopted in more states.

“When you’re a small team, you have to gure out the best way to do a sale, and that is to nd someone in the executive o ce who really understands the value of the product and is able to help you sell to multiple sites within their health system,” Palazzolo said.

Sou rou said SxanPro inked a partnership with nationwide medical supply distributor Medline and landed contracts with two of the largest health systems in the country but declined to share their names for competitive reasons.

She’s optimistic the company will continue growing.

“We’ve turned a pro t every single year, which is di erent for a lot of tech startups. Everything that we’ve built has been because a customer has come to us and said, ‘Hey, if you could do this, it would solve this massive problem for us,’” she said. “Whether we create new products or we just enhance the products that we have, we will always continue to develop.”

Contact: rachel.watson@crain.com (989) 533-9685; @RachelWatson86

“EVERYTHING THAT WE’VE BUILT HAS BEEN BECAUSE A CUSTOMER HAS COME TO US AND SAID, ‘HEY, IF YOU COULD DO THIS, IT WOULD SOLVE THIS MASSIVE PROBLEM FOR US.’”

—Ashlea Sou rou, founder and CEO, SxanPro

Guests mingle at the networking event ReThink in West Michigan last November. Hello West Michigan hosts the event to lure workers back to the region. | RUSS CLIMIE/TIBERIUS IMAGES

A user scans QR codes on supply bins using SxanPro’s newest hospital inventory management product, the LINK app. Ashlea Sou rou launched SxanPro in 2020 to help hospitals reduce waste and save money. | SXANPRO

MICHIGAN'S LARGEST EMPLOYERS CRAIN'S LIST |

employees January 2023

6 UNIVERSITY OF MICHIGAN , Ann Arbor48109 734-764-1817;umich.edu

7 U.S. GOVERNMENT 477 Michigan Ave., Detroit48226 313-226-4910;usa.gov

8 TRINITY HEALTH MICHIGAN 20555 Victor Parkway, Livonia48152 734-343-1000;trinity-health.org, .stjoeshealth.org

9 HENRY FORD HEALTH 1 Ford Place, Detroit48202 800-436-7936;henryford.com

10 MCLAREN HEALTH CARE One McLaren Parkway, Grand Blanc48439 810-342-1100;mclaren.org

ResearchedbySonyaD.Hill:shill@crain.com

|ThislistofMichiganemployersencompassescompanieswithheadquartersinthestate.Numberoffull-timeemployeesmayincludefull-timeequivalents.Itisnotacompletelistingbutthe mostcomprehensiveavailable.Crain'sestimatesarebasedonindustryanalysesandbenchmarks,newsreportsandawiderangeofothersources.Unlessotherwisenoted,informationwasprovidedbythecompanies.NA=notavailable.NOTES: e. Crain'sestimate. 1. FromForm10-KendingDec.31,2022. 2. BeaumontHealthandSpectrumHealthmergedasanintegratedhealthsystemwiththetemporaryname,BHSHHealthonFeb.1,2022.RebrandedasCorewellHealthinOctober2022. 3. Asof July2022. 4. IncludesnumbersforSpectrumHealth,BeaumontHealthandPriorityHealth. 5. SucceededMarkSchlisselafterhewas redonJan.15.SantaOnotobegina ve-yeartermastheuniversity'spresidentonOct.13 6. Includesapproximately 16,000in-statepart-timeemployees. 7. Includesapproximately15,600in-statepart-timeemployees. 8. AsofJuly1,2021. 9. AsofJuly2021. 10. NamedpresidentandCEOonSept.8.PreviouslyservedasinterimCEOafterWrightLassiter'sdeparture inAugust. 11. EstimatefromMWPVLInternationalInc. 12. Namedinterimpresident,e ectiveNov.4.SucceedsSamuelStanleyJr.whoannouncedresignationinOctober. 13. Fall2022counts.EmployeecountsasofOct.1,2022. 14. Fall2021counts. EmployeecountsasofOct.1,2021. 15. Q42021. 16. FromFrom10-KendinginDec.31,2022. 17. AsofJanuary2022. 18. SucceededFrankSardoneasCEOinMarch2020.SardoneretiredinDecember2019. 19. FiguresareFTEcountsfromtheCenter for Educational Performance and Information.

Want the full Excel version of this list — and every list? Become a Data Member: CrainsDetroit.com/data

Grand Circus Park improvements include Woodward median

KIRK PINHO

Changes are coming to Grand Circus Park downtown.

e Downtown Detroit Partnership is proposing to install a median between the park’s two halves on Woodward Avenue, new sidewalks and landscaping, new public restrooms, a food and beverage space, and relocating monuments and obe-

lisks as part of a multi-phase master plan that has been in the works for several years.

e Historic District Commission next week will consider some of the changes put forward by the DDP.

Bob Gregory, president of the Detroit 300 Conservancy, which is the DDP subsidiary that operates public spaces like Grand Circus Park, and senior consultant for strategy and

public space for the DDP, said the rst phase of the $16 million master plan for the park is expected to cost about $4 million.

at’s coming from a $475,000 Downtown Development Authority grant; $850,000 in Revitalization and Placemaking Program money, which is funded with $100 million the state received in American Rescue Plan Act money through the Michigan

PEOPLE ON THE MOVE

To place your listing, visit www.crainsdetroit.com/people-on-the-move or, for more information, contact Debora Stein at 917.226.5470 / dstein@crain.com

ACCOUNTING

Michigan CFO

Erik Goerke joins Michigan CFO Associates as a Consulting CFO.

Erik is a results-driven, hands-on CFO and licensed CPA with a mix of both public accounting and private industry experience, specializing in the hospitality and automotive industries. Erik brings a pragmatic, continuous improvement mindset to clients, with an emphasis on developing the skills of the team around him.

Erik holds a BBA degree from Michigan State University and an M.S. in Accounting & Finance from Eastern Michigan University.

AUTOMOTIVE

Piston Group LLC

Vinnie Johnson, an NBA legend who now presides over the Piston Group, will be honored as an Outstanding Business Leader by Northwood University at an April 15 gala at the Henry Ford Museum. Tickets are online at www.northwood.edu/obl/ awards. Other honorees include Michael and Dianne Morey (Bandit Industries); Andres Lopez (O-I Glass ); Fred Bunting (Auto-Wares Group of Companies); Gina Thorsen (Jacquart Fabric Products); and Grant Baidas (Exchange Bar & Grill, Northville). Join us April 15!

AUTOMOTIVE

Ziebart International Corporation

Brian Jackman has been promoted to Senior Vice President and Treasurer at Ziebart International Corporation. Jackman has been with the brand for over 14 years and has lled six different positions. In this new role, Jackman is responsible for all aspects of corporate nancial functions, including nancial and tax reporting requirements, cash management, liaison to several independent audit rms, banks and insurance institutions, warehouse functions and control of corporate assets.

AUTOMOTIVE

Ziebart International Corporation

Jason Thiesen has been promoted to Vice President, US Franchise Operations at Ziebart International Corporation. During his 16-year career at Ziebart, Theisen worked his way up from technician to corporate sales and eventually Director of Franchise Operations. Theisen will now be responsible for leading franchise operations and supporting franchisees through their ownership journey. He will lead his team to ensure that operational and technical procedures are ef cient and effective.

Strategic Fund; and the rest from the DDP, Gregory said.

Proceeds from the Grand Circus Park Conservancy’s annual Grand Circus Gala on June 22 are also anticipated to be contributed to the DDP for the e ort. e conservancy, which was established several years ago, raises money for improvements to the ve-acre park.

Some work should start this year, Gregory said, although the bulk of it is to take place in 2024. SmithGroup is the architecture rm behind the project; a contractor has not yet been selected.

“ e overall master plan is a transformational project,” Gregory said. “It’s going to restore the park to what it really was designed for in the 1800s and 1900s and make it more open, connecting to the rest of the neighborhood.”

Penrickton Center for Blind Children

FINANCIAL SERVICES

Hilco Performance Solutions

Hilco Performance Solutions (HPS), a management advisory rm that consists of operational and nancial experts in the areas of Manufacturing, Supply Chain, Sales & Customer Experience, Organizational Design, and M&A, has named Steve Savoy Procurement, Supply Chain, and Materials Handling Practice Leader. With over 25 years of industry and consulting experience, Mr. Savoy has led numerous Lean implementation projects, PMO teams, operations strategy, and strategic sourcing projects.

Penrickton Center for Blind Children in Taylor announces the promotion of Patricia Obrzut as Executive Director of the SE Michigan agency serving children who are visually impaired with additional disabilities. The foremost expert on Active Learning in North America, Obrzut holds a graduate degree in Occupational Therapy and held the position of Assistant Director since 1994. She began as the OTR in 1987 and has been an integral part of its remarkable growth.

Andrea Schotthoefer has been named Assistant Director. She brings vast non-pro t knowledge, staff development and communication skills to the agency. Their leadership positions Penrickton Center, now in its 71st year, for a vibrant future serving children and families worldwide.

David Di Rita, principal of Detroit-based developer e Roxbury Group and also a member of the Grand Circus Park Conservancy, said the master plan is the byproduct of two years of work.

“We hosted at least ve stakeholder meetings, which brought in local businesses, property owners, residents and retail, and it was kind of a blank-slate exercise,” Di Rita said.

Among other changes proposed down the line: Improving walk-

ways, building a large plaza around the west fountain and a smaller plaza around the east fountain, adding more sidewalk and street landscaping and regrading other pathways.

e park was originally created in 1850 and then demolished for underground parking and rebuilt in the 1950s, according to a SmithGroup document prepared for the historic commission.

e city-owned parking structure became part of Detroit’s bankruptcy

case in 2013-14.

Ultimately, a joint venture between e Roxbury Group, a subsidiary of Bermuda-based holdout creditor Syncora Guarantee Inc. and Nashville, Tenn.-based Premier Parking entered into a 30-year master lease agreement with the city to operate, manage and repair the underground garage, which has 790 spaces.

e $19 million in garage improvements that had been planned have been completed, Di Rita said.

Contact: kpinho@crain.com; (313) 446-0412; @kirkpinhoCDB

A rendering of a proposal for redesigning Grand Circus Park in downtown Detroit. SMITHGROUP

The Downtown Detroit Partnership is proposing to relocate monuments and obelisks as part of a multi-phase master plan in the works for a redesign of Grand Circus Park. | SMITHGROUP

“IT’S GOING TO RESTORE THE PARK TO WHAT IT REALLY WAS DESIGNED FOR IN THE 1800S AND 1900S AND MAKE IT MORE OPEN, CONNECTING TO THE REST OF THE NEIGHBORHOOD.”

—Bob Gregory, president, Detroit 300 Conservancy

ey bought the Indian Village home in March 2019 for $465,000, according to property records.

While still relatively new to the historic neighborhood, the couple joins a long list of residents in the Indian Village area to work to restore and preserve the stately homes, about 350 of which fall into the Indian Village Historic District, according to the neighborhood association.

e couple’s renovation e orts have earned them a modest following on Instagram, where they frequently post pictures and videos of their updates.

Having moved into the home in spring of 2019, installing central air conditioning was priority No. 1, according to Cravens-Hutton. e onset of the COVID-19 pandemic one year later put the brakes on much of the work for many months.

Given the scope of the work, and the time and treasure it’s taken, Cravens-Hutton said she’s asked frequently about whether she regrets taking on such a project. Her answer is simple.

“I’m like, ‘No, I don’t.’”

While the couple knew the house needed considerable work upon purchase, they acknowledge it’s been far more than expected.

When purchased, the home had ve bedrooms and four full baths, along with two half-baths. Upon full completion of the renovations — which the couple anticipates could still be a decade down the road — it will be four bedrooms and three full baths. e two half-baths will get renovated, and two more will be added — one in the attic and one in the basement.

Currently, the house lacks a working shower, and the only working bathtub — which Cravens-Hutton said has been dubbed “the uterus,” due to its size and shape — is in a bathroom that still lacks electricity.

When the couple purchased the home, the “aesthetics” overall for the house were pretty good, and they thought it just needed “some

UWM

From Page 3

ose numbers, particularly the latter, were “o the charts crazy,” Ishbia told analysts at the time.

“Do I think UWM will stay at 54 percent forever? No,” Ishbia said. “But I do think UWM being 11 or 12 percent of the overall market is very realistic.”

Taken together, UWM’s surging market share and Ishbia’s statements touting those accomplishments “kind of help make our case” for “anti-trust and attempted monopolization,” said Bob Goodman, a Florida attorney representing e O’Kavage Group.

“We feel that the recent developments support our amended pleading and support our overall allegations,” Goodman told Crain’s.

A spokesperson for UWM declined to comment on the recent ling from Goodman, citing the pending litigation.

Ishbia, however, has not shied away from the fact that his goal is to make UWM the leading mortgage lender in the country.

“We’re trying to be the best we can be to help our clients,” Ishbia, speaking generally about the growth of

paint and plaster work,” Hutton said.

“What we didn’t realize was a lot of the underlying issues, the things you don’t see,” he said. “We didn’t know how bad that was.”

e couple initially budgeted in the range of $120,000-$140,000 for renovations, but those projections are now out the window.

“We’ve blown so far past that,” Hutton said with a laugh, noting that at this point they’ve largely stopped keeping track.

“ is house is our investment,”

Cravens-Huttons added.

And while the couple plans to continue to live there, the historic

UWM, told Crain’s in an interview earlier this year for his Newsmaker of the Year award. “And what has happened is, because of what we’ve done at UWM (with) the technology that we built here, the service levels that we provide, the great pricing we provide. What it has done is it’s made all the other wholesalers step their game up. And when they step their game up, who does that help? Brokers and consumers. Everyone is winning. It’s a rising tide.”

In addition to UWM, Ishbia is also personally named as a defendant in e O’Kavage Group’s lawsuit.

e complaint led last month quotes an interview Ishbia gave to e Detroit News, touting that the ultimatum resulted in 11,500 — out of 12,000 — independent brokers opting to work with his company as opposed to Rocket.

“ e penalty of working with Rocket … is you don’t get to work with UWM,” Ishbia said in e News interview. “And nobody is willing to take that chance.”

e complaint also states that “UWM’s ability to successfully impose these burdensome conditions on brokers is further evidence of its market power.”

Rocket Mortgage earlier this year red back at UWM. e Detroit-based

neighborhood has certainly proven popular from a real estate perspective.

For example, a nearly 5,000-squarefoot updated and historic colonial-style home, for example, located just around the corner from the Huttons’ house, sold last April for $697,000, according to Zillow.

Matt O’Laughlin, a Realtor in the Detroit o ce of Max Broock Realtors, said he’s sold several homes in the area in recent months, including the nearby Book mansion, which sold in November for $1.2 million.

at home is also undergoing renovations, which the buyers are doc-

lender, part of the publicly traded Rocket Companies Inc. (NYSE: RKT), in February announced its “Bully Shield” initiative, in which company executives said they’ll pay the legal fees of any broker who wishes to defy Ishbia’s All In ultimatum.

Other lawsuits

UWM has also led at least three lawsuits in federal court against independent brokers it accuses of violating the ultimatum. e lawsuits against America’s Moneyline Inc., Kevron Investments and Mid-Valley Funding, all based in California, remain pending, according to court records.

ose lawsuits allege that the brokers violated an addendum to their agreement with UWM, which sought to keep them from working with rival lenders Rocket Mortgage and Fairway Independent Mortgage, if they wished to keep doing business with UWM, as Crain’s has previously reported.

e lawsuits seek damages and claim that the alleged breach of contract has damaged UWM’s business in a variety of ways.

Contact: nmanes@crain.com; (313) 446-1626; @nickrmanes

umenting on Instagram.

e relative limited availability of such homes o ers buyers the opportunity “to come in and put their own touch on it,” O’Laughlin said.

Time for dinner

e family dinner in the new kitchen — which features a butler’s pantry, wet bar and refrigerator that opens just by tapping the handle — represented a signi cant step in the couple’s overall renovation plans for their historic home.

e light- lled living room and sunroom on the main oor are near

completion, albeit with a few light xtures and original windows still to x. e dining room was being painted. But considerable work remains.

Cravens-Hutton said getting the whole house wired for electricity will be the next main milestone she looks forward to. Still, they’re in no massive hurry, and for the meantime a dinner in a new kitchen makes for a good pause.

“I could not be more excited,” Cravens-Hutton said of that meal.

Contact: nmanes@crain.com; (313) 446-1626; @nickrmanes

Kris Cravens-Hutton and Dave Hutton planned to host their rst family dinner in their renovated kitchen in their house in Indian Village earlier this month. They believe the butler’s pantry at back is original to the 1910 house. NIC ANTAYA/CRAIN’S DETROIT BUSINESS

“People were losing their minds trying to be the rst to market. With the price as high as it was, it’s not hard to fathom that people would do this. ere were millions and millions to be made. ese indictments are only a very small portion of what happened out there.”

e U.S. Department of Justice and the FBI allege Johnson accepted at least $102,000 in bribes from three di erent parties to fast track the approval of medical marijuana licenses for two companies, which were not named in the legal case.

Johnson, who became a lobbyist after leaving the Legislature in 2005, was appointed by then Gov. Rick Snyder to chair the Michigan Medical Marihuana Board in 2017 and continued to do so until Gov. Gretchen Whitmer dissolved the board in 2019.

Medical marijuana sales were approved by voters in 2008 but the legal framework for sales didn’t exist until 2017 after Snyder signed a package of bills to regulate the industry, which led to the creation of the board Johnson chaired.

e board’s responsibilities included preliminary approval of license applications and ultimately offering a recommendation to regulators on whether to issue a full license. e feds allege companies tied to the co-defendants received application approvals and license recommendations after Johnson received bribes, which included two private jet ights to Canada.

e other defendants charged ursday include lobbyists Brian Pierce and Vincent Brown and John Dawood Dalaly, who operated two marijuana businesses listed in court documents as Company A and Company C.

U.S. Attorney for the Western District of Michigan Mark Totten said in a press conference in Lansing ursday that all four defendants were cooperating with the authorities, meaning they could be aiding law enforcement in identifying more wrongdoing.

Medical marijuana prices were extraordinarily high before adult-use recreational sales came online in December 2019. Medical marijuana was about $3,000 per pound in 2018, while retailers could purchase from caregiver suppliers — private citizens who were licensed to grow for medical use — were selling wholesale for less than half that.

But the board was riddled with problems early on, causing months of delays before eager medical marijuana retailers could receive licenses.

In July 2018, 19 months after a law passed to allow for medical marijuana sales and seven months after the state began accepting applications,

BOOK TOWER

From Page 1

James Witherspoon, vice president of architecture and design for Bedrock, said the skylight is just one part of a broader restoration of the Louis Kamper-designed building’s architecture.

“A lot of the detailing and a lot of the classical details that were put into this project have been restored by the team here on-site,” Witherspoon said during the media tour.

Among them, the skylight, a clock

not a single license had been issued. And then, when the rst license was issued, the board and the state agency su ered from chronically slow approvals.

e backlog and massive pro t potential for the rst to market led to shady behavior, said Pollicella.

“People see dollar signs and they lose all sense of morals and ethics,” Pollicella said.

Pollicella said a client terminated her when she refused to facilitate a bribe to members of the Detroit City Council on a medical marijuana client’s behalf.

“A lot of people in this industry do unethical things, but I think there’s a lot of hubris involved if you don’t think you’re going to get caught,” Pollicella said.

As Crain’s researched the potential charges, several sources that spoke under the condition of anonymity feared their own business associates or clients could have turned up on the list of those being indicted. In fact, nearly a dozen di erent names were oated as those who could be indicted among sources.

It’s unclear if or when the feds will announce more corruption charges related to the industry, but the wrongdoing is already creating a stir among the Michigan Cannabis Regulatory Agency.

“As has been clearly seen in my rst six months on the job, we don’t take illegal activity lightly here at the CRA,” Brian Hanna, executive director of the CRA, told Crain’s in a statement. “We are currently reviewing the information that has been made available today and will begin investigations as warranted. Marijuana industry stakeholders in Michigan can be assured that if we nd that any businesses broke the law or rules, disciplinary action will be pursued.”

Pollicella and several other sourc-

AUTO SHOPS

From Page 3

Junkyards have to be 1,000 feet from parks and playgrounds, while tire storage or processing facilities must be 1,000 feet from residential areas.

Murphy said the new restrictions mean about two-thirds of existing junkyards and auto repair shops are now considered nonconforming across the board; about three-quarters of auto sales in the city are now considered legal but nonconforming.

a total disregard for the community.”

Je rey cited one lot that had a makeshift wall made of trucks as an example of what some residents have to put up with.

“ is is what community folks are dealing with,” he said. “ ere’s so many bad actors, you have to address it in a strong-handed way. It’s happening like that all over the city.”

“I think there should be distance, for sure,” Williams said. “I don’t think there should be more intense zoning. It shouldn’t be so hard; it’s already hard enough.”

es who did not want to comment on ursday’s charges said that while the elimination of the licensing board in 2019 likely slowed corruption at the state level, it’s all but picked up at the local municipality level, where companies also need licensing approval.

e state requires a “competitive” scoring process for local municipalities to award marijuana licenses. is process has already spurred lawsuit after lawsuit in communities across the state, many alleging a corrupt process.

Reporter David Eggert contributed.

Contact: dwalsh@crain.com; (313) 446-6042; @dustinpwalsh

with cherubs on it, and elevators.

For years, the skylight in the atrium had been blocked o from ground- oor viewing because the second and third oors had been inlled.

“If you came into this lobby a couple years ago, it’s just a single-story lobby, none of the grand detail, grand skyline that’s been prepared here today,” Witherspoon said.

Some of the skylight was no longer intact when Bedrock purchased the building, so some portions had to be recreated from things like old photographs and drawings. Some portions

She said that last summer the city counted 926 auto repair facilities, 374 car lots, 95 junkyards and 11 towing yards in the city limits.

“A lot of used car lots park on the sidewalk or street,” she said. “ ere are too many signs so buildings look bad.”

ose are among locals’ complaints, she said; poor or nonexistent screening is also an issue.

And as more communities prioritize walkability, city planner Kimani Je rey said, there’s less appetite among neighbors for auto-related uses that are “not conducive” to a neighborhood feel.

He said the amount of car-related uses can be a burden to neighborhoods, particularly those that “have

had to be taken apart, cleaned, shipped to New Jersey to a glass fabrication company and then shipped back and installed.

e property is going to open in phases throughout the year.

e apartments are a mix of studio, one- and two-bedroom units with 46 di erent oor plans, a news release from last month says. Twenty percent of the units are reserved for those making 80 percent of the Area Median Income, a gure that is fraught in Detroit because its calculation includes the suburbs and skews the affordability gure upward.

As such, nes have been increased as well. A violation for a rst o ense is going from $100 to $250, Murphy said, while a third o ense went from $700 to $1,000. An unlawful change of use that used to garner a $750 ne will now cost $2,500 for a rst o ense; a third o ense (and all subsequent ones) will go from $1,500 to $7,500.

Je rey said he expects the city’s Buildings, Safety Engineering and Environmental Department to be much more aggressive in shutting businesses down when they don’t follow the rules.

“If you think it’s a blighting in uence, you don’t want a whole lot in one neighborhood,” Murphy said. “You want to spread them out.”

Robert Williams, the owner of Wright Choice Auto Sales on East Warren Avenue in Detroit, said he doesn’t mind some more rules. But he doesn’t think the city should make operating a business any more di cult.

Crain’s has inquired about the market-rate unit rents.

Restoration work on the Italian Renaissance-style Book Tower, which opened in 1926, is being done by Brinker-Christman, a joint venture between Lansing-based e Christman Co. and Detroit-based Brinker Group; plus Detroit-based Kraemer Design Group on historic preservation and New York City-based architecture rm ODA on architecture and interior renovation.

When $618.1 million in tax incentives was approved for the Book Tower/Book Building project and three

Williams said he’s owned his business for eight years. He hasn’t had any complaints from neighbors in that time, he said, adding that two popular restaurants next to each other would have full parking lots as well.

Murphy said there have been issues with auto-related blight for 15 years — “as long as I’ve been with the city.”

Bolger said Detroit’s history as the Motor City — where car ownership was a religion — likely contributed to the high number of automotive uses. Many gas stations became repair shops, he said, and it was an easy entry point for a new business. And aging businesses likely need even more attention.

There was so much agreement about the need to make changes to Detroit’s car-related uses that the effort moved ahead of other zoning-related discussions, Jeffrey said.

“If anything was unanimous, this was probably the one unanimous issue,” Je rey said. “It was more dire.”

Contact: arielle.kass@crain.com; (313) 446-6774; @ArielleKassCDB

other new construction e orts totaling $2.14 billion in May 2018, the Book Tower/Book Building restoration was expected to cost $313 million.

e other three projects are the under-construction development on the former site of the J.L. Hudson’s department store, the completed addition to One Campus Martius and the Monroe Blocks project, recently revealed to have an updated plan and name.

Contact: kpinho@crain.com; (313) 446-0412; @kirkpinhoCDB

“PEOPLE SEE DOLLAR SIGNS AND THEY LOSE ALL SENSE OF MORALS AND ETHICS.”

—Denise Pollicella, founder and managing partner of Cannabis Attorneys of Michigan

Changes in Detroit ordinances will require more distance between places with auto-related uses, more limits on where they can go in Detroit and heavier nes for illegal activity when those rules aren’t followed. | GETTY IMAGES/ISTOCKPHOTO

Grand Rapids Mayor Rosalynn Bliss said in a recent media brie ng with Housing Next — a group working to close the housing gap — that the city will need the cooperation of the many Kent County suburbs that have golf courses available to redevelop, because the city has no land bank authority and very little available property left to develop.

“It’s (about) how do we get more creative,” she said.

Following are some of the biggest golf course property conversions underway in West Michigan:

Alpine Township, Kent County

Developer Mike Houseman, president of Wolverine North America, and three silent partners in fall 2019 acquired the property that formerly housed Alpine Avenue Golf Center, at 841 and 1007 Alpine Church Road NW, and several surrounding parcels in Alpine Township.

e driving range and miniature golf venue closed in 2015. Houseman said he planned to start redeveloping the property into housing right after acquiring it but was delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic.

Since the initial acquisition, the partners also bought an adjacent orchard, a house to the north and the township’s former 1950s-era re station at Alpine Avenue and Alpine Church Road to enlarge the development.

e current plan is for 119-unit age-restricted senior apartments that will be owned and operated by Clover Group, 73 single-family units that will be built and sold by JTB Homes, 26 condos and 28 townhomes. ere will also be 10 commercial parcels along Alpine Avenue.

Houseman estimates the construction budget will be about $79.2 million, including site infrastructure costs.

e Alpine Township Planning Commission at its December meeting approved Houseman’s request to rezone the site to mixed-used planned unit development. Later that month, the township board approved the preliminary site plan for the condos and the infrastructure plan for the commercial portion. Houseman said he will seek nal site plan approval for the senior apartments within the next 30 days.

Demolition of the buildings on the site is complete, and Houseman said he hopes to start construction on the apartments by July.

“We’ve been grading as much as we can between weather events, and we hope to have the roads completed by the end of summer,” he said.

He projects the residential component of the project will take about ve to six years, and the commercial component about three years.

“I’ve done other developments, but this is at a higher scale,” he said.

Meanwhile, also in Alpine Township, developers Dale Kraker and Howie Hehrer of JTB Homes and Interra Homes closed on the purchase of half of Gracewil Country Club at 2597 Four Mile Road NW from owner John Wilson last summer for an undisclosed sum. ey are under contract to buy the remaining half of the golf course within the next year or two.

“ ey no longer wanted to continue operating, and it was ready for … housing development,” Hehrer said.

e 206-acre, 36-hole golf course was built in 1929 and will remain open for all of 2023 and on a year-by-

year basis after that as the multiphase housing project progresses.

Pending approval of their latest site plan and rezoning request by the township on April 17, their aim is to convert the golf course into 538 units of housing, including 317 single-family lots, 70 villas for the general market and 151 units of senior housing.

If all goes well, Hehrer said site work is likely to start as soon as early next year, with construction beginning in earnest by 2025. ey expect the project will take about 20 years to complete across several phases.

Cannon Township, Kent County

irteen miles east, just outside of Rockford, Kraker has another golf course redevelopment underway.

He acquired the former Silver Lake Country Club, at 7901 Greenbrier Drive NE in Cannon Township, for just less than $1 million in March 2020 after the former owner, om Rosely, closed it in 2019.

Kraker initially oated the idea of building 450 units of condos, apartments and senior living housing, but then Kent County approached him with a request to buy 137 acres of the 174.4-acre golf course for a planned county park.

His new plan is to build the Villages of Silver Lake — 48 single-family homes with two lots reserved for future use on the 37.4 acres of which he retained ownership.

Kraker said he pivoted to the single-family plan for the smaller acreage because there are already condos and single-family housing on the other side of the golf course by a di erent developer, Silver Lake Estates and Silver Lake Condominiums, and single family seemed to match market demand.

e Cannon Township board voted in August to grant PUD rezoning approval. Kraker’s next step is to submit the engineering drawings to the township for approval.

e estimated project cost and timeline will “come later down the line,” he said, after he’s secured all necessary approvals.

Kraker said he expects the homes will be priced at $400,000 and above.

Courtland Township, Kent County

2018 and acquired the 100-acre former Braeside Golf Club at 5460 11 Mile Road in Courtland Township from a previous developer whose plans for housing there didn’t pan out.

ey then launched construction on a single-family community called Braeside Estates.

Since 2018, Wurn’s home construction business that he founded with partner Bill Roersma — Roersma & Wurn — has completed the rst phase of the development and part of the second. An additional 100 acres adjacent to the golf course property came up for sale when their project was already underway, so they acquired it and added a third phase to the project. Phase one, which kicked o in 2018, included 26 lots. Phase two, which will include 24 lots and began construction in 2021, is about 30 percent done and scheduled to wrap in 2025.

Depending on the economic conditions of the next few years, Wurn said phase three, which will include 42-48 lots, could take an additional three-and-a-half years to complete. e homes are priced anywhere from $500,000 to $800,000 apiece, he said.

Wurn said the project appealed to the partners because Roersma & Wurn’s housing communities have typically done well in the Rockford area.

“A golf course is typically quite beautiful, and they’re rolling (hills), and it provides for walkout basements. It was also something that could be engineered in such a way that people had a lot of breathing room — the lots are spacious,” he said. “… We just think it’s one of the very best projects available in Rockford, Michigan, right now.”

Walker, Kent County

English Hills Country Club at 1200 Four Mile Road NW in Walker closed in 2020. Developer Mark Avis, of Illinois-based Redhawk Multifamily LLC, in partnership with Scott Sorenson of Domo Development in Ada, closed on the purchase of the 142acre golf course property for $4.4 million in February, according to city property tax records.

Together with an adjoining property at 1470 Four Mile Road NW, which they purchased from Kim Sorrelle as part of the same deal, Redhawk plans to build English Hills, a

552-unit rental townhomes development that they rst proposed in 2021. At the time, Avis estimated rents would range from $1,400 to $1,500 a month, but with rising construction costs he doesn’t have a current estimate.

Avis said he hopes to break ground on the project by the end of the year. He described it as one of “the best developments” he’s ever planned.

“It’s just a beautiful, beautiful piece of property, and we love the location, love Walker. We just thought we could create something really special,” he said.

Also in Walker, Anthony Rodriguez and Rick Cavenaugh of Barrington, Ill.-based Stoneleigh Cos., are building Savannah at Waterford Village at the former Lincoln Country Club at 3485 Lake Michigan Drive NW, which closed in 2021.

e project will include a clubhouse and 250 luxury one-, two- and three-bedroom apartments with rents ranging from $1,800 to $2,575. Construction on the multifamily component began in January and is expected to wrap in two years. Pre-leasing will begin the rst week in July, with the rst building open for occupancy at the end of September, Rodriguez said.

e clubhouse will include a tness studio, resident lounge, business center, terrace, outdoor dining with barbecue grills, walking trails surrounding a pond, a wetlands area and dog park.

Stoneleigh also received zoning approval for ve commercial lots and 68 lots of single-family housing onsite. Rodriguez said the lots are listed for sale, and if he “had to guess,” those home values will ultimately be priced somewhere between $350,000 and $450,000 once built.

Rodriguez said the 36-acre site was “highly attractive” for a mixed-use development because it’s a “walkable community.”

“ e site has great access o Lake Michigan Drive NW, a major arterial road with convenience to downtown Grand Rapids (10 minutes),” he said in an email to Crain’s.

Wyoming, Kent County

Avis, with Redhawk Multifamily, also is planning to develop housing at e Pines Golf Course, which is still operational at 5050 Byron Center Ave. SW and 2180 52nd St. SW in Wyoming.

He said he is under contract to buy the 114-acre property, which includes multiple parcels, from Michael Boogaard by the end of the year.

“ e owners approached me — it was not for sale, it was o the market — and they asked if I would consider developing if they wanted to sell it, and it is just (a) phenomenal location and a beautiful, beautiful property,” he said.

e plan consists of 7,500 square feet of retail, 22,000 square feet of o ce space and 604 units of market-rate housing split between condos, lofts and townhomes.

Avis said this project — which doesn’t yet have a name — likely won’t break ground until the end of 2024 and will take three to ve years to build out.

Other Michigan golf course projects

Kent County isn’t the only place golf courses are being tagged for redevelopment as housing.

In Oakland County, SE Metro Property Services submitted a proposal in June to convert Coyote Golf Club in Lyon Township into housing. However, according to Planning Department Coordinator Katherine Des Rochers, the developer recently withdrew the request, and township is in talks with another interested developer, though nothing has been formalized.

Also in Lyon Township, a conceptual plan to put 182 single-family homes on the 160-acre Cattails Golf Club site was presented to the township board in January, Hometown Life reported.

Fruitport Golf Club in Muskegon County closed in 2021, and developer Denny Cherette of the Cherette Group broke ground on a housing development there in January 2022. When completed, it will include 217 high-end apartments. Tenants began moving into the rst completed buildings in January, according to the development’s Facebook page.

In Ottawa County, Shayne Malone of Malone Development in November received approval for an apartment complex at 367 Country Club Road, on the site of the Holland Country Club that closed in 2009. e most up-to-date version of the site plan, amended in February, includes 108 apartments.

Contact: rachel.watson@crain.com (989) 533-9685; @RachelWatson86

Developer Mark Wurn and his partners formed the Redstone Group in

Site work began in January on the multifamily component of Savannah at Waterford Village at the former Lincoln Country Club in Walker. STONELEIGH COMPANIES

For Richard Walawender, all roads lead back to Eastern Europe

Richard Walawender’s life and career have been shaped by his Polish roots. It started with his involvement in the Solidarity movement of the 1980s, which led to helping establish one of the rst private commercial banks in Poland as a young lawyer. Now, 62-year-old Walawender — attorney and principal at Miller Can eld Paddock and Stone PLC — plays a central role in the rm’s practice in Europe, including its new o ce in Ukraine where planning is underway to rebuild the war-torn country. The following conversation has been condensed and lightly edited for clarity.

BY | KURT NAGL

 How did you get into law?

I didn’t decide on going to law school until after I graduated from undergrad and then was going to go into academia. But that wasn’t really exciting enough, so that’s when I applied to law school. Went to Michigan Law School and then joined Miller Can eldin ’86. I originally started doing nance work, public nance, mostly. My earlier interest was actually in sort of Central Europe and Poland. My parents are from Poland. I speak Polish. And when I was an undergrad, I spent a year in Krakow.

 How did your time there shape your career?

At that time, what was going on was the Solidarity trade union was having strikes and protests and work stoppages and marches against the government. And when I was over there, I really got involved with them. And then I came home and nished law school. The government clamped down in late ’81 and declared martial law and arrested all these Solidarity leaders, so I just went on with my life and my practice.

Then in 1989, the Solidarity took over the reins of government in Poland, the rst noncommunist government for two years, and I got a call from some of them that I knew before. They asked me to start helping them out on certain projects, and that’s when I kind of took the plunge. So we ended up doing a lot of work setting up U.S. companies in Poland, and so that’s when my practice focus changed.

 What has been the most exciting case or project you worked on in your career?

Setting up a bank in Poland. This was like in the early ’90s. There were no private banks in the country. It was all government-owned banks. So, when we started setting it up, one task was to nd investors willing to put in the capital. It was like $10 million was the minimum

RUMBLINGS

amount of capital. So I ended up nding a group of investors out of the East Coast willing to put it up and did a joint venture with Solidarity and set up the Solidarity Bank.

 How did that work?

What was interesting about that process was in setting up the bank, looking at the bank code in Poland, which actually they did have one even though nobody ever looked at it, because it was kind of meaningless. So there was a small section in the bank code on applying to set up a bank. And it really just says, here’s the application, you know, you need to identify the name of the bank, the capital amount, owners and a few other things. And I mean, literally, you could t all of that on one page. That was kind of strange to even me being a young lawyer with no experience in this, let alone in Poland, but then again, no one else had any experience in Poland. We put this robust plan together and walked into this appointment with the National Bank of Poland to submit the application and were greeted by the president of the National Bank of Poland, which is sort of like their equivalent of the chairman of the Fed over here. We submitted this application, put it on the table, had a short meeting … And we became a little template for the National Bank of Poland on how to examine and review applications for new banks.

 You are the honorary consul general of Poland in Detroit. What does that job entail?

I can advocate on behalf of the Polish government, but also involved mainly in handling immigration issues for people here. The general consul of Poland is in Chicago, and so they’re the foreign service employees actually doing all the paperwork. But when there’s dignitaries, the Polish government coming in, you know, I assist them in organizing meetings with Michigan o cials or

federal o cials, and also economic cooperation between the two countries is something else that I promote in that position.

 What are the strongest business ties between Michigan and Poland?

It’s probably still automotive. There’s a lot of U.S. companies and suppliers in Poland. But there’s also quite a bit of interaction in the IT sector as well, computer science software. That’s a pretty popular sector in Poland, which U.S. companies take a lot of advantage of, especially in the automotive area where now everything is controlled by software.

 What big projects are you involved in now?

In addition to the United States, you might know that Poland’s a big, big advocate and supporter of Ukraine in this war with Russia. There’s 3.5 million refugees — Ukrainians — that came into Poland. We made a decision a few months ago to a liate with a Ukrainian lawyer. Her name is Olena (Shtohryn), and she’s a young lawyer from Kiev. One of their major clients back in Ukraine was the Ukrainian Construction Association, which represents all the major probably a trillion dollars’

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These are the richest people in Michigan, according to Forbes

DAN GILBERT IS STILL the richest person in Michigan, and it isn’t particularly close.

With a net worth of $18 billion, Gilbert ranked No. 92 on Forbes’ 2023 “World’s Billionaire List,” released Tuesday. e chairman of Detroit-based Rocket Companies Inc. (NYSE: RKT) fell 21 spots from last year on the list, which notes that nearly half of the world’s billionaires are worth less than they were a year ago.

Next among Michiganders was Ronda Stryker, a third-generation heir and director at medical device company Stryker Corp., based in Kalamazoo. Her $6.9 billion net worth put her at No. 344 on the list. (Her siblings, Jon and Pat, were Nos. 636 and 905 with $4.3 billion and $3.2

Dan Gilbert

billion, respectively.)

Stryker was followed by United Wholesale Mortgage Chairman and CEO Mat Ishbia at No. 486, whose $5.4 billion net worth grew by a half billion dollars since last year.

New this year, Forbes divided the Meijer family wealth evenly between brothers Doug, Hank and Mark. eir $4.6 billion each put them in a 20-way tie for No. 591 with Mark Cuban, Charles Dolan and Jack Dorsey, among others.

Little Caesars Pizza co-founder Marian Ilitch ranked 636th with $4.3 billion. Roger Penske, chairman and CEO of Bloom eld Hills-based car dealer Penske Automotive Group, rose 148 spots to No. 905 with $3.2 billion.

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