"It's the opportunity to get in low and sell high," says Gilbert. $32 in downtown Chicago, often with the first year free on a five-year lease. Right now a primary selling point is cheap rents: office space at $18 a square foot, vs. He knows that his march into Detroit won't be a success unless people follow, not just for sentimental or quixotic reasons, but because it makes good business sense. "I have to believe that, objectively, it's the right thing to do," says Gilbert. It was Karmanos who first persuaded Gilbert to seriously consider moving, and whose conviction rubbed off on him. The $400 million Compuware tower, opened in 2003, is the legacy of another pioneer, Peter Karmanos, 66, the founder and CEO of the business-software maker. "The possibility of living in an urban area is quite exciting." "The reality is better than I thought," says Kristin Broadley, 35, a Quicken Loans manager who plans to move downtown rather than commute. Gilbert has made a concerted effort to get his suburban employees enthused about the move, including field trips to the city, where some workers toured lofts and apartments. ( See editor note at bottom.)They'll occupy four floors of the Compuware headquarters building, where they'll share use of a preschool, fitness center, and cafeteria. The newest is Dan Gilbert, 47, founder and chairman of the online mortgage company Quicken Loans, who announced in July his decision to uproot 1,700 employees from a low-slung headquarters in suburban Livonia and plant them next summer in the glass-walled tower at One Campus Martius, in the barely thumping heart of the city. Part of Detroit business tradition, however, almost as much as the epic decline, is the periodic emergence of a square-jawed, impatient entrepreneur who believes he can spark a turnaround by force of will. Renaissance Detroit, a civic group of business leaders, has abandoned the urban theme, renaming itself Business Leaders for Michigan. There's no new tenant activity," says Cameron McCausland, director of brokerage service for Colliers International, based in the city's suburbs.Įven the R-word seems hexed. "Pick any point in time - it's about as bad as you can get right now. Could the climate get any worse for doing business here? The Detroit school system went into receivership, the unemployment rate hit 28.9% in the city, and two of the Detroit Three automakers filed for bankruptcy. This year the remaining semblance of a local economy was battered to a surreal degree. A Detroit News report recently identified 48 empty buildings downtown of 10,000 square feet or more. The GM Renaissance Center is emptying out the 47-story Penobscot Building, once a throbbing hub, is in receivership and the stately Comerica building is only a branch office since the banking company moved its headquarters to Dallas in 2007 after 158 years in Detroit. Despite billions in public and private investment over the past 15 years - including two new stadiums, a river walk, three new casinos, thousands of new hotel rooms and loft and apartment units - downtown Detroit may be the quietest major city in America. This is Detroit 2009, where announcements of a renaissance can be as illusory as an army of movie extras. The rooftop trees, growing wild 14 stories up, are real but doomed, as demolition crews gouge out chunks of the crumbling building, proceeding with a teardown. Most of the renovated Merchants Row storefronts have yet to find tenants. Only as you draw close do you see that the milling crowd belongs to a movie production: a studio remake of "Red Dawn," lured here by generous incentives from the state of Michigan. On the roof of the Lafayette Building at the corner, two trees stand, as if in a garden, their leaves a seasonal gold. A row of historic storefronts beckons shoppers. Steps away, office workers lounge at café tables in a plaza, eating and chatting beside a fountain and a Civil War-era statue. A large crowd of people stride up the street toward a sleek, glass-walled tower in the Campus Martius complex. (Fortune magazine) - It is noon in downtown Detroit, a glorious autumn day in the nexus of the city's business district.
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