Good morning! Today: Crain’s reporter Jay Davis writes about the MSU-UM game so I don’t have to. Plus: New plans for the old Dearborn Hyatt and a throwback to the early days of Crain’s 40 Under 40 awards.
Say hello, and go Bucs: abragg@crain.com.
The big story: The Big Game
This week’s Big Story is by Jay Davis.
This year’s Michigan-Michigan State game will be in stark contrast to the 2020 edition of the football rivalry.
The teams enter this year’s contest, set for noon today, with unblemished 7-0 records — impressive even despite a lack of tough opponents, considering each squad has already more than tripled its win total from last season.
In a broader sense, the game will be a return to normalcy for everyone involved.
The 2020 game, a 27-24 MSU victory despite being more than a three-touchdown underdog, was played without fans as the coronavirus pandemic raged. Campuses were online-only to slow the spread. Bars and restaurants, which depend on game-day crowds to boost revenue, operated at 50 percent capacity with skeleton crews. Fans were advised to not congregate.
Today, for the most part, will be much different.
Each of the 75,005 seats inside Spartan Stadium should be full. Based on each team’s ranking — UM at No. 6 in the Associated Press Poll and MSU at No. 8 — this is the biggest game in the rivalry since 1964. A handful of tickets were still available as of Friday afternoon on Stubhub and other ticket resellers, priced as high as $990.
The atmosphere in East Lansing will be electric, with the matchup taking place at Michigan State for the first time since 2018. Tailgate lots will be full across campus and around town. That’s a lot of cars paying between $20 and $100 each to park.
Bars and restaurants will benefit as well, possibly for the entire weekend. Some fans and alums will make it a bender, hitting every bar from The Riv to Rick’s American Cafe to the Tin Can. East Lansing hangouts are still short-staffed but are doing all they can to accommodate customers.
For a day, the state of Michigan will be the center of the college football universe. Both ESPN’s “College GameDay” and Fox’s “Big Noon Kickoff” show will broadcast live from the MSU campus.
The winner strengthens its case for the Big Ten title game and the College Football Playoff. The loser, despite hurt feelings and pride, will still have a chance to have a special season. The fans should rejoice, too, at the chance to talk trash in person for the first time in a year.
Fun should be the name of this game every year, but with the stakes this high, I have to put all pleasantries aside and say: GO GREEN!
— Jay Davis
Looking ahead: To the polls
Hundreds of local elections will be held across Michigan on Tuesday. The ones to watch are in the city of Detroit, where Mayor Mike Duggan is running for a third term against challenger Anthony Adams. Duggan has barely campaigned, has refused to debate his opponent and is heavily favored to win; he won 72 percent of the vote in the primary to Adams’ 10 percent.
Detroit City Council elections will be a little spicier as a federal corruption investigation widens; two of Detroit’s nine council members resigned while pleading guilty to criminal charges and two others decided not to run for re-election. And there are several interesting proposals on the ballot, including Proposals R and S for reparations and Proposal E, which would decriminalize some psychedelic drugs. Reporter Anna Frank has a helpful primer on those proposals as well as a look at cannabis proposals voters across Michigan will consider next week.
Need to know: Hotel Dearbornia
The former Hyatt Regency hotel in Dearborn, mostly recently The Edward, via CoStar Group Inc.
The ’70s space-age former Hyatt Regency hotel in Dearborn finally has new owners. Rhodium Capital Advisors, a Manhattan-based real estate investment company, closed on the purchase of the long-vacant hotel and conference center Wednesday for an undisclosed price from the U.S. Marshals Service. Why was the U.S. Marshals Service selling a ’70s space-age hotel in Dearborn? Because the previous owner, Xiao Hua “Edward” Gong, agreed to forfeit the hotel as part of a deal with the Canadian government in a fraud case. It’s a weird one! But you can catch up on the details here. The new owner plans to convert the hotel into a multifamily, market-rate apartment complex with 375 units. Good news if you ever wanted to live in a ’70s space-age hotel in Dearborn, which once had a monorail that delivered guests directly to Fairlane Town Center mall.
MSUFCU NIL: Michigan State University Federal Credit Union in East Lansing will pay members of the MSU women’s basketball team under new Name, Image, Likeness rules that allow student-athletes to receive compensation, so now that alphabet soup makes sense. MSU football quarterback Payton Thorne also struck a deal with HopCat. The announcements follow a recent similar deal struck with male athletes at MSU from Pontiac-based mortgage lender United Wholesale Mortgage Corp., which was criticized at the time for not including women.
Bullseye: The retail location announcement heard ’round the world/Detroit social feeds: Target Corp. is opening a long-rumored, much-anticipated store in Detroit south of Mack at Woodward. Whatever you think of the shop’s petite size — it’s cute that the rendering shows just a slice of the brand’s distinctive spherical red bollards — it’s meaningful for the many Detroiters who’ve been driving to the suburbs to shop.
Historical footnote: 30 years of 40 Under 40
40 Under 40 honorees through the years. Top row (from left): Dan Gilbert, Mike Duggan, David Provost and Kathleen Hudson. Bottom row: Rebecca Salminen Witt, Reginald Turner Jr., Robin Terry and Meg Whitman.
On Monday we’ll unveil the 2021 Crain’s Detroit Business 40 Under 40 honorees.
It’s been 30 years since Crain’s Detroit Business first recognized 40 young overachievers in business. And dang, what a class that was. Dan Gilbert and Mike Duggan were members of the 1991 class, which is legendary; Gilbert was the 29-year-old president of Rock Financial Co. and projected to do about $150 million in home loans that year. Duggan was the 32-year-old Deputy Wayne County Executive and shared with Crain’s some “sobering thoughts” about “whether the political and racial polarization that now exists in the city of Detroit can be overcome so that we can get cooperation in the massive job of rebuilding the city.”
Many other future stars studded that 1991 class, too: scions Denise Ilitch and Bobby Taubman; future Michigan Supreme Court Chief Justice Conrad Mallett Jr.; Desiree Cooper, then a lawyer for New Detroit Inc., who would become a Pulitzer Prize-nominated journalist and author; and two business titans-turned-wildlife conservationists, Stephen Polk and Jonathan Holtzman.
Plenty of other big players made the list over the next 30 years, and their stories are great wayfinders through Detroit business and social history.
Did you know, for example, that the Pontiac Silverdome hosted games in the 1994 FIFA World Cup? The chair of the World Cup host committee, James Duggan, was a 40s honoree in 1993. (Yep, he’s Mike Duggan’s brother.) Other ’93 winners of renown include Jim Ketai, who would go on to co-found Bedrock Real Estate with his friend and fellow 40s alum Dan Gilbert; banker David Provost, now the chairman of TCF Bank and architect of over a dozen bank mergers; and Terry Barclay, now president and CEO of women’s professional alliance Inforum.
Meg Whitman — then known as Margaret — was in 40s in 1995, when she was president of Florists’ Transworld Delivery, Inc., a company with a rich history in Detroit, where it was organized in 1910. She made our 1996 list of Newsmakers of the Year for deciding to keep FTD in Southfield, though the company did ultimately relocate its headquarters to Downers Grove, Ill., in 1997. Whitman went on to executive stints at eBay, HP and short-lived Quibi, and she recently spoke at Detroit Homecoming about investing in education in Detroit.
Kathleen Hudson was marketing manager and glass ceiling-smasher at Albert Kahn Associates in 1995 and one of only six women shareholders of the company. At the time she was expecting her first baby and looking for a nanny. Today, she is vice president and director of business development at SmithGroup where, in her bio on the company’s website, she writes: “I used to be the youngest person in the room, and the only woman most of the time … Now there are many more women at the table.” Attorney Reginald Turner Jr. was also honored in ’95. Turner went on to lead the Detroit Institute of Arts’ successful tri-county millage campaign in 2012 and this year is serving as president of the American Bar Association.
Those are some highlights from the first *checks notes* four years of 40 Under 40. The list goes on and on — honorees of the early 2000s include techno pioneer Derrick May; Rebecca Salminen Witt, who made Greening of Detroit a verdant presence in the city’s nonprofit sphere; Dave Blaskewicz, who helped establish what is now Invest Detroit; Robin Terry, who is still taking the Motown Museum to new heights; and venture capitalist Raj Kothari, who was honored as a Crain’s Health Care Hero this year for his service in the Civil Air Patrol and efforts to stand up field hospitals during the COVID-19 pandemic.
You can explore past 40s lists here, where a drop-down menu above the list of winners allows you to navigate by year. You’ll find our 2021 list of winners at that same link on Monday morning.
Most-read stories: Oct. 23-29
1. Target to open new store in Detroit
2. Former Dearborn Hyatt sells to new owner with big plans
3. Volkswagen building in Auburn Hills gets a new owner
4. Grocery co-op in Detroit’s North End secures state funding
5. Vinnie Johnson shutters office furniture company Airea
6. Dave’s Hot Chicken set to open first Michigan location
7. ‘Beginning of a journey’: In Midtown Detroit, a new community for women
8. Real Estate Insider: Financial woes for another ‘Book’ building threaten ownership
9. Walbridge fills up one Lyon Township warehouse building, starts another
10. Condos push add-on rooms as more buyers seek a space apart
