As many start ups as we can get going. It's was the amazons and starbucks types that let Seattle lose Boeing to chi town with little more than a wave and a few choice words.
As many start ups as we can get going. It's was the amazons and starbucks types that let Seattle lose Boeing to chi town with little more than a wave and a few choice words.
Correct, endogenous growth from within it probably our best bet. Who knows which of the many successful starts from the last five years could be the next big thing at a national levels. In the meantime, though, established regional entities with the ability to move should not be overlooked. Moving to Detroit is not just playing musical chairs-- not in our current circumstances. Looking at Penske as a really obvious target.
Lets see, I have fifty or so employees in my office out on Big Beaver. Detroit comes calling with an attractive package. Do I hate my employees enough to subject them to a city income tax, a commute through unsafe areas, paying for parking, and having to run a gauntlet of panhandlers to get from the parking to the office?
Beat me to the punch there. A few jobs ago my group had an outpost in the D... the old guard insisted the flag remain there...but they eventually lost that argument and was shuttered shortly after I got there--primarily because all the new management blood lived in exurban Oakland county and expenses of keeping Detroit were cutting into end of year bonuses for equity holders....I digress.
Anyway, for us at the downtown office, parking was paid and there were other perks given to offset the rather tiny matter of the income tax. Which of course created its own conflict as it was seen as "unfair" and unearned extra compensation for us by the exurban dwellers who worked out of the suburban office because THEY didn't get them...or [[what was really cheesing them off) access to free parking when they wanted to come into town for games.
Now let's not exaggerate. The city income tax can be offset with a raise, driving on any highway or Woodward is not an unsafe commute, there aren't too many panhandlers in the core of downtown anymore, and parking isn't that expensive unless you have a private garage like at One Kennedy Square.
Now we are getting into some good merits discussion. Hermod, I think most of your concerns are overblown, illogical, or outdated, and if your employees are something other than robots, i.e. people with brains that require stimulation and hearts that require human interaction, then your concerns will be outweighed by the benefits of the urban work environment. I could not imagine working in an office park with noplace to go outside; I have been privileged to have my choice of employment location and always be located in a downtown. Walking and moving about has been proven to increase brain activity and blood flow. Aside from the physical and mental health of your employees, you should care about their productivity. The legal briefs and analyses I write are generally better when I take time to think, and when I walk somewhere outside for lunch or coffee my make the blood flow. I cannot think, and I cannot get my blood flowing, by staying at my desk, or by walking down the first floor of the building to a cafeteria and coming back up. Nor can I stand the thought of not having options as to how I live my daily live. I MUST get a car. I MUST drive on a highway daily. I MUST eat the cafeteria food or DRIVE or pay delivery to get anything else. And if I want to dare see a show, ballgame, or have social time on a weeknight, which I like to do frequently, I'll need to leave early and sit in traffic to go downtown.
I would never work at your office on Big Beaver road. And you should really lobby to get that road name changed.
Big Beaver Rd? Why would anyone who isn't from Troy/Sterling Heights want to work there? Unless you're a stone throw from Somerset, working in endless suburbia doesn't sound too enticing to me. It's easier to drive downtown from the western suburbs, Ann Arbor, downriver, Grosse Pointe...probably even Royal Oak than it is to drive to somewhere on that awfully named road.
I hope that state's leader will consider the issue of city income taxes. On Tuesday we voted to eliminate one tax with the revenue to be made up by some mysterious yet to be fully determined source. I believe that Detroit's income tax is higher than the limit set by the state. Detroit, I believe, obtained permission to temporarily impose an income tax above 2 percent. Presumably, if gambling revenues greatly pick up - and they are now moving in the other direction - the city will reduce the income tax rate.
It is time for an evaluation of the very many taxes the state imposes. We could have a much
more equitable tax system in Michigan and eliminate the city income tax in the 21 locations that now impose it.
I sometimes peruse metromodemedia.com and write suburban companies that are expanding and looking for new space to consider locating in the city. I bet if they received enough well written suggestions selling the move to Detroit, someone might start to pay attention.
Stealing companies from the suburbs does not grow wealth for the entire region. All it does is move people around. Downtown does not need another huge corporation, it needs lots of small companies. What is better is try to be innovative at what we currently do, and try to build stuff we currently import from outside the Detroit area.
The city needs everything it can get. Home grown, innovative, high growth companies are the best route to creating more regional wealth, but a strong central city will also need to pull some more companies from the suburbs, any kind be it major corporations [[probably unlikely) to small and mid sized companies.
Here's a crazy thought. Remove city government offices from the City-County Building [[CAY) and put them into some of the vacant buildings [[not owned by Gilbert) along Woodward/Griswold/Washington Blvd, and or Broadway. Then tear down the CCB/CAY and offer the property up to a company that wants to build a world class world headquarters building on that property. Imagine if we could get Ford out of their "Glass House" in Dearborn. Now that would be a coup.
Also, before it was announced that a New York based company had bought the old Wayne County Building, I definitely felt that Jeffrey Figer should have bought that building and moved his law offices from Southfield to there. Somewhere I remember a commercial or ad in the paper where he and his lawyers were standing on the steps of the Wayne County Building. Now, that would have been a coup.
That would be nice but the satellite office I work for of 35 people, I don't think is big enough to get tax incentives. Most of the tax incentives I've seen are given to companies like BCBS and QL who move 100s or 1000s of workers. And since our numbers are soft, corporate couldn't afford to give us raises to offset the income tax. So while my company would fit in perfectly downtown, we have to stay in the suburbs. :mad:
Royce I like where your head is at, but there is no need to do that. We've got three city-controlled front-and-center development parcels for a new corporate HQ: Monroe Block, Hudson Block and Ford Auditorium [[though they probably just want to hold onto it for something lame like a bigger hart plaza). Then there are probably a half-dozen ready made other parcels for tall things, like Randolph @ E. Fort [[whole block), a few small blocks around the financial district that would be perfect for tall, slender buildings, and take your pick of parking lots east of the Ren Cen. In short, no need to move mountains, or city hall.
Planner,
I agree that growing business from within is the best option, with second best being a move from another region into the metro area. However, I disagree that a company moving from the suburbs to Downtown is a zero sum game. When an area like Downtown Detroit has been down and out for so long, when something positive happens, it is usually a catalyst. The ROI is immense, because TBH, Detroit needs employment more than Troy does. That is not a subjective statement, it is fact.
When visitors come into town and see a vibrant downtown, word spreads. With a healthy downtown core, the metro area is going to be considered a lot more for corporate moves and expansions. It is a case where if you can fix the weakest link in the chain, the chain as a whole improves.
I will agree that after a certain point, which Detroit has not yet reached, it does become closer to a zero sum game. However, there is still housing to consider. When a company locates downtown, their employees are much more likely to live closer to the urban core [[not necessarily Detroit, but more likely Livonia than Walled Lake). If a company opens in Wixom, the employees can live in Brighton or Walled Lake. So therefore having employment Downtown helps to curb sprawl and helps us generate tax revenue to reinvest in ailing infrastructure.
The reality is that there is plenty of office and industrial space everywhere in the metropolitan area that is underutilized. When this happens, rents stay low and leases are signed at bargain rates. Most buildings and communities outside of Detroit proper do not want to lose their businesses and will do what they can to entice them to stay.
The cost of doing business downtown is fairly high when you start to include things such as additional taxes, parking for clients, etc. Granted a lot of this is assumed in the lease or in the operating costs but it is there. Not all of Detroit's area for doing business is downtown. In fact the vast majority of it is not. That is where the risk/reward is and it is also where people live [[remember there are still over 700k who live in the City proper, 90-95% whom do not live near the CBD). This is where we need innovative smaller businesses. It would also do a heck of a lot more to make Detroit vibrant both in appearance and improve its economic condition.