BY JOHN GALLAGHER

DETROIT FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER


To get a good idea how Quicken Loans founder and chairman Dan Gilbert hopes to change downtown Detroit, take a look at the progress on his Madison Theatre Building.

Gilbert bought the small, five-story structure near Broadway and Grand Circus Park and has workers transforming it into a hub for high-tech entrepreneurial activity.

The building is to open in late fall.

There'll be a co-working floor that Gilbert plans to offer for free to entrepreneurs -- sort of a desk-for-a-day environment for techies. And there'll be a 150-seat theater where Gilbert hopes to host all sorts of technology events, from critiques of new software and hardware to brainstorming sessions for digital types.

It's all part of transforming downtown into what Gilbert calls Detroit 2.0 -- a city rich with high-tech entrepreneurial activity and a bustling new economy.

"We're just really trying to highlight the city and bring folks from the suburbs downtown," Dan Mullen, Gilbert's point man for the Madison project, said last week during a tour of the work in progress.

He added, "We want you to live here, work here and play here."

Continued at: http://www.freep.com/article/2011062...wntown-Detroit