BY JOHN GALLAGHER

DETROIT FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER


CLEVELAND -- If you think Quicken Loans founder and Chairman Dan Gilbert is having an impact on downtown Detroit, you ought to see what he's doing in Cleveland.

Since Gilbert bought the Cleveland Cavaliers basketball team in 2005, he has renovated Cleveland's renamed Quicken Loans Arena [[The Q), opened a mortgage banking center that now employs 300, built a $25-million practice facility for the Cavs, and is deep into construction for a $350-million Phase I of his future Horseshoe Casino in a former department store downtown, with a 16-acre new casino to follow in a few years.

Gilbert's investments in and around downtown Cleveland will total close to $1 billion.

And it's all done with typical Gilbert style -- upbeat, quirky, colorful, high energy -- all familiar qualities of his work in downtown Detroit, where Gilbert has bought several historic buildings and is renovating them as entrepreneurial hubs.

Even a critic of casinos, like the Rev. Mark Giuliano, pastor of Cleveland's historic Old Stone Church, describes himself today as a Gilbert convert, saying, "He gets it."

Despite this enormous investment, Gilbert's heart still seems to belong mostly to downtown Detroit, where he moved his Quicken Loans headquarters in 2010.

Gilbert said Cleveland's downtown may be in better shape than Detroit's, but he added, "What they don't have, and I tell this to them, they don't have the spirit that's in Detroit. It's not even close."

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