Detroit from my hotel room window in the daylight
Yes it was a little shocking to see the city in daylight. Last night’s bright lights had given way to the dawns early light
(okay so it wasn’t dawn but it was at least 7:30 am).
My hotel room at the Aloft at the David Whitney was on a corner of the top floor and proved a great
vantage point to see Detroit 2015.
I did not take the photo shown above because my camera couldn't capture the devastation of the formerly blighted buildings, now demolished, which created an eerie maze of foundations, a virtual checkerboard outlining what had been the first floors of so many buildings; maybe opulent, maybe storied, no matter, they are gone. Plantings
from original landscaping, referred to as "Ghost gardens," outline what has been, but now must give way to
hope of what can be.
My hotel bathroom...sans robe and color
It was a freezing cold Detroit morning, the sun was shining
and I was anxious but ready to start my exploration of this much storied city.
As I emerged from my shower and stepped onto the freezing cold slate floors of
the bathroom, I reached for a bathrobe which didn’t exist. I phoned the front
desk to request a robe to which the clerk replied, “The ALoft brand doesn’t
include robes”, to which I said, “M’am, its below freezing here in Detroit, and
I don’t think business people often travel with robes, you might reconsider for
just this location”! Brrr…., this would become, and is, my only complaint of my
Motor City experience. 
Historic Woodward Avenue, and the section referred to as "Merchants Row"
I headed out onto Detroit’s storied Woodward Avenue, and
walked along the four blocks which are planned to be the premiere shopping
district already named Merchants Row. As I made my way to my first appointment I
hurried past an empty city block with painted steel beams sticking out of the
ground, each about four feet tall, placed randomly apart, there must have been
hundreds of them. What in the world? Contemporary art? A sculpture? But, by
whom? I looked around for a sign but there wasn’t one… curious. Curious, indeed!
An art installation on Woodward Avenue?
First stop today, the Bedrock Real Estate Tour led by Bruce
Swartz, an affable fellow. Bedrock is the powerful real estate development arm
of Dan Gilbert’s conglomerate of companies (most Gilbert owned companies the
name contains the word “rock” in them). If you have the opportunity to visit
Detroit you must take this tour. The tour starts at the highly secured Bedrock
headquarters located in the Compuware building (Compuware was founded by
another Detroit big bucks funder, Pete Karmanos and also an owner of the
professional sports team, the Charlotte Hurricane’s), overlooking the Campus
Maritus (Latin for “field of mars”, a word used in the early 18th
century to reflect military origins of Detroit as a French, and then British,
controlled Fort).
Campus Maritus Park with the Quicken Loans headquarters in the background
Campus Maritus is a city park with year round programing
which is surrounded by streets (the Place de la Concorde Detroit style!). Security
is tight at this building and every visitor is checked in at the secured
entrance; a valid picture ID is required. It took so long to check in that I
thought they must have typed all of the information on my Driver’s License into
their data base- a little creepy. I was given a key card ID on a lanyard and was
escorted through another security checkpoint, this one with a card activated
turnstile. Our guide used his key card to open doors, to use the elevators
between floors, and access hallways not less than twenty times on the tour of
this building.
We walked down a secured corridor lined with art from local
artists, and past Bruce’s glass enclosed office with a wall of fame featuring
photos of other tourists such as Warren Buffet, Madonna, Usher, Paula Abdul,
and others who’ve taken his tour. Detroit has piqued the interest of a wide
swath of the American public from dignitaries and celebrities, to me.
Madonna
Warren
Me
We paused at a gleaming wood floored basketball court with a
lighted score board showing the names of the Detroit Pistons and the Cleveland
Cavaliers (the Cavaliers were winning!), the later team owned by Gilbert.
Next was a war room of sorts, centered by a full scale model of downtown Detroit. Each building owned by Gilbert has an orange painted roof, which was more than half of them (70 buildings, but whose counting?).
Gilbert is talked about as a visionary and is much lauded by his employees. Gilbert’s main tenet focus is filling these buildings with high-tech companies, the Silicone Valley of the Midwest if you will. He not only leases to these companies, he also invests in them if they will move their headquarters to Detroit.
Elevator doors at the Bedrock Headquarters
And one more thing about Dan Gilbert, he's all about fun and making his employees happy. Check out these elevators (above) in the bedrock headquarters!
The second part of the tour was across the street at the Quicken Loan Headquarters which was the highlight of the tour. Quicken Loans is the nation’s largest online mortgage lender, and in 2014 was named a top-five place to work nationwide in Fortune Magazine’s annual ranking of the “100 Best Companies to Work For.”
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"Working" at Quicken Loans
"Conducting business" at Quicken Loans
According
to an article I read, that was the 11th consecutive year the company
has ranked in the top-30 of Fortune’s benchmark workplace culture study, and I
got to see first-hand just why that is so.
The bull pen, a huge room with what looked like a thousand
employees all on their feet at or near their moveable desks, walking around
with headsets transacting loans from around the country. It was loud, exciting,
and irreverent, but those kids were doing business, lots of business.
Qzine, the Quicken Loan employee cafeteria, shown above and below.
From there we went down to their cafeteria, known as Qzine,
more like a food court with four restaurants, mini-market, their own Starbucks
and a private chef. Bruce said the room is used for special corporate events,
non-profit events, and even a wedding or two.
From there we headed down to the security office, the
security command center for all the Gilbert owned companies and buildings (no
photos allowed). For the record, I felt safe every minute that I was in Detroit, night or day.
Security cameras were plentiful in downtown Detroit, and have a direct feed to Mission Control.
Mission Control for the Rock Ventures companies owned by Dan Gilbert (Note: I did not take this picture- it was uploaded from the internet!)
There was a huge wall full of large screen monitors beaming
live footage from cameras on every building (inside and outside) that Bedrock
owns; there were three rows of employees monitoring every screen, including two
girls on the first row doing nothing but monitoring social media platforms,
looking for any mention, good, bad, or otherwise, of Dan Gilbert, or his
companies. These young ladies were vested with taking whatever action appropriate,
including reporting and following up on threats. Two successful examples were
shown of their security work and prosecutorial capacity of this social media
monitoring. Watch what you say on social
media platforms kids, big brother is watching!
We then walked outside and as we were crossing an alley Bruce
showed us the beginning installation of the gigabit-speed internet fiber-optic
cable, Rocket Fiber (a Dan Gilbert “Rock Ventures LLC” high tech investment), which
is to be the latest, fastest fiber-optic cable in the world. “No buffering
here!” exclaimed Bruce. Rocket Fiber will provide data at a gigabit per second,
about 100 times faster than traditional residential Internet.
Pictured above and below: "Parking garage as a museum". Not my words
parking structure!
Good Night Moon
