From the top floor of Quicken Loans’ offices in downtown Detroit, Dan Gilbert would have a spectacular view of the city below. Before the front of his office stretches Campus Martius Park, a beautiful, ovular space that hosts picnic tables and food vendors in the summer, and an ice rink and enormous Christmas tree in the winter. If Gilbert were positioned just right, he might be able to see down Woodward Avenue to Hart Plaza, and spy Canada peeking out from beyond the Detroit River. Circling to the backside of his offices, Gilbert’s view would be of Comerica Park, the Detroit Opera House, Ford Field—the very best of the city’s entertainment and cultural offerings.
But Dan Gilbert is not the kind of person to spend his time staring out windows, surveying the world below. No—he is a man who dives headfirst into life, who is restless in his pursuit of opportunity and innovation. He is a man that ranks among the wealthiest individuals in the world, worth an estimated $5.8 billion. He is a man of great energy, and even greater ambition, a man who knows that a kingdom is not built by standing still.
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The story of his kingdom began in 1985, when Gilbert and his brother, Gary, along with a couple of investors, embarked on a business venture that would soon change the trajectory of their lives. Based in Detroit’s suburbs, Rock Financial, which would later be renamed Quicken Loans, grew during the late eighties and early nineties into an area leader in mortgage lending. By 1999, the company was so attractive that it sold for over a half billion dollars to Intuit, Inc. Yet, not content with sitting on his incredible new wealth, Gilbert finagled Quicken Loans back from Intuit just three years later, for not even an eighth of the price it had sold for. Since then, he has remained at the head of Quicken Loans, serving as the company’s chairman while it has grown into the second largest mortgage lender in the United States.
In 2007, the company announced that it would consolidate its offices spread throughout Metro Detroit into a single location at the heart of Downtown. Four years later, that vision became a reality. The office space, based at One Campus Martius, is whimsical and fantastic, dangling from its
A look inside the zany interior of Quicken Loans' offices in Downtown Detroit
ceiling UFO-esque light fixtures and popping with neon swatches of pink, purple, and orange along every surface. It is an aesthetic that suits Gilbert, a man former Quicken Loans CEO Bill Emerson describes as being “a big kid at heart.” Scooters zoom through the office past arcade games and pool tables, big screen TVs and designer sofas, an endless number of distractions meant to provide employees some relief from the stress that come with working at a demanding company.
Making his employees feel at home, both in the office and the city, is an important mission for Gilbert. Recalling the stories his parents and grandparents told him of Detroit’s wonders during the mid-twentieth century, when the city was at the peak of its economic and cultural influence, Gilbert intends to use his incredible wealth to, in his own words, “help lead the transformation of a great American city.”
In the wake of the Great Recession, when property values were at an incredible low, Gilbert snagged $2.2 billion worth of land in Midtown and Downtown. Today, he owns over 15 million square feet of Detroit. It is on this land that Gilbert intends to create his vision of a revitalized city center. He plans to develop high-rise condominium complexes and high-end retail spaces, entertainment venues and sports arenas that will rival those of any other American city. Already, he has invested in the QLINE, a light rail system that will run 3.3 miles along Woodward, and has partnered with upscale lifestyle brand Shinola to open a hotel on the same avenue. These developments, Gilbert imagines, will soon become “vibrant, distinct destinations [that] draw people to the region.”
An integral part of Gilbert’s vision for Detroit is that the city attracts talent from outside of its own reaches. In particular, Gilbert is enthusiastic about what young professionals, recently graduated from college, can bring to the city. Perhaps he sees in these men and women something of himself; he, too, was raised in the suburbs, and put his education to work in the city. These young people’s presence, perhaps, affirms to Gilbert that his efforts have meaning, that he is really creating a city more attractive to the next generation than it was to his own.
But this focus on bringing new people to Detroit is also one of the great drawbacks of Gilbert’s plan. Left behind from his vision are those people who have long called the city home. As Reverend Wendell Anthony, president of Detroit’s NAACP chapter, has explained, many Detroiters feel as though their own communities have experienced none of the benefits that Gilbert is supposedly bringing to the city. “What we don’t want to see,” Anthony remarked in 2013, “is two Detroits, one for those who are downtown and one for those [who are] in the neighborhoods.”
Yet the gap between Detroit’s center and its neighborhoods seems to grow persistently stronger. Gilbert’s efforts do not extend beyond the boundaries of the city core; all the life he is bringing to the Woodward Corridor, all the excitement and wonder, can be scarcely felt a few miles away, in areas that still suffer from inadequate infrastructure, failing social services, and widespread poverty. Gilbert is not ignorant of the problems Detroit continues to face outside of its core; he has commented on how he views reforming the city’s underfunded public school system as being the next great step in bringing about worthwhile change. Yet Gilbert has not taken on any initiative of his own to improving Detroit’s public school system, or its public health services, or its other institutions that would benefit all the city’s residents.
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It would perhaps be unfair to say that Gilbert does not care about these issues and the effect they will have on Detroiters; he and his wife, Jennifer, have, after all, committed to donating half of their personal wealth to various charities, many of which will undoubtedly work for the benefit of people living in the city. But the fact remains that Gilbert does not throw his weight behind philanthropic efforts; his focus has been, and continues to be, on ventures that benefit him as much as they do Detroit. Gilbert is not a savior in a suit—he’s just a businessman.
Moreover, Gilbert’s everyday life remains far removed from that of Detroiters. Gilbert does not live in the city, and he never has—raised in Southfield, he resides now in Franklin, a quiet, upscale village 23 miles northwest of the city. Though his work might bring him downtown every day, Gilbert does not truly belong to the city that he turned into his own personal sandbox. His views on what is best for Detroit are those of an outsider—those that give suburbanites reason to celebrate, and city residents reason to wonder what they missing out on. His is a vision that aims to make the city a destination, not a home. His efforts have undeniably changed Detroit in many ways during the past several years; but how these changes have affected all people in the city remains a question that Gilbert seems unable, or unwilling, to confront.
