Dan Gilbert (Photo by Steve Jennings)
Any way you look at it, it's hard not to give Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert credit for being instrumental in reviving downtown Detroit.
For decades, a good stretch of downtown Woodward looked listless and decayed. Then Gilbert led efforts to create a vibrant big-city downtown, replete with big-brand stores like Nike and Under Armour.
That said, not everyone sees Gilbert as a hero. In fact, a Metro Times story by Tom Perkins portrays Gilbert as a big recipient of corporate welfare, and points to some highly questionable lending tactics that have caused Quicken Loans heartburn and money. The headline: On Dan Gilbert’s ever-growing rap sheet, and corporate welfare.
On Monday, Gilbert announced that he shut down the Cleveland Cavaliers' proposal to use public funds to cover around half of $282 million needed to renovate the Quicken Loans Arena, which the team built 22 years ago, Perkins writes. The decision comes as the public pushed back over Gilbert's use of tax dollars for the project.
As for Detroit, Metro Times writes:
Last month, metro Detroiters oohed and ahhed at the conceptual drawings for Gilbert’s planned downtown skyscraper on the Hudson site, which will be the city’s tallest structure when its complete sometime around 2020.
Detroit Free Press staff writer and Dan Gilbert lapdog John Gallagher billed it as an “architectural icon,” and a “stunningly ambitious” and “eye-popping” project. Other slightly less giddy outlets noted that the the 52-story building will transform the city’s skyline, and that it would be the most the ambitious downtown high-rise since the Renaissance Center’s 1977 construction.
Of course, Gilbert gets the credit, but taxpayers could end up paying for most of it.
That’s because Michigan’s lawmakers passed a group of laws informally called the “Gilbert Bills” that are specifically designed to provide corporate welfare to Gilbert as he builds the new skyscraper. It’s a slightly complicated package, but ultimately means taxpayers could end up covering most or all of the 734-foot, $775 million project’s cost. That’s despite the fact that Gilbert is worth an estimated $6.2 billion. (By comparison, the Renaissance Center cost $500 million in the mid 1970s. It was privately funded.)
Perkins also cites questionable lending practices:
At this point in 2017, piecing together the lawsuits and investigations that are playing out since 2011 provides a much different picture of Quicken Loans. On one hand there’s Dan Gilbert, Detroit’s superhero. On the other, there’s Dan Gilbert, a super-villain whom courts, judges, the Justice Department, and other outlets have accused of systematically preying on Quicken Loans’ poorest customers in the years leading up to the recession.
While Cleveland taxpayers push back against Gilbert's use of corporate welfare, Perkins adds, "in Detroit, there seems to be no such opposition."
