The list of development successes in Detroit has increased in recent years, with particular attention being paid to the 1.4-square miles of downtown. New retail, apartments and sports complexes have been built or revitalized, bringing clout to those developers who got the job done.  But Dave Blaszkiewicz knows Detroit is nothing without its neighborhoods.  "I feel like we've got great momentum in the Midtown, downtown areas with the stadiums and arenas, really placing themselves there on a permanent basis." he said "But Detroit is built on its neighborhoods, and if we can't stabilize those we're not going to be long for the world." Blaszkiewicz is President and CEO of Invest Detroit, a major player in Detroit development, providing financing to a host of projects around the city. The organization earlier this month received its largest-ever award, $50 million in New Markets Tax Credit funds from the U.S. Department of the Treasury's Community Development Financial Institutions Fund. And even though he has his hands in just about every new development in Detroit, Blaszkiewicz will always count Invest Detroit's efforts in the city's 10 Strategic Neighborhood Fund Zones among the work he is most proud of. And there's a reason why these areas get the focus over others. "I wish we could create a template where we just go from place to place. But the reality is each one is different," Blaszkiewicz said. "We look for what we would call tipping neighborhoods: these are the neighborhoods that are right on the bubble where if we put our shoulders into them we can get them to tip in the right direction." New Markets Tax Credits are targeted at low-income areas and geared toward bringing investment into things like new real estate development and businesses. The program was authorized by Congress in 2000 and is currently allowed to dole out $91 billion through the end of 2025, according to the Congressional Research Service. Typically, in a leveraged structure, an investor like a bank or other financial institution combines both a loan and equity into a fund it majority controls that then invests that capital in what's known as a community development entity — in this case, Invest Detroit. In exchange, the investor-controlled fund receives tax credits totaling 39 percent of their total investment applied against their federal income taxes over seven years: 5 percent of the investment for the first three years, and 6 percent the remaining four years. The CDE then takes that capital and invests it, either as equity or a loan, in real estate projects and businesses in low-income areas. Invest Detroit says that it has received $163 million in NMTC allocations since 2009, which have gone to 16 projects in Detroit. As for what's next, Blaszkiewicz says he believes the most significant project on the horizon in Detroit is the 27.5-mile Joe Louis Greenway. The recreational pathway of biking and walking trails will connect 23 neighborhoods in the city to the Dequindre Cut, Detroit Riverfront, Highland Park, Dearborn and Hamtramck. Named after the legendary Detroit boxer Joe Louis, the transformational pathway was first envisioned in 2007 and is estimated to cost $240 million to complete. "This is much more than a bike path. This is an opportunity to leverage public spaces across the city...Having the attention on a targeted geography is always a benefit because it gets everybody focused around particular areas," he said. "I can go back to things like the Super Bowl, the lower Woodward strategy, transit-oriented development strategy, all things that got folks focused around targeted geographies and development. Everybody kind of brought their own pieces to the table and helped to lift up Midtown and Downtown over the years. We're trying to take on the same approach in the neighborhoods today, and I think Joe Louis Greenway is the next opportunity going forward."

Sue Mosey has never been afraid to take a risk in business. It may not always pan out for her, but when it does, it goes big. "I've found over the years that it's really hard to move the needle on the neighborhood, especially on the market side - growing rents or attracting more residents or anything - if you're not really willing to take quite as big of a risk," she said.  For more than three decades, Mosey has been the Executive Director of Midtown Detroit, Inc., the non-profit organization responsible for community development, marketing, real estate, small business development and arts programming within Detroit’s University Cultural Center and New Center districts. Midtown Detroit also manages public space maintenance and a number of programs including the façade matching grant program and residential incentive programs. Projects that have been undertaken by the organization under her direction include public improvements such as new streetscapes and park development; greenway planning and construction; and residential and commercial real estate development and management. The organization also produces a number of signature arts events, including Dlectricity, Noel Night and movies and live theater productions in New Center Park. And after heading up the agency since the 1980s, Mosey has a new vision, post-pandemic, for continuing to build the area on Woodward, north of Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard. Housing rates have been stable with a fairly constant demand for Midtown. But that has started to change the traditional makeup of the area.  "I think we had gotten to a point where a lot of students were really priced out of the market, except for maybe graduate students," she said of the neighborhood. "I'm hoping with some of the new workforce housing units that are being developed, and maybe over time, we'll be a little bit more friendly to our student population that we think is a really critical part of our DNA here."

Kirk and Arielle traveled to Atlanta for the annual National Association of Real Estate Editors conference and discuss the top concerns among residential and commercial real estate players. They also pull aside Mason Ailstock, chief executive officer of the Rowan Foundation, a business innovation triangle in metropolitan Atlanta, to see what lessons he's learned in the building of the project and what advice he has for the Detroit innovation districts.

Ammar Alkhafaji is all about finding that “work-work balance.” He has no choice: He’s a full-time medical doctor and a property developer with a special focus on retail and multi-family units. “When you’re passionate about something you make time to do it,” the 28-year-old said in an episode of The Build Up podcast. Alkhafaji, an internal medicine doctor in his last year of residency, works out of Ascension Providence in Southfield and Novi. But he’s also the principal behind The W Investors Group, which has spent the last several years working on a project in White Lake Township called Four Corners Square. The space is unique to the area and features a large mixed-use development not generally seen in that part of Oakland County. The $20 million-plus development was started by his father Shakir and has 83 market-rate apartments and more than 20,000 square feet of retail. It’s basically an urban-style apartment community is the heart of the county’s lakes area. “Giving them those kinds of urban amenities in that suburban area was our ultimate goal there,” he said. He’s been on job sites with his father, Shakir, since he was 10 and credits everything he knows to the man. “My father and I, we mostly bonded on construction sites,” Alkhafaji said. “So, it was time we got to spend together. It wasn’t watching sports or going to football games. We really bonded on job sites. And that’s what got me to really enjoy it at a young age.” The interest in biology and medicine came later when he was in high school. But when the time came to make a choice – medicine or property development – Alkhafaji figured out a way to do both. That might mean sleeping fewer hours than most, scheduling meetings for his off days at the hospital and having a limited amount of free time. But it is his passion to help others, and in this, he has married his two careers. “Being a physician, it’s actually been able to help me build a rapport with other physicians and medical tenants in terms of their needs and building that trust with them to understand what they truly do want in terms of their space and how to really execute that for them,” he said. “In terms of multidisciplinary clinics and all sorts of other medical developments, we’re doing that over multiple communities right now… People don’t want to be in hospitals, they want to be seen in outpatient facilities. And creating innovative ways to get care to the outpatient setting is something we’re working on right now.”

When Richard Hosey first got into development 25 years ago, he was all about the economics. "I liked new construction," he said. But these days, he's much more conscious of the value of architecture, and many of his current projects involve some element of historic preservation. "It's a coming together of economic incentive and architectural wow factor. We would never build an apartment complex with 13-foot ceilings. It's just inefficient, it costs so much more – when you think of 13-foot ceilings you think of some mansion where cost is no object," he said. "But if you have a building that already has 13-foot ceilings, then people get to have this incredible wow factor based upon what was already there. And the federal historic tax credit, especially when combined with the state historic tax credit or other incentives it brings that extra cost… back in line with new construction." Since returning to his hometown of Detroit in 2008, Hosey has been among the most active developers – and public servants – in the city. Most recently, the owner of Hosey Development LLC and his development partners unveiled a $134 million proposal to redevelop the former Fisher Body 21 plant into apartments, a project touted as the largest Black-led development in the city. But he has also been instrumental in the transformation of the Capitol Park neighborhood, along with his development partner Richard Karp. And in between redeveloping old buildings, he finds time to serve on several boards, including the Downtown Development Authority, Historic District Commission, Detroit Land Bank Authority and Detroit Housing Commission. Through these various roles, Hosey has been able to understand development from all sides of the equation. And one thing he's noticed about Detroit compared to the other cities where he has worked: "In other cities, there's very little concern for the concept of gentrification." "There's very little concern for affordability and accessibility until it's way down a path where people go 'wait, there's no place for teachers to live. Everything is four thousand dollars an apartment,'" he said. And he's learned making sure all stakeholders have a voice in the process from the start is the way to preventing the problem from getting out of hand. "Having those conversations here up front certainly presents another piece of the puzzle but it also makes it where over the long run you end up with a much better system," he said. "There's a real sense of, everyone should be involved and everyone should be heard."

Ryan Maibach compares the regulatory environment for construction companies to living under COVID-19 restrictions: There are a lot of rules and it’s hard to keep them straight. “If you can picture the patchwork of the responses to the pandemic that we saw, be it various states, various counties, various cities and you apply that to the industry, some of the confusion that we saw… the challenges that we all experienced through COVID, that is pretty much what we experience on a daily basis in this industry – We can do this in this municipality, but we can’t do it over there. This is how we approach safety in this location, but it has to be done another way over there,” Maibach said. “It’s really unfortunate. It creates a lot of inefficiencies, it creates challenges in labor affordability, it creates challenges in design efficiency and design automation.” Maibach knows firsthand the difficulties of trying to build a space from the ground up. His family has been doing it for nearly 100 years. Maibach is the president and CEO of Barton Malow Holdings, which has been in the contracting and building business since 1924. It was founded in Detroit by Carl Osborn Barton and a year later, Ben Maibach Sr. – Ryan Maibach’s great grandfather – came on as a carpenter. Four generations on, the company now has 3,000 staffers in 16 offices from four entities and five partner firms across North America. Ryan Maibach joined the business in 1997 as a project engineer and worked his way up to the top job in 2011. Among his notable projects: the Shinola Hotel on Woodward Avenue, The Exchange Building in Greektown and Dan Gilbert’s Hudson’s site tower in downtown Detroit. Despite the challenges his industry faces, Maibach says there’s nothing else he’d rather be doing. “Something that’s really special about construction is there’s a tangible end result. You drive through the city of Detroit, drive through the community here and you can point to these finished products, these sort of monuments to the struggle of creating,” he said. “It can, at times, be a bit of a struggle but as with many times in life, the more you struggle with something the more you’re proud of it.” He’s particularly proud of The Exchange project, which is ongoing now using LIFTBuild technology, using a patented method to hoist some one million pounds of steel, concrete and other building materials to the top of an under-construction residential high-rise in Detroit's Greektown neighborhood. The method is basically building the floors on the ground and then lifting them up around the elevator shaft and securing them in place. “Projects are a lot like kids. You appreciate the different aspects of each one of them and it’s pretty tough to have favorites. Each project not only represents something in and of itself – creating this space where there’s health care and people were healed or where cars are built or Little Caesars Arena where there’s these gatherings of people watching – but for us as an organization, these projects can be another step in accomplishing something strategically, which is exciting,” he said. The LIFTBuild technology positions Barton Malow for the future of construction, a change that Maibach says he embraces. “While I can speak pretty passionately about how I was drawn to construction as a kid and what a wonderful industry it is, I also believe it is an industry that is absolutely ripe for change,” he said. “We want to be doing things to make sure that we are positioned well as an organization to ensure relevancy well into the future and be a part of an industry that very likely will change pretty dramatically by the time I retire.” See what else Maibach had to say in this episode of The Build Up.

Michael Cooper has never been the star of a short film, but he’s done pretty much everything else behind the scenes. That’s because his twin sons, Daniel and Adam, 27, have been shooting their own films since they were small children, and they’ve been roping in their dad since the beginning. “They’ve been making movies since they were six years old with a FisherPrice movie camera,” he said. “And then over time, the equipment got better, and the films got more sophisticated.” The men, who started Cooper Brothers Films in Southern California, are still working at what their passions are, something that Cooper says makes him proud. “What I see in them is something I hope I will always have and that is a drive to continue to learn, continue to grow, to pursue the things that I love doing,” he said. “My background… I was more a math and science, analytical, person… It pushes me to my more creative side.” After nearly three decades with planning, architecture and design firm HED, Cooper enjoys a chance to be creative. He also enjoys planning what the future of the industry will look like and how to help get his company there. "We're designing for communities, and we want everyone in the community to be able to enjoy what we do, to be able to engage with what we do, to experience the spaces, the structures, the places that we are helping to create," he said. "The generations entering the workforce today are much more focused on purpose, much more focused on positive impact." One change has become obvious since the COVID-19 pandemic: people are more likely to want hybrid work schedules. And that puts demands on office buildings that didn’t exist before 2020. Offices now need to be spaces where people can work solo in privacy, in groups of various sizes and have the technology to accommodate hybrid work. But offices also need to be fun and have new amenities to draw people in, Cooper said. But most of all, tenants are looking for smaller spaces as fewer people will work in one place at one time. "The sum total of all of those things, the hope is you'd wake up in the morning and say, 'my day is filled with lots of different things, but I can do all those kinds of things in the office, plus I can see my friends, I can see my colleagues, experience some of the enjoyable things about work," he said. His own company is downsizing in a post-pandemic world, moving from its 36,000-foot Southfield headquarters to a 19,000-square-foot space at the corner of South Main and Fifth streets in Royal Oak. "The reason why we chose to look in a different direction really had to do with the sensibilities of our staff and what they were looking for, Cooper said. "What they were looking for was more urban, more dense, more amenity-rich environment in a walkable community."

Ron Boji started his first business when he was in third grade, selling popcorn he got for free from his dad's grocery store at school. He knew he had to differentiate to compete with the popcorn already being offered for a dollar, so he came up with his own special seasoning — Lawry's salt and Parmesan — and undercut the school by 25 cents. "I would sprinkle it on at the perfect time, wrap it all up and I think it was 75 cents I was selling it," he said. "I had to sell mine more on the playground." It should come as no surprise that when Boji went to start his own development company alongside his father 25 years ago, he already had the special seasoning to become a successful entrepreneur. "You have to have a passion for it. And I feel at a very young age, that passion resonated with me," he said. "Whether selling poporn, buildings, wholesale, hotels, or anything else, I've got a huge passion for what I do." Boji is now the president and CEO of the Boji Group, a development, construction and property management firm with more than 3 million square feet of space. Among other properties, the company owns the tallest building in Lansing, the former Michigan National Tower, which it rechristened the Boji Tower after its 1998 purchase. Boji Group has more than 50 properties in Michigan, Ohio, North Carolina and California. Boji started the company with his dad, Louie Boji, 25 years ago, and he’s done a lot of development using public-private partnerships, in particular. He's also spent time serving in various appointments in the nonprofit world, including with the Michigan Chamber of Commerce, Lansing Regional Chamber and the YMCA of Metropolitan Lansing. Boji has a long history of donating money to political causes and candidates. He's planning to vote in Tuesday's primary for GOP gubernatorial candidate Tudor Dixon. But when it comes to the general election, he admits he is likely to cross the aisle. "I look at the candidate and then I look at where to invest my dollars...," he said. "Not to give anything away, I think Governor Whitmer has done a spectacular job of leading this state forward."

Today’s guests are Lynnette Boyle and Michael Martorelli of Beanstalk Real Estate Solutions. The firm has residential and commercial properties throughout Detroit, including the Guardian Building, The Marygrove Campus and The Obama Building. After a career that included time with Kirco, Farbman Group, Sterling Group and Bedrock, Lynnette formed Beanstalk in 2016, focusing on property management and brokerage. Recently, Beanstalk joined with Center City Properties to create a multi-family housing division. Michael is the new director of sales and leasing for that side of the business.

Today’s guest is Joe Luther, vice president and general manager of Southeast Michigan Operations for Christman Companies. He started as a project engineer at the construction firm in 2008 and since then has amassed a resume of major projects. Some of those projects include the Accident Fund national headquarters in Lansing, multiple Detroit Public Schools projects and the redevelopment of the GSA Theodore Levin U.S. Courthouse in Detroit.