Don't distort Ilitch companies' positive impact on community | Rebuttal
Doug Kuiper
Honest conversations about race, inclusion and opportunity have an important place in our community. Unfortunately, some recent media reports — in the Detroit Free Press in particular — have not been honest, providing a distorted picture of the positive impact our organization has in the community.
Perhaps the most egregious affront is to say that an arena-opening concert — a concert announced eight months before disgusting displays by bigots in Charlottesville — is in any way comparable to Jim Crow laws. This statement sadly diminishes the grotesque history of Jim Crow laws.
For our part, we focus on driving our community forward. Most recently, we've done so with the development of Little Caesars Arena, a world-class venue that will not only house more than 200 events a year, but has also brought the Detroit Pistons back to a more accessible locale for Detroiters to enjoy.
Throughout the arena's development, we have worked passionately to ensure it exceeds our community's expectations.
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From the beginning, Olympia Development of Michigan has worked proactively with the city to meet Detroit executive orders: to ensure its contractors hire 51% Detroiters — an objective that in many cases is simply not possible due to a lack of available skilled tradespeople in our city — or to contribute funds to support future workforce development. Successfully meeting this executive order in either fashion, as certified by the Department of Human Rights, is a first in the city's history for a project of this scope and magnitude.
Detroiters have worked nearly 600,000 hours on Little Caesars Arena, and when our contractors were unable to find workforce, we partnered with them on apprenticeships to grow our skilled trades. Some 836 apprentices — more than half of whom are Detroit residents — have worked on our construction sites, learning skills to provide for their families now and in the future. In fact, Little Caesars Arena had double the number of apprentices typical for a project of this size and more than any other active Michigan construction project.
We have made significant investments to create joint venture opportunities for small and medium-size Detroit businesses (Dixon Masonry, Lardner Elevator, Edgewood Electric and MSL Mechanical Contractors to name just a few) to participate in the arena — a task many would not be able to do on their own — setting them up for future growth.
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Beyond the arena, our concurrent investments in Detroit and its residents are highly visible on Woodward Avenue and beyond. Little Caesars Pizza is investing $150 million in Detroit's first new multistory headquarters building in a decade, which will house more than 600 jobs and is slated for a 2018 opening. The Wayne State University Mike Ilitch School of Business is also under construction and will open next year, bringing life-changing opportunities to students thanks in large part to a personal gift of $40 million by Mike and Marian Ilitch — one of the top five gifts ever to a public business school. Additionally, construction and restoration work on new and historic residential projects is under way thanks in part to the leadership and partnership of longtime Detroiter Emmett Moten and his development partners, among others. These developments will bring nearly 700 new residential units to the city, 20% of which are affordable housing.
Little Caesars Arena and The District Detroit are only one aspect of the Ilitch organization's decades-long commitment to Detroit. Across our family of businesses, we:
Provide 8,600 jobs, more than a third of which are held by Detroiters
Have completed more than $2.6 billion in brick-and-mortar projects in Detroit
Purchase about $100 million annually in goods and services from Detroit-based businesses
Have awarded more than $475 million in contracts to Detroit companies for work on projects across The District Detroit — 60% of the total and twice the executive order of 30%
Have paid more than $1.5 billion in taxes to Detroit to date
Have made more than $80 million in charitable contributions to our community in the last dozen years alone
Have created 2,100 permanent jobs at Little Caesars Arena, 61% of which have gone to Detroiters
Have changed lives through three years of our Cass Technical High School internship program
We have a large family of businesses with more than 300 million customer interactions every year. In every case, we work to make the best decisions we can with the information we have at the time. While we cannot control what any third party does or says, we can and will continue to invest diligently in our community and its people.
Our organization gladly risks its capital in developments like Little Caesars Arena, building Detroit's workforce and creating jobs. These projects don't just transform our landscape, they transform lives through new opportunities and employment, through attracting new employers to our city and by creating billions and billions of dollars of economic impact.
Doug Kuiper is vice president of corporate communications at Ilitch Holdings, Inc.