Pontiac Summit

Archive for the ‘Business on Pontiac City’ Category

Hollywood is coming to Pontiac in a big way now that Motown Motion Pictures announced its going to invest $70 million to build a film studio in an old GM plant.

The deal is expected to create nearly 3,600 jobs directly and another 1,539 spin-off jobs. All of them will be based in Metro Detroit.

“What’s really significant is that here, in the State of Michigan, we’re building a state of the art movie facility,” says Steven J. Lemberg, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Motown Motion Pictures.

The 600,000-square-foot development will have nine sound stages. The smallest sound stage will measure 12,000 square feet. The biggest will clock in at 30,000 square feet. The GM facility is already 400,000 square feet, so Motown Motion Pictures will have to build another 200,000 square feet to reach its goal.

The firm is partnering with Raleigh Studios and Hollywood Rentals, a production company that rents equipment. Raleigh Studios is the largest independent studio in the country. It will provide employees and production assistance.

“We’re saying we have the employees, we have the studio equipment, you can just come here and get to work,” says Steven J. Lemberg, Senior Vice President and Chief Financial Officer of Motown Motion Pictures.

Motown Motion Pictures plans to have the first phase up and running by this summer. The rest will be built over the next five years.

The Michigan Economic Growth Authority gave Motown Motion Pictures $101 state tax credit over 12 years to help bring the project to Michigan. Another $12.9 million in Infrastructure Development Film and Digital Media were also given.

Potential is a favorite buzzword used by investors in downtown Pontiac. They point to a variety of factors when promoting the city’s potential, such as road and streetscape improvements, walkability, a vibrant nightlife and a healthy stock of historic buildings.

The Woodward Avenue Loop that surrounds downtown is being reconstructed this summer. The city is finishing a streetscape improvement project along Saginaw Street this spring. These and other examples are what city leaders point to when they say the groundwork has been laid for the downtown area to make some real strides.

“These last three years we have done all of the infrastructure and strategic planning and streetscape improvements,” says Sandy McDonald, executive director of the Pontiac Downtown Development Authority. “Now we’re ready to target a lot of the more tangible developments.”

In the mean time, what downtown Pontiac already has is starting to look much better. The city’s façade-improvement program, which provides as much as $20,000 in grant money for a rehabbed façade, is responsible for a good deal of that aesthetic improvement. In the last three years the facades of 19 buildings have been renovated compared to less than 10 in the 10 years before.

“The streetscape improvements were a long time coming,” McDonald says. “We don’t believe new structures and streets will bring in new businesses but we do believe it will help existing businesses stay.”

Six of those recent façade improvements are part of projects that completely renovated their respective buildings. These in turn have helped add another 400 downtown workers in the last year. All of these little things help improve the area incrementally, breathing more life into downtown each time.

“It’s not just about putting paint on an old building,” McDonald said. “It’s about creating that vibrancy downtown.”

Diamonds in the rough

Blair J. McGowan has been steadily recreating downtown Pontiac one building at a time for a long time. He helped turn an old church into one of Metro Detroit’s most recognized music venues, Clutch Cargo’s, and is now restoring his fifth building.

“Downtown Pontiac has a treasure trove of turn-of-the-century buildings,” McGowan says. “People love old buildings with character and history. They are becoming a rarer thing as we continue to build out into the suburbs. There is a charm that can’t be duplicated.”

That fifth building is the Crofoot Building at the corner of Pike and Saginaw streets. Built in the 1830s, it is one of the city’s oldest structures. It had been vacant for years and still showing damage from a 1950s fire before McGowan and his team started rehabbing it.

He says the city is “very development friendly” and “went to bat for” him to help win a $100,000 state Cool Cities grant to rehab what McGowan calls “a great building in a great city in a great county.” He expects to finish the project this spring, turning a blighted property into two corner bars, a pool hall and a small concert venue with a 1,000-person capacity similar to St. Andrews Hall in Detroit.

McGowan is renovating the building to its 1800s appearance as much as possible. He thinks that type of character and authenticity is what makes downtown Pontiac unique and is one more example of its great potential.

“When we came here in 1989 most of the buildings in downtown Pontiac were boarded up,” McGowan says. “There were broken windows and glass everywhere. Today there are no boarded up buildings. There is a lively and growing community here.”

Leon Yulkowski’s family sees the same potential. His family, which owns Pontiac-based commercial-door manufacturer Total Door, has been investing in Pontiac since the 1950s. The Yulkowski family is now close to finishing the rehabilitation of the Waterman Center, 91 N. Saginaw St., turning it into a state-of-the-art, mixed-use building.

The building, once a Federal’s Department Store, had been vacant for several years. There were only a couple windows left in the structure when work started 18 months ago. Now it’s nearly finished and half of the 59,000 square feet of retail and office space is leased.

“We think that Pontiac is a good place to be,” Yulkowski says. “The space is under priced in the market. If you are very careful about cost and designing properly you can make a reasonable profit.”

Pipeline potential

The DDA’s McDonald likes to say the city isn’t trying to “hit home runs” when it comes to developing its downtown. But there just might be a big hit coming down the pipeline for the city.

The city is planning to make some strong pitches for future development this summer. A study on housing realities and possibilities for the downtown area is expected later this spring. The city is putting together a list ranking downtown buildings and parcels ready for development. City officials will shop these rankings and a list of economic incentives to developers this summer in hopes of spurring more rehabilitations and new development.

Other enticements include the fact that Pontiac is one of the pilot areas for the Wireless Oakland Project, which plans to provide wireless Internet access for all of Oakland County, and home to technology companies, such as MichTel and SBC. Another is that there is enough parking in the downtown area so a worker is never more than a three-and-a-half minute walk from his or her car.

“The numbers are here,” McDonald says. “We are in Oakland County. We are the seat of Oakland County. This is where M-59 and Woodward intersect.”

He also points out there is a strong small-business community and thinks bringing in a few chain stores would complement existing shops well by creating more variety. He also sees opportunities for things like a book store and a family-oriented restaurant.

McDonald argues there is enough foot traffic in downtown to support these types of new businesses already, and that they would only help the overall business climate in downtown by attracting more people. But he adds that downtown’s success is largely thanks to its small businesses that make it what it is today.

“Because there is a sense of community of looking out for each other there is also the sense that we will stick this out together,” McDonald said. “You don’t see people abandoning Pontiac. You don’t see people packing up and leaving.”

Pontiac-based pushtwentytwo is still pushing to expand its business in Michigan.

The marketing/PR firm just added another employee, rounding out its staff to 18. The company also has the occasional intern, usually in the summer.

The firm’s newest employee will serve as the associate creative director. That new person, Gil Lapastora, is responsible for supervising pushtwentytwo’s creative activities in places like print and digital media.

Pushtwentytwo has steadily grown since it was formed more than 20 years ago. It has grown its client list to a diverse group, ranging from automotive-based clients to healthcare to technology firms.

The city of Pontiac is moving forward, and a recent event brought leaders together to keep the progress on track.

Community organizers, government officials, and law enforcement professionals discussed challenges and opportunities facing the city of Pontiac at the first Pontiac Community Summit on Nov. 1. The conference, which was held on the Baker College campus, created five key focus areas for consideration: Education, Family/Social Issues, Public Safety, Workforce Development, and Urban Development.

“The Pontiac Summit provided the opportunity for diverse groups to come together in a single forum for a common, coordinated purpose of obtaining community support for complex issues facing the City,” said George Miller, director of Oakland County Health and Human Services. “With this opportunity comes the responsibility of the Summit organizers to develop action steps and assist in the implementation of those steps with public officials.”

Over 200 participants, including members from Oakland County Executive Office, Oakland County Health Department, Planning and Economic Development, Work Force Development, and the Sheriff’s Office attended the workshop. Also in attendance were Baker College President Jeff Love, Pontiac Mayor Clarence Thomas, and state Sen. Mike Bishop of Rochester Hills. The event was organized by the Rev. Sylvester Thompson of Pontiac’s Messiah Missionary Church.

The summit’s mission statement called for diverse groups to come together for a “common, coordinated purpose of obtaining community support for complex issues facing the City.”

It was a chance for representatives of governmental agencies to start a conversation with each other, creating relationships and ideas that could last after the Summit ended. It also created the opportunity for local residents to sound off about their concerns in the community.

Topics of much discussion included healthcare for women, re-introducing the incarcerated into the community, and parenting in the 21st century. Groups studying each focus area created five recommendations to address a specific challenge facing the Pontiac community. The groups will meet in six months to report on their progress.

“The Summit clearly demonstrated the pride that residents have in their community,” Oakland County Planning Supervisor Bret Rasegan said. “The input that was gathered and the recommendations generated are outstanding.”