Crain's Detroit Business, 1155 Gratiot Avenue, Detroit, MI (2025)

12/22/2025

Demolition on a long-vacant former hospital in Southwest Detroit has begun as the Detroit City FC men’s and women’s soccer organization kicks off its effort to build a new 15,000-seat stadium on the site.

Officials with the team, city and others gathered last week to commemorate the removal of the Southwest Detroit Hospital property at Michigan Avenue and 20th Street, which, in addition to what is being called AlumniFi Field, other components as part of the $198 million vision include a 421-space parking deck, 76-unit residential building and commercial uses.

The stadium, construction of which is pegged at $153 million by itself, is expected to be completed for play in time for the spring 2027 season, officials said. The overall project received approval for $88 million in public funding, including brownfield tax-increment financing reimbursements.

Detroit City FC, which currently plays at Keyworth Stadium in Hamtramck, first announced its plan for a new stadium in May 2024, about two months after buying the old hospital site for $6.5 million. It then spent months assembling buildings and land from various previous owners in the area of Michigan Avenue and 20th Street.

Read more here: https://www.crainsdetroit.com/real-estate/detroit-city-fc-razing-detroit-hospital-new-soccer-stadium?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=soc-own

12/18/2025

LIV Golf is bringing its high-energy brand back to Michigan next year.

The LIV Golf Team Championship will be played Aug. 27-30 at Saint John’s Resort in Plymouth, organizers announced Thursday. It will be the second straight year the league will play its last event of the season at The Cardinal course. The 2025 season-ending event brought more than 40,000 fans to the three-day event.

The return of the tournament highlights Michigan’s expanding role in LIV Golf’s international calendar, organizers said in a news release.

LIV Golf officials praised Saint John’s Resort and the state of Michigan as fantastic hosts.

The return of the tournament comes after LIV and Saint John’s agreed to a one-year deal. Organizers in a release said the 2026 championship will build on the energy of 2025 event, with plans for an expanded party hole, enhanced fan zones, live music, and collaborations with local chefs and artists.

Read more here: https://www.crainsdetroit.com/sports-recreation/liv-golf-returning-saint-johns-resort-2026

12/18/2025

Michigan regulators have signed off on power contracts for a mammoth artificial intelligence data center near Ann Arbor, a key step forward for the multibillion-dollar project that has become a political flashpoint.

The three-member Public Service Commission gave conditional approval to DTE Electric Co.'s agreements with Green Chile Ventures LLC, an Oracle Corp. subsidiary that plans to serve OpenAI. The state attorney general and others had asked the agency to order a longer contested case proceeding on the Detroit-based utility's request to bless the deals, which was made less than two months ago.

The 1.4-gigawatt "hyperscale" facility in Washtenaw County's Saline Township would be the state's largest electricity user by far, consuming enough to power some 1 million homes and representing a 23%-28% increase in DTE's average daily load. The developer, Related Digital, plans to begin construction in the first quarter of 2026 if environmental permits are secured. Other massive Michigan data centers are also in the works, but not as far along, a year after the state enacted tax incentives to capitalize on a jump in computing demand fueled by AI.

Read more here: https://www.crainsdetroit.com/politics-policy/oracle-openai-data-center-gets-approval-michigan-power-deals?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=soc-own

12/17/2025

The average cost of an ounce of w**d in Michigan is less than $60, a historic low, as this year’s crop of outdoor-grown product floods the market.

Historic oversupply continues to plague industry operators as average prices dropped to just $59.79 in November, down 3.4% from October and down 16.7% year-over-year, according to data provided by the Michigan Cannabis Regulatory Agency.

The dropping prices are due to the October harvest of ma*****na grown outdoors. Known as “Croptober,” thousands of acres of ma*****na are grown outside during the summer months and harvested in October, then frozen and distributed around the year to be processed into infused liquids and edibles as fresh frozen product.

The inventory of fresh frozen ma*****na at growers and processors jumped to 3 million pounds as of Nov. 30, up from just 1.1 million pounds on Sept. 30.

With so much product in the market and stiff competition, operators just aren’t in a position to improve margins through higher prices.

Read more here: https://www.crainsdetroit.com/cannabis/michigan-w**d-prices-hit-historic-low-amid-outdoor-product-flood?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=soc-own

12/17/2025

Approximately 76 banks in Michigan could close or consolidate if the Fifth Third Bancorp acquisition of Comerica Inc. is approved by regulators, according to documents obtained by Crain’s.

In October, Cincinnati-headquartered Fifth Third Bancorp announced a deal to buy Dallas-based Comerica for $10.9 billion in the largest U.S. bank deal this year. The deal would create the ninth-largest bank in the country, with about $288 billion in assets, pending shareholder approval. It is expected to be completed in early 2026.

Fifth Third Bank and Comerica Inc. are two of Michigan’s largest banks by deposits, at No. 7 and No. 3, respectively, according to data compiled by Crain’s. With Comerica’s 144 independent branches and Fifth Third's 156 branches, that means statewide consolidation.

Across all 80 closures in Michigan and Florida, 30 Fifth Third locations are expected to close, compared to 50 Comerica locations, according to the documents provided to Crain's by activist organization Fair Finance Watch, which obtained the list through a Freedom of Information Act request of the Federal Reserve. Michigan would bear the brunt of the impact.

A spokesperson for Fifth Third told Crain's in an email that the branch closures would not take place until the second half of 2026.

Read more here: https://www.crainsdetroit.com/banking-finance/fifth-third-comerica-deal-would-bring-michigan-branch-closures?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=soc-own

12/17/2025

A new joint venture is proposing to turn a vacant building near the Fox Theatre in the District Detroit area into a hotel.

It’s at least the third attempt since 2019 to redevelop the Park Avenue House building at 2305 Park Ave.

This time, Detroit-based Walters Group and Detroit-based developer The Roxbury Group are planning to turn the 13-story, Louis Kamper-designed building into a 175-room hotel with a $60 million price tag.

A hotel flag was not revealed during a recent meeting of the Downtown Development Authority Finance Committee, during which that body signed off on a $10 million loan for the project. Construction would start in the fall of 2026 and be completed by the spring of 2028, James Van D**e, president of Roxbury Group, told the committee.

The DDA board meets this week and may grant final approval for the loan then.

Read more here: https://www.crainsdetroit.com/real-estate/park-avenue-house-targeted-hotel-conversion-new-joint-venture?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=soc-own

12/16/2025

A push to enact new job-creation and job-retention incentives by the end of the year is dead.

And an effort to expand subsidies to help fund the Renaissance Center overhaul and other new redevelopment projects will wait until 2026, too, barring an unlikely breakthrough this week — lawmakers' last voting days in 2025.

Developers had held out hope that lifting a cap on tax captures could get to Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer this year in conjunction with separate tax incentives tied to new jobs and, maybe, retained jobs. Legislative leaders had agreed to send jobs incentives to Whitmer by year's end after cutting other economic development funding from the budget, but neither chamber passed anything Thursday — the deadline for legislation to be considered by the other chamber next week.

Read more here: https://www.crainsdetroit.com/politics-policy/rencen-revamp-funding-stalls-michigan-incentives-pushed-2026?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=soc-own

12/16/2025

Enrollment at Michigan’s public universities has been on a downward slope for more than a decade and that slide isn’t expected to turn around soon — if ever.

While a handful of universities have gained students, enrollment numbers have dropped precipitously at others, with losses as much as 45% since an “enrollment cliff” dropped after 2011-12.

The increased financial pressures for universities with fixed costs and increasing competition for students, along with the unique constitutional autonomy Michigan’s public universities are afforded, are heightening competition among them and with the big three research institutions: the University of Michigan, Michigan State University and Wayne State University.

Hard conversations are continuing to determine if the current governance model of 15 independent public universities is in the state’s best interest or if other strategies could help keep the universities financially viable, accessible and aligned with the state goal of having 60% of residents hold a degree or post-secondary credential by 2030.

There is likely a role for the state in helping Michigan’s public universities navigate enrollment declines through increased collaboration and coordination.

Read more in this month's Crain's forum here: https://www.crainsdetroit.com/crains-forum-higher-education/could-overhaul-help-michigan-stem-college-enrollment-drop?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=soc-own

12/16/2025

Detroit Opera’s renowned artistic director, Yuval Sharon, who brought new excitement to opera when he staged an hourlong, drive-through opera adaptation of Wagner's "Götterdämmerung" in a Detroit parking garage during the COVID-19 pandemic, will depart at the end of the 2025-26 season amid financial pressures for the opera company.

Sharon and Detroit Opera mutually agreed to end his contract, which was to end in 2028, according to a joint statement issued by the opera company.

Financial pressures have made the artistic vision that was laid out in Yuval's contract extension, enacted in 2024, impossible, the opera company said.

"In working with Yuval, we have committed in an unprecedented way to expanding the American operatic tradition while serving the needs of our local community," President and CEO Patty Isacson Sabee said in the statement. "While we are sad to part ways, we look forward to continuing this expansive, inclusive mission for years to come. In this period of transition, Detroit Opera will continue to present opera and diverse performing arts of the highest quality."

Under Sharon's leadership, Detroit Opera achieved remarkable milestones and saw a dramatic shift in the size and makeup of its audiences. Groundbreaking productions — two of which recently made their Metropolitan Opera debuts — garnered consistent national attention, the artistic director and opera company said in the joint statement.

Read more here: https://www.crainsdetroit.com/arts-entertainment/yuval-sharon-exit-detroit-opera-amid-financial-pressures?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=soc-own

12/15/2025

New water infrastructure at the Detroit Zoo. A renovation of Canton Township's recreation center. Money for Flint, following the water crisis. Funding for the Motown Museum, the Zekelman Holocaust Center in Farmington Hills and BAMF Health's expansion into Detroit.

Those are among more than 200 earmarks in the 2024-25 state budget that appear to have been eliminated or reduced following House Republicans' cancellation of "work projects," unspent funds that Democratic Gov. Gretchen Whitmer's administration had planned to carry into the 2025-26 fiscal year.

The rare move last week angered grant recipients and Democrats who enacted the spending in 2024 — when they controlled the now-split Legislature — and left lawmakers, state departments, grantees, their lobbyists and others scrambling the following day amid widespread confusion over the scope of the $645 million in disapproved funding and whether that figure is even correct.

Read more here: https://www.crainsdetroit.com/politics-policy/detroit-zoo-motown-museum-lose-funding-michigan-cuts?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=soc-own

12/15/2025

There’s no good time for a scandal like the one the University of Michigan is facing, but this moment, in particular, is an especially bad one.

UM’s firing Wednesday of head football coach Sherrone Moore over "an inappropriate relationship" with a staff member and subsequent criminal charges against him come on the heels of a steady stream of disruption at the elite school.

It also comes as the university operates under an interim president and follows a string of issues that cast the institution in a negative spotlight and on a national scale.

They include then-offensive coordinator and quarterbacks coach Matt Weiss allegedly stealing the personal information of more than 40 college athletes and hacking into their personal photos and videos; the Connor Stalions football sign-stealing scheme to illegally scout future opponents and the removal of Mark Schlissel as president in 2022 over his inappropriate relationship with an employee.

Outside of athletics, there has been controversy over student protests and encampments over politics, DEI and the Israel-Gaza war. Federal cases involving University of Michigan students from China alleged surveilling a military exercise, smuggling biological pathogens across U.S. borders and illegally voting in the 2024 election.

Read more here: https://www.crainsdetroit.com/education/um-has-seen-plenty-scandals-one-could-be-toughest?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=soc-own

12/13/2025

The University of Michigan is producing more startup companies than ever before. The problem? About half of all of its spinouts are leaving Michigan.

Not only that, but they are finding bigger success out of state than the UM spinouts in-state.

UM startups that leave created more than 4,300 jobs and saw venture capital and liquidity events totaling $3.6 billion, according to a 2023 report from Detroit-based ID Ventures. The companies that stayed created 2,300 jobs and saw $1.4 billion in venture capital and liquidity events.

The pattern reveals what insiders say is a fundamental flaw: while Michigan can create new and innovative companies, the state lacks the resources needed for startups to scale — capital, talent and infrastructure. Founders are forced to make the choice: move and grow, or stay and stagnate.

Read more here: https://www.crainsdetroit.com/technology/university-michigan-keeps-losing-startups-it-creates?utm_source=facebook&utm_medium=soc-own

Crain's Detroit Business

12/22/2025

12/18/2025

12/18/2025

12/17/2025

12/17/2025

12/17/2025

12/16/2025

12/16/2025

12/16/2025

12/15/2025

12/15/2025

12/13/2025

Address

Telephone

Website

Alerts

Contact The Business

Shortcuts

Share

Category