This article originally appeared in the Detroit Free Press August 19, 2025.

Since Detroit’s financial collapse and 2013-2014 bankruptcy, the dramatic revitalization of downtown has been a major part of the city’s comeback story.

Numerous vacant buildings have been rehabbed and converted from office use to upscale apartments and hotels. Once-darkened storefronts now hold retailers such as Gucci, H&M, Nike and a future Apple Store. Every month seems to bring a new restaurant opening.

Much credit for this turnaround goes to businessman Dan Gilbert, the founder of top nationwide mortgage lender Rocket Mortgage and owner of the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers.

Since relocating his mortgage company from Detroit’s suburbs to downtown some 15 years ago, Gilbert, through his organization’s real estate arm, has redeveloped dozens of empty and underutilized buildings and also undertaken exciting new construction projects, such as a still-under-construction downtown skyscraper at the former Hudson’s department store site that recently became the second tallest in the city.

But an abiding challenge in Detroit economic development is attracting new businesses from outside Michigan, or at least outside the metro area, not just convincing existing businesses in the region to come downtown or ditch space in an older Detroit building for that in a newer one.

Tax incentives and other subsidies ― when a business promises to meet certain conditions in exchange for a financial benefit, like building affordable housing or creating new jobs ― have had an important role in downtown Detroit’s revitalization.

Gilbert and other developers have taken advantage of such programs, but the Michigan Department of Treasury is refusing to release documents that would show whether these developers are keeping the promises they made.

The Free Press, with legal assistance from the Mackinac Center for Public Policy, a free-market think tank, filed a Freedom of Information Act lawsuit last month to compel the Michigan Department of Treasury to disclose documents that would allow us to understand the effectiveness of these subsidies. We, and our lawyers, contend that these records should be public.

New workers?

Gilbert’s organization has been highly successful in recruiting coveted hotel operators and retailers to its downtown buildings. Yet in today’s post-pandemic economy, when many employers are still downsizing at lease renewal time, Gilbert’s real estate firm ― Bedrock ― is facing a challenge in landing new-to-Detroit tenants to fill its office buildings.

Our lawsuit is an effort to learn what is truly net new economic activity at high-profile Detroit developments that rely on public subsidies.

The lawsuit seeks information that is key to understanding whether developers such as Bedrock do ultimately achieve the lofty expectations for their biggest projects as those expectations were presented to the public at the time the projects were seeking ― and getting ― approval for hundreds of millions in subsidies.

So far, Treasury officials have been shielding this information from public view.

'They are public records'

The information we’re seeking should identify the occupant businesses and number of new employees within Bedrock’s downtown projects that are benefitting from a major taxpayer subsidy program called “Transformational Brownfields.”

They could reveal whether the subsidies are indeed bringing in new businesses and jobs, or conversely, if developers are getting payouts for existing jobs that have just moved over to the new development sites.

Bedrock is required to submit progress reports to the Michigan’s Treasury department every year. Michigan’s Treasury department denied my Freedom of Information Act request to see those reports, claiming the reports are confidential taxpayer information.

But that denial goes against the Michigan Constitution, which specifically states that “all financial records, accountings, audit reports and other reports of public moneys shall be public records and open to inspection.”

“They are public records under the Michigan Constitution,” attorney Derk Wilcox from the Mackinac Center Legal Foundation wrote in the complaint, “and must be disclosed.”

What is a transformational Brownfield?

Brownfield sites are generally understood to be blighted or functionally obsolete buildings that are inherently challenging to redevelop from a financial standpoint, and therefore require subsidies.

The Transformational Brownfield program allows developers to capture various streams of state and local tax revenues generated after new development for up to 30 years.

Gilbert actively supported passage of the Transformational Brownfield program back in 2017, as it moved through the Michigan Legislature and was signed into law by former Gov. Rick Snyder.

The following year, the Detroit City Council and members of the Michigan Strategic Fund in Lansing awarded Bedrock the first Transformational Brownfield designation for a bundle of four downtown development projects.

Under the program, the real estate firm can capture up to $618 million in taxes at these project sites over three decades. The rationale for such tax captures is that redevelopment spurs economic growth that wouldn’t otherwise exist. Captured taxes, in this view, are at least a net neutral.

The first project was an expansion to a large downtown office building, known as One Campus Martius, that houses the headquarters for Rocket Mortgage’s parent company.

This project was different from the others in the bundle, as it wasn’t a vacant site but rather an already bustling “Class A” office building that was only 15 years old at the time the subsidy was approved.

The expansion was complete by early 2021, and since that year, employment at Rocket’s parent company has dropped from 26,000 employees in the U.S. and Canada to 14,200 at the end of last year, according to company filings with the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission, a workforce reduction driven by the end of the pandemic-era mortgage refinancing boom and Rocket’s adoption of more artificial intelligence, or AI.

Without the records the state Treasury says it is not authorized to provide, it’s unclear whether the building expansion has been adding jobs to downtown, and whether Bedrock received the tax capture.

3,345 new jobs by 2026?

An analysis by University of Michigan economists projected that three of Bedrock’s four Transformational Brownfield project sites would create 3,345 new jobs by 2026 ― not including construction work ― and ultimately bring a net fiscal benefit of $683 million for the state through 2052.

How close are the projects to meeting those expectations? No one really knows.

Developers often contend it is nearly impossible to build anything new in Detroit without significant incentives and subsidies, because rent prices here are significantly lower than in bigger markets like Chicago, yet building costs aren’t much lower.

That may be true, but the public at least deserves to know the return-on-investment for its incentives.

With this legal action, hopefully we can unlock some facts on what exactly Michigan taxpayers are rewarding under this new program.

Permission to reprint this blog post in whole or in part is hereby granted, provided that the author (or authors) and the Mackinac Center for Public Policy are properly cited.