Employees at Quicken Loans Inc.'s headquarters in Detroit are free to shoot hoops on a two-story half court replica of the Cavaliers basketball court at The Q, complete with a hardwood floor and the familiar red and gold lines. Through the 10th floor glass windows, you can see two of Dan Gilbert's most recent purchases: the Chase Tower (center) and First National Building (left).DETROIT, Michigan--They've been called a "band of brothers" - seven hard-nosed businessmen, all friends, all wealthy, all known for their strong personalities, expensive taste and high-style projects.
They are the individuals who stand to financially benefit the most from Cleveland's Horseshoe Casino.
Though their company is not yet a year old, they've actually been together since early in 2009, when they began laying the ground work for the successful passage of an Ohio constitutional amendment okaying casinos in the state's four largest cities.
Led by Dan Gilbert - the sometimes volatile, always colorful majority owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers - they are the principals of Rock Gaming LLC, a powerful new force in the gambling industry that has teamed up with Caesars Entertainment Corp. to develop casinos in Cleveland, Cincinnati and now, possibly, Baltimore.
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- Faces of Rock Gaming LLC
They submitted an application - and a check for $22.5 million - to Maryland officials late last month to develop a slot machine-only casino near the city's Inner Harbor with Caesars and two local investors. They are considered to be the frontrunner for the project.
Caesars, the minority partner in the Ohio projects with a 20 percent stake, has more than 70,000 employees worldwide. Rock Gaming has 14 - all based in downtown Detroit except for one.
Their big bet: that their concept of a high-style, up-scale "urban" casino that feeds on the character of a city and its attractions as much as on its slot machines will make them wildly successful and, in the process, revitalize rust belt cities.
"We think the right way to go is to do good and do well," said Matt Cullen, a Rock Gaming principal who's second in command of Gilbert's family of 39 companies. "But there's no question it's a risk."
"This is ground zero for what we're going to do," said Matt Cullen looking down on Detroit's Campus Martius Park from the 10th floor of the Compuware Building, where Rock Gaming LLC and Quicken Loans Inc. lease four floors for their headquarters. A much safer bet is building a cookie-cutter casino in the suburbs. "Land's cheaper, infrastructure's cheaper, everything's cheaper if you're out in a corn field somewhere," said Cullen, a 29-year veteran of General Motors Corp. who joined Gilbert in 2008.
"We really do think this is a much better way to go to leverage gaming as a form of entertainment and economic development," he said. "And I think people agree with that, and I think we'll have more opportunities as we go forward."
Aside from Cullen and Cavaliers President Len Komoroski, the five other men who own Rock Gaming have worked together in various business ventures for years.
They trace their friendships back to the Southfield, Michigan, suburb where they grew up in the same neighborhood. They're Jewish and most of them, including Gilbert, attended the public Adlai E. Stevenson Elementary School in the 1970s, when the influential Al Rosco was principal.
Rosco was so beloved by his students that even today, more than 30 years after his death, dozens of them regularly contribute to a Facebook page, "Mr. Rosco's Stevenson Elementary School fans," set up to honor him as "the greatest principal ever."
Lunchtime last week at Campus Martius Park, "ground zero" in Dan Gilbert's plan to revitalize Detroi's central business district. In the background is the Compuware Building, home to the headquarters for Quicken Loans Inc. and Rock Gaming LLC.The principals of Rock Gaming code named one of their most important projects - the relocation of 1,700 Quicken Loans Inc. employees from the suburbs to its downtown Detroit headquarters in August 2010 - operation "ROSCO" in memory of their mentor.
The move was part of Gilbert's "Detroit 2.0" initiative, an effort to spark development downtown that includes the purchase of several landmark buildings, the relocation of Gilbert's entire 4,000 person workforce from the suburbs to downtown and financial incentives for employees who want to live downtown.
Gilbert and his companies are pouring hundreds of millions of dollars into reviving the central business district around Woodward Avenue, the city's main thoroughfare that is now home to Quicken Loans headquarters and once was home to the Detroit bar that Gilbert's father, Samuel, owned when he was growing up.
"We all grew up together in the same neighborhood in Southfield, Michigan," said Brian Hermelin, a Rock Gaming principal and the company's financing guru. "We have a long and shared history."
"It's an interesting group," Hermelin said. "Everybody brings something very different to the table."
Steve Rosenthal, an accomplished developer who's overseeing the design and construction of the $400 million Horseshoe Casino Cincinnati, said he's known most of the other Rock Gaming owners his entire life. "Literally, since we were seven years old," he added.
A look inside Quicken Loans Inc.'s new offices in the Chase Tower, complete with writeable walls and a high-energy color scheme. Break rooms are well stocked with fresh fruit, coffee and tea, as well as Quicken's trademark slushies and popcorn. All are free. Today, all but one work from the 10th floor of a downtown Detroit office building, a wacky, lavish space they designed as equal parts playground and corporate headquarters for both Rock Gaming and Quicken Loans.
There are large flat screen TVs, Wii consoles, ping pong tables, bean bag chairs, and bright colors - limes, oranges, reds, blues everywhere.
There's cherry and banana scratch-and-sniff wall paper. You can write notes on the walls; really, they're nearly all dry erase. And staffers, including Gilbert, are sometimes seen riding around on scooters or Big Wheels made for adults. (Gilbert has one parked in his office).
Break rooms are well stocked with grapes, apples, oranges, coffee and tea, as well as Quicken's trademark slushies and popcorn. All are free.
But the most impressive perk, which Rock Gaming spokeswoman Jennifer Kulczycki said was installed to bring "a little bit of Cleveland to Detroit," is a stunning half court replica of the Cavaliers basketball court at The Q, complete with a hardwood floor, familiar red and gold lines. Hanging from the two-story ceiling is a smaller, but exact copy of the Cavaliers scoreboard. The score: Cavs 109, Heat 93.
Cullen said the group likes to get in a pick-up basketball game once a week.
"It is a group of friends," he added. "But do we hold people accountable? We certainly do."
"I'm very impressed with them," said Albert Ratner, co-chairman emeritus of Forest City Enterprises Inc., which owns the historic Higbee Building and leased four floors of it to Rock Gaming for the first phase of the Cleveland casino, expected to open in March.
Additionally, Rock Gaming will pay Forest City $85 million for 16 acres nearby on Huron Road for a second, larger casino that is a few years from development.
"They're in it for the long run," Ratner added. "That's important. My belief is, if I were to predict, that this is going to be among the first of many enterprises they'll be doing for the city. And that's very exciting."
Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson said Gilbert's Rock Gaming has developed credibility with local leaders, and he's betting that Gilbert will want to increase his stake in Cleveland beyond the casino, the Cleveland Cavaliers and Quicken Loans Arena.
Cleveland Mayor Frank Jackson in February 2011."There are a lot of opportunities that exist here in Cleveland," the mayor said. It was Jackson who asked Gilbert to consider what at the time they thought would be a "temporary" casino. Jackson hoped for a fill-in operation in a building like Higbee to begin generating tax revenue while the full-fledged casino was being developed along the Cuyahoga River.
The mayor watched and prodded as Rock Gaming group analyzed the possibilities behind closed doors, and a $100 million idea for a "temporary" facility turned into a permanent, $400 million Las Vegas-style casino that would breathe new life into a cherished Cleveland landmark and, Jackson says, provide an economic boost to other nearby businesses.
"They have big ideas, grand plans, but they also carry through," Jackson said. "He (Gilbert) has demonstrated through his actions, his commitment to Cleveland."
Just before Christmas, Rock Gaming inked a deal to bring Caesars onboard, primarily to operate the two Ohio casinos, which would be developed under the Caesar's Horseshoe brand. Caesars, the world's largest owner and operator of casinos, is a minority partner in Rock Ohio Caesars and will invest $200 million in the Ohio casinos, Security and Exchange Commission records show.
Chris Warren, Cleveland's chief of regional development, said the Higbee casino is a "big shot in the arm" for the area around Public Square and lower Prospect Avenue, much of which is boarded-up and struggling. Rock Gaming's interest in the area, Warren said, "bodes well for our future."
"We've been very impressed with them promising to do something, committing to it, and then getting it done," Warren added.
Back at Rock Gaming's Detroit headquarters, Cullen acknowledges that people might be skeptical of all the do-good talk from a developer. "Judge us by our actions," he said, "not by our words."
As proof he offers "Detroit 2.0," Gilbert's effort to bring back Detroit's central business district around Campus Martius Park, the historic center of the city, a European-like park where the city's main thoroughfares converge.
He indicated that Gilbert planned to bring the same type of effort to Cleveland, beginning with the opening of a Cleveland office for Bizdom U, a four-month boot camp for entrepreneurs, who can receive up to $100,000 in startup funding for a business they plan to locate within the city's downtown core.
"This is ground zero for what we're going to do," Cullen said looking down on the Detroit park from the 10th floor of the Compuware Building, where Rock Gaming and Quicken Loans lease four floors for their headquarters.
The 23-story, U-shaped Dime Building in Detroit was recently purchased by a Dan Gilbert company.From his perch, Cullen pointed out the top of the U-shaped, 23-story historic Dime Building, the First National Building and the Chase Tower, all recent Gilbert company acquisitions. Cullen said Gilbert companies are spending hundreds of millions of dollars in the area and now own two million square feet of office space.
On Monday, 1,500 Quicken employees worked their first day on the job downtown in the Chase Tower after relocating from the suburbs. They followed the first wave of staffers - 1,700 people who moved into the Quicken headquarters in August 2010.
"Don't just think about it as a job," Gilbert told hundreds of cheering employees who packed the Chase Tower lobby, according to published reports. "Think about it as a journey and a mission, and a way to affect your hometown and make it the greatest city on the planet."
Much of the newly acquired office space will be used to house employees for Quicken Loans, which is hiring people at a rate of about 100 a month, said Dan Mullen, acquisition manager for Bedrock Management, Quicken's real estate development arm.
But much of the space in these buildings and others, including the century-old Madison Theatre building on Broadway Street near Comerica Park, will be renovated and offered to high-end retail shops, upscale restaurants, high-tech startups and fellow entrepreneurs.
"We want to provide cool space for other people to relocate down here," Mullen said. "It's a live-work-play mentality."
All 4,000 Gilbert company employees will be downtown by June, said Melissa Price, who oversees the moves with the precision of a military general. Price also is responsible for much of the outrageous, high-energy design, which is meant to spur creativity and reflect Quicken's culture. She said that Gilbert stole her Big Wheel.
"We like to have a little bit of fun," she said.