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CHARITY BACKED BY EX-MICROSOFT CEO AND WIFE IS PUTTING DOWN PERMANENT ROOTS IN METRO DETROIT
Posted by Crains | Sherri Welch | July 1, 2026
Former Microsoft Corp. CEO Steve Ballmer and his wife Connie are founding a new independent nonprofit in Southeast Michigan that will accelerate their support for children and families as Ballmer Group shifts its focus to a smaller number of large, scalable initiatives around the country.
The launch of MoveUp Southeast Michigan over the next year will come in tandem with the creation of similar nonprofits in Los Angeles County and Washington state where the couple have directed support through their donor-advised fund over the past decade.
The three new nonprofits willoperate independently from Ballmer Group while continuing to be funded by the Ballmersto boost their efforts to improve economic mobility for kids and families.
Ballmer Group leaders said the shift reflects a deliberate move toward community-based philanthropies grounded in local connection with teams embedded in the regions they serve.
“Our stellar teams in these three regions have built deep relationships in their communities and, together with their partners, have created opportunities for kids and families,” Connie and Steve Ballmer, founder of USAFacts and chairman of the Los Angeles Clippers, said in a news release. “Our intention is to ensure that these local philanthropies can be permanent, ongoing resources in each region, while we concentrate our national efforts on advancing economic mobility in new ways.”
The exact shape the new nonprofits will take — whether foundations or operating nonprofits, perhaps operating with a permanent endowment — has yet to be determined, leaders said.
Each organization will establish an independent board and continue its existing regional work while evolving to meet local needs. Current grantees will continue to be supported throughout the transition with no disruption to existing commitments, the release stated. The transition to fully independent operations will occur over the next year.
Kylee Mitchell Wells, founding executive director of Ballmer Group’s Southeast Michigan office and a Detroit native, will lead MoveUp Southeast Michigan as CEO, as her counterparts in California and Washington will do with the new nonprofits in those areas.
Ballmer Group employees in each region will transition to the new organizations.
Ballmer Group CEO Terri Ludwig, who helped guide the evolution of the regional entities, will serve as a founding board member for all three organizations while continuing to oversee efforts supported by the donor-advised fund.
“Across these regions, our teams have demonstrated exceptional leadership and have distributed more than $1.5 billion in grants over the past decade,” Ludwig said in the release. “I am honored to help them transition to this exciting new chapter of grantmaking and impact.”
Over the past decade, Ballmer Group has invested $600 million in Southeast Michigan, supporting K-12 education, post-secondary education, workforce development, economic and community development and public-private partnerships, working with businesses and governments, Wells told Crain’s.
After a decade of work, “We’re at this inflection point,” Wells said.
“This transition to community-based philanthropy has really helped us to understand the impact and progress that we’ve made. Establishing these independent regional organizations just feels like the right evolution of the work at the right time and ... reinforces Connie and Steve’s commitment to an enduring presence, right, in the focus areas of Michigan, Southeast Michigan, Washington and L.A.”
The shift to independent nonprofits in the Detroit area and other regions “ensure(s) that these entities will be able to live on in respect to geography for generations and have awesome impact for generations to come,” Wells said.
The logistics of how the Ballmers support economic mobility will change but their commitment remains and will be increased, Wells said.
The dollar amount of the Ballmers’ ongoing commitment to Southeast Michigan and the other areas isn’t yet being announced but will “add to the region in a very meaningful and impactful way from a resource standpoint,” she said.
“This is is all about accelerating the awesome grant making that we’ve been doing over the last 10 years and being able to do more,” Wells said.
To read the original article posted by Crains, visit https://www.crainsdetroit.com/nonprofits-philanthropy/cdb-ballmer-group-shift-to-independent-nonprofits-20260701/?utm_id=gfta-ur-260701&share-code=PPV6C2RZHBDEPMYT4LP4QXUD54&user_id=4036633&customer_secondary_source=cdb_articleGifting
FORMER MASCO HEADQUARTERS SLATED FOR REDEVELOPMENT
Posted by Crain’s Detroit Business | Amy Barczy | June 5, 2026
A massive office building in Taylor is being targeted for redevelopment after several corporate moves left the complex mostly empty for the past six years.
The former Masco headquarters office, a 417,000-square-foot building on more than 18 acres of land at 21001 Van Born Road near Interstate 94, has been purchased by a group led by Bob Waun, a real estate investor known most in metro Detroit for his work in Pontiac.
Waun led the purchase of the office complex via his company, PMI-Taylor LLC, for $1.3 million in October from Burton-Katzman, according to CoStar Group Inc., a Washington, D.C.-based real estate information service.
The deal was a “highly engineered purchase,” Waun said, noting that the price is not indicative of the “majestic” building’s value.
Waun’s vision for the facility includes breaking the giant office into condominium-type units to accommodate multiple uses, including medical office space, a conference center, art storage and 150,000 square feet of Class A+ office space that could be broken into smaller components according to a company’s needs.
An 800-seat auditorium and expo center in the complex used by Masco for trade shows is being marketed by Waun and his associates as prime space for conferences and events.
“We really don’t need office space like we used to,” Waun said. “We have to massively rethink what was office space.”
Waun said he’s offering Class A space in the building at a Class B price by offering units for sale as condos instead of leases.
“No one needs 450,000 square feet,” Waun said. “But every mortgage company needs 20,000 square feet. It’s what the market needs.”
The building is suited to be divided, as it was first built in 1966 with multiple additions throughout the 1970s, 1980s and 1990s, he said.
“Masco, being a building products company, built it with courtyards and an aesthetic eye,” Waun said. “It’s built like a pyramid, and floors upstairs get more natural light.”
The building has multiple courtyards and custom storage spaces for fine art on three levels of the building, as Masco founder Alex Manoogian stored artworks there for the Manoogian Collection, Waun asid.
The investor said he was drawn to the building’s Ghafari-designed architecture and details, including its granite exterior and high-quality interior finishes like 9-foot-tall cherry doors in some of its office spaces, and wanted to save it from demolition.
Masco, the building products maker behind brands including Behr paint, KraftMaid cabinets and Delta faucets, was founded by Manoogian in 1929. The company used the building as its headquarters until 2017, when it moved to a small office it built in Livonia.
After Masco moved out of the Taylor office, Bingham Farms-based real estate companies Core Partners and Burton-Katzman purchased it for Ford Motor Co. to use. Ford entered into a 10-year lease of the space in 2017 as overflow for its workers as it overhauled its Dearborn campus. Before the COVID-19 pandemic, Ford had hundreds of workers in the space; after the disruptions of the pandemic, fewer Ford workers worked in the building — and for fewer days, Waun said, leading to a feeling of emptiness at the complex.
At the time of closing last fall, Ford bought out the remainder of its lease on the building, Waun said.
“We couldn’t be more excited about this project,” Taylor Mayor Tim Woolley said in a statement. “PMI Taylor LLC has been great to work with. It’s been a great relationship. That old headquarters building is, in many ways, a key to moving the Van Born Road corridor forward in the future. This plan will create and house good jobs in the medical, storage and events space. It will attract business owners seeking quality office space and it will be a regional economic draw.”
To accommodate Waun’s vision, the property is seeking a rezoning to Light Industrial/Planned Unit Development. The Taylor City Council held its first hearing on the proposed change on June 2.
Waun said he doesn’t plan to fill the building with industrial tenants, but said the zoning accommodates the variety of flexible users he’s seeking.
Part of the development includes a new 90-foot-tall billboard sign near I-94 that Waun said is intended to be a welcome sign for the city of Taylor with digital configurations and potential naming rights.
To read this original article on Crain’s Detroit Business, visit https://www.crainsdetroit.com/real-estate/commercial/cdb-old-masco-headquarters-redevelopment-20260605/
GM PRODUCTION, HIRING PLANS REVEALED FOR LAUNCH OF ORION ASSEMBLY PLANT
Posted by Crain’s Detroit Business | Kurt Nagl | May 6, 2026
General Motors Co. and its suppliers are gearing up for a second-quarter launch next year at Orion Assembly Plant with plans to rapidly increase hiring in the coming months and scale production to 190,000 units annually, GM has told suppliers.
The Detroit-based automaker will produce the gasoline-powered Chevy Silverado and GMC Sierra pickup trucks, as well as Cadillac Escalade and Escalade ESV full-size SUVs at the plant in Orion Township in Oakland County after years of delay and an expected $6 billion investment.
GM previously has said production would begin in 2027 but has not detailed exactly when or shared volumes — an important indicator of how many jobs a plant will sustain and how much business will be generated for suppliers.
The 190,000-unit projection relayed to parts makers is just shy of two-thirds of the plant’s capacity. The plant was initially intended to be for all-electric models before the automaker reversed course back to traditional gas engines amid costly tariffs, the rollback of emissions rules and cooled demand for EVs. It has also engaged suppliers about hybrid powertrains but has not made any final decisions.
GM spokesman Kevin Kelly said the automaker does not comment on volumes.
As for jobs, there are more than 600 workers at the plant now with that number “growing rapidly toward end of year,” Kelly said in an email. “We’ll share updated employment numbers closer to the start of regular production.”
GM’s all-electric Factory Zero has had an opposite trajectory. Suffering from waning sales of electric trucks, the plant permanently laid off 1,145 employees last year and has implemented temporary shutdowns since then to curb output. GM also shelved plans for a next-generation refresh of its electric trucks, likely until the start of the next decade, according to suppliers.
Per GM’s agreement with the UAW, priority placement at Orion Assembly will be available for workers on indefinite layoff at Factory Zero or elsewhere in the company, Kelly said.
GM said in 2022 that it would add up to 2,300 new jobs at Orion Assembly. According to its incentives agreement with the state, which included $666 million in taxpayer cash, it has until 2030 to create 1,840 jobs.
A source familiar with the contract said that a job at Orion Assembly filled by a GM employee on indefinite layoff would count as a “new” job.
Crain’s inquired with the Michigan Economic Development Corp. for clarification.
Supplier plants surrounding Orion Assembly are also gearing up for launch, including Lear, Piston Automotive, Flex-N-Gate, GFX and others. In tandem with the factory coming on line, there’s been an influx of other developments in the northern Oakland County community, which is about to get a lot busier.
The rail spur at the plant is being reactivated after more than a decade as GM plans to use trains to move metal frames and finished vehicles, according to township documents, as opposed to relying solely on truck transportation as it did with the Chevy Bolt, which was built at the plant until it closed for retooling in 2023.
GM is expected to deliver about 12 railcars of frames from Pontiac to Orion daily on a just-in-time basis. Each production day, the township expects two daytime trains carrying frames and two nighttime trains hauling finished vehicles.
Officials are looking to the new assembly plant to anchor an economic rebound for Oakland County, which lost 2,800 jobs in manufacturing last year amid dramatic changes in federal policy.
To read this original article on Crain’s Detroit Business, visit https://www.crainsdetroit.com/real-estate/commercial/cdb-repairs-planned-alhambra-2900-cass-20260507/
NEW TECH CONTRIBUTES TO BIG BOOST IN PROFITABILITY FOR MORTGAGE COMPANY
Posted by Crain’s Detroit Business | Nic Antaya | August 7, 2025
UWM Holdings Corp. experienced its best quarter in nearly four years, driven in part by new technology rolled out by the Pontiac-based company in recent months.
In its second-quarter earnings report released Thursday morning, the wholesale mortgage lender (NYSE: UWMC) reported an 18% jump in total loan origination from a year earlier, and overall profitability increased of more than 300% over the same period.
"Over the last several years, we've built scalability in our business by investing in technology," Mat Ishbia, the company's chairman, president and CEO, told analysts and investors during a Thursday morning conference call. "While you hear many other companies using AI as a buzzword, the difference is actually at UWM, we have products and services that are powered by AI that are actually impacting our business today and will impact our business even more when (mortgage) rates drop, and just going forward in the future."
In May, UWM rolled out a suite of AI tools available to the independent mortgage brokers that work with the company aimed at increasing efficiency in the lending process.
Ishbia said those tools are already having an impact at the company. Specifically, a generative AI chatbot dubbed "Mia" is designed to act as a virtual assistant for mortgage brokers who historically have had difficulty staying in touch with past clients, Ishbia said.
The technology, Ishbia said, has been steadily making calls on behalf of mortgage brokers to past clients who may benefit from a refinance loan, but the CEO acknowledged that market still remains somewhat slow given still-elevated interest rates. But market fundamentals are starting to shift, Ishbia said, and it will likely soon help drive more business.
"It doesn't go at scale until rates drop a little bit more," Ishbia said. "But I think that's close to happening right now."
The 30-year fixed-rate mortgage averaged 6.63% as of Aug. 7, down from 6.72% last week and up from 6.47% a year ago, according to Freddie Mac. The 15-year rate, popular with refinancers, averaged 5.75%, down from 5.85% last week and up from 5.63% a year ago.
UWM saw total lending volume of nearly $40 billion and net income of $314.5 million, according to the earnings release.
While loans for home purchases continue to make up the lion’s share of the company’s lending volume, UWM continues to see an increase in current homeowners seeking refinancing. Refinance loans last quarter accounted for just shy of one-third of the company’s total lending, a notable stat given that UWM is not known as a large servicer of mortgage loans.
UWM this week announced a temporary new incentive to juice refinances, as mortgage rates have dropped slightly in recent weeks. Called R/T 90, the offering provides a 90-basis points pricing incentive for conventional, jumbo, FHA and USDA rate and term mortgage refinances, and is available on rate locks through Sept. 16.
In July, Ishbia — UWM's largest shareholder — began trimming his stake in the company, selling shares via a 10b5-1 trading arrangement that generally allows for public company executives to sell shares as part of a prearranged plan and serves as a shield against any potential allegations of insider trading. The goal is to increase the number of shares available for purchase on the open market.
"The stock price is way too low to be doing it, but I don't get to choose that anymore," Ishbia said Thursday. "But we feel fine about it because I know it's a long-term play."
The company's stock price was trading up Thursday morning following the earnings report, with shares trading as high as $4.84.
To read this original article on Crain’s Detroit Business, visit https://www.crainsdetroit.com/banking-finance/uwm-sees-big-boost-mortgage-profitability-new-tech
MOTOWN MUSEUM RAISES $70M, LAUNCHES CONSTRUCTION OF NEW THEATER AND EXHIBITS BUILDING
Posted by Crain’s Detroit Business | Sherri Welch | September 16, 2024
The Motown Museum on Monday said it is beginning construction of a planned new theater and exhibits building some two years after its last phase wrapped up, after raising $70 million for the expansion plan.
The new two-story building will house the Ford Motor Company Theater, retail and immersive exhibits and Miss Lillie’s Motown Café, named after the Berry Gordy family’s in-house cook. Its lobby will be accessible from entrances on West Grand Boulevard and Ferry Street. It’s slated to open in summer 2026, the museum said.
“This is an incredibly exciting time for this project, with the past few months being full of important design details being finalized, leading us to this special moment allowing us to now share with our Detroit community and fans and visitors from around the world when they can step inside this one-of-a-kind experiential space,” Motown Museum Chairwoman and CEO Robin Terry said in a news release.
“With our final campaign milestone within reach, our talented team of architects and construction planners are now fully executing and bringing our bold vision to life.”
C-based Perkins & Will is the museum’s architecture firm of record and Detroit-based L.S. Brinker is overseeing construction of the new building.
Construction of the two-story building behind Hitsville U.S.A., the original home of Motown Records, was delayed last year as it sought environmental approvals required after receiving a $10 million federal earmark. Earlier delays were tied to the COVID-19 pandemic and rising costs of construction, the museum said.
Costs rose an additional $10 million since January 2023 bringing the fundraising target for Motown’s three-phase expansion to its current $75 million — up from $50 million when the project was announced in 2016.
Work on the larger project began in 2019. The museum celebrated the completion of the first two phases of the project— a new educational programming and creative hub for entrepreneurship, Hitsville Next, in three nearby renovated buildings, and Rocket Plaza —in August 2022.
The main museum where the Motown greats made history continues to be housed in the Hitsville building at 2648 W. Grand Blvd.
The larger project has attracted funding from contributors including Ford Motor Co., Ballmer Group, the Vera and Joseph Dresner Foundation, Rocket Companies Inc., the Gilbert Family Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Hudson-Webber Foundation, Kresge Foundation and Bank of America, among others.
While construction on the final phase of the initial plan is underway, Motown Museum is also developing plans for a nearby property it acquired in 2022 with part of a $5 million gift from philanthropist MacKenzie Scott.
The property at 2550 W. Grand Blvd., west of Rosa Parks Boulevard, includes a 36,000-square-foot building and a gated surface parking lot with 195 spaces that will give the museum almost all of the parking needed and possibly incorporate shuttled service to the museum, Terry told Crain’s last year.
Motown Museum is evaluating how it might best use the large building, which effectively doubles its footprint, to support what it's doing on the main campus, she said.
A spokeswoman for the museum on Monday said there is no update yet on the plans for the new building.
To read this article on Crain’s Detroit Business, visit Motown Museum starts building new theater, exhibits building | Crain's Detroit Business (crainsdetroit.com)
