On the Season 3 premiere of the CityAge Podcast, our new co-host Lisa Chamberlain chats with Bedrock Detroit CEO Kofi Bonner. A seasoned professional with diverse experience in affordable housing, fintech, public sector work and sports, Kofi chats with Lisa about Detroit’s transformation, future development in Cleveland, the importance of public-private collaboration, and much more. From the role of climate change in reshaping urban landscapes, to the need to concentrate redevelopment efforts and the future of manufacturing in Midwestern cities, this wide-ranging conversation has something for everyone.
On the Season 3 premiere of the CityAge Podcast, our new co-host Lisa Chamberlain chats with Bedrock Detroit CEO Kofi Bonner. A seasoned professional with diverse experience in affordable housing, fintech, public sector work and sports, Kofi chats with Lisa about Detroit’s transformation, future development in Cleveland, the importance of public-private collaboration, and much more. From the role of climate change in reshaping urban landscapes, to the need to concentrate redevelopment efforts and the future of manufacturing in Midwestern cities, this wide-ranging conversation has something for everyone.
The recent moves towards bringing much more industry and advanced manufacturing to the Midwest. Frankly, I can only applaud that because, let's face it, the Midwest folks know how to build things.It's in their DNA, as I put it. Hi, and welcome to the first episode of season three of the City Age podcast.I'm Alon Markovich, and I'm here with our new co host, Lisa Chamberlain. Lisa, first off, welcome aboard .We are so thrilled to have you join us, and I know our City Age audience is going to love oh, well, thank you for that. And I am very excited to be here for those in our audience who don't know you, Lisa.I thought I would give them an intro.So, Lisa is an urban strategist and former New York Times real estate reporter whose communication skills are abundantly clear.If you follow her on LinkedIn, I think her feed is one of the most vibrant and insightful LinkedIn streams anywhere related to the built environment or cities around the world.Lisa is now with the center for Urban Transformation at the World Economic Forum, and as such, she has a global view of urban issues.And I think one that you'll all hear comes through in her conversations with our guests throughout the season.I've known City Age for years now.I've been to many events that have taken place over the past twelve years, and so it feels kind of serendipitous to now be part of the podcast.It's weird, right?You and I met in Detroit, andwe'll be going back to Detroit soon,and Detroit is particularly appropriate for today.So let's get to it.The voice which kicked off today's episode is thatof Kofi Bonner, the CEO of Bedrock Detroit.Kofi, he's had quite the personal and professional journey, kind of like Detroit has.He was born in Ghana, where he earned a bachelor's degree and then came to the United States to attend UC Berkeley, where he earned two master's degrees, actually, in architecture and planning.And then he went on to hold a number of public and private sector positions inSan Francisco, Oakland, and Emeryville, focused primarily on planning, economic development, and affordable housing.After spearheading numerous major redevelopment projects all over theBay Area, he left to become the first black CEO of an NFL football team, the Cleveland Browns.This was at a time when the city building not only the team, but a new stadium after the team had departed to Baltimore.So it's a critical moment.And he's now the CEO of Bedrock, which is theDetroit real estate arm of the Rocket family of companies owned by Dan Gilbert, who also owns the Cleveland Cavaliers.So Kobe has a number of different vantagepoints on cities, on economic development, and on the cultural and intangible things that make a place equitable and vibrant, and we talk about a number of those in the interview.Well, that's a great place to leave it and to let everyone hear the conversation that you hadwith Kofi Bonner, CEO of Bedrock Detroit.Kofi Bonner, welcome to the City Age podcast.I'm really excited that we're chatting.Yes, yes, indeed.I appreciate the opportunity, so I'll just jump in.You clearly have a wide range of personal and professional experiences, from developing affordable housing to investing in fintech companies workingin the public sector in San Francisco and Emeryville to running the Cleveland Browns.How has all of this informed your view of cities?How they develop, how cultural context impacts the way people live in them?What I've observed, I guess, about cities is just how organic they are in many ways and also how dynamic.And what do I mean?I mean, cities, obviously, people and culture,economics and the marketplace and politics andeach of those components are dynamic innature and evolve and change with time.And what I found is so many cities are indifferent stages of evolution even as they're evolving and changing. They're compared against each other, but some what unfairly in some respects because again, the people, economics and marketplace and the politics of those places are so different.When I was in Cleveland, for example, the downtown was quite vibrant.Tower City was amazing at all the national retailers and was just the place to be.It was the heart of downtown in many ways.I left and went to San Francisco, andSan Francisco was beginning its tremendous upswing.This is in 2005 in the tech boom, and it obviously continued on that upswing all the way till more recently.And now, of course, there are many conversations about where San Francisco is in its evolution.But certainly one would say it's taken somewhat of a step back.It's evolving.And here I am now in Detroit with a significant public partnership with the city of Cleveland and working with the city to again evolve and move that city back to some economic prominence and reviving the downtown.Yeah, I would say it's very interesting that Detroit's history can offer some lessons to places like San Francisco because they both had a situation where a certain sector became really dominant in the city andcreated a bit of a monoculture.And who would have guessed that acity like San Francisco would go from enormous success to struggling so quickly?What can that city take away fromDetroit's evolution and how it has recovered?Well, I think San Francisco is beginning to do it.As you pointed out, there was so much attractiveness.I guess the attraction for tech and a certain kind of tech was so great that it beganto dominate the economy to the point where others that were really strong and continue to be strong,but they were being crowded out of the marketplace.Biotech for in Life Sciences, for example, was andis a very strong market sector in San Francisco proper and certainly in the adjacent cities, too.In South San Francisco.And those companies are finding it a little harder to compete for the space in downtown with the advent of all the technology companiest hat were locating in downtown and seemingly had an endless appetite for real estate.As their appetite has significantly diminished, it has created this vacancy in downtown.And I think, if anything, San Francisco is now trying to diversify as much as it possibly can.Whereas certainly back in the Detroit heyday, the Big Three certainly dominated the economic landscape.And there's no question about it, they're still very prominent.But there's great deal more diversityin the economy here in Detroit.It's amazing that the top four or sosectors, industry sectors, through health, are all relativelyevenly distributed with healthcare and government, manufacturing and professional science and technical services.They're all fairly evenly distributed inthe economic sector here in Detroit.And I think that's what has created much more resilience, perhaps in Detroit.Yeah, I find it rather remarkable that Detroit is recovering faster than places like Boston and Los Angeles.And this is on the heels of Detroit filing bankruptcy just ten years ago.I don't think it could be said enough that it's only been ten and a half or so years since bankruptcy, whichone would say is sort of the bottom rung.Right is the largest American city ever to file bankruptcy.It's certainly nothing to be proud about, but I think Detroit can certainly be proud about the fact that ten years later we're having a conversation about Detroit being one of the rising stars in the urban economic landscape.And I think you're right tosay, well, what are those factors?And I've been here three years now and so Iwould say much of the credit goes to those who have been here for the last ten years.I think first and foremost, the city wasable to get its collective act together under the leadership of Mayor Mike Duggan.I think he's done an extraordinary job marshaling all the civic and political leaders to just support a vision where he could literally, stepby step, rebuild the fabric, the economic fabric of the city and would say that component.Of alignment between the political establishment, the broader civic establishment and the private sector.With strong leadership from the private sector, Ithink are key components of this revitalization.It really has been a true public private collaboration, and I use that word collaboration on purpose, because it's not just government and private sector, but communities, individuals,neighborhoods, philanthropy, investors.It's an all hands on deck situation.It has been, it has been and continues to be.And I believe that perhaps Detroit, because we're so fardown, it rallied folks to sort of wake up and recognize what they had and how they craft a patht o get to where they want to go.And that sense of urgency has really manifested itself in what we have today.Whereas perhaps some of the other cities,they were perhaps coasting in some fashion. Yeah.Taking their success for granted at a time when Detroit was doing the hard work of rebuilding.Not to name them, but I thinkthat certainly has been somewhat the case.And I will also say that when you are rebuilding, literally rebuilding every block,you care about all the components, obviously.And Detroit was blessed with a number of significant buildings with great architecture, but unfortunately, they'dbeen vacated as the economy crashed.And we had the pleasure of rebuilding and reusing those buildings and taking them from where they were to now Class A facilities thatare occupied by national tenants.But what that has done, the large number of buildings that have been historically repaired with the careand attention that we've paid to detail, has created what I consider to be one of the most elegant and beautiful cityscapes along certainly Woodward Avenue, and certainly in other portions of the downtown, too.And that also creates this wonderful feel, a feeling of downtown. Absolutely.And of course, when you populate that with people and activities and intentional activations, it just fills up the space in a manner thatI think has really helped support the grow thand changing of the image of downtown.It is remarkable because Bedrock has rehabilitated and repurposed more than 100 buildings. Is that right?Yeah, that's correct.And this is all in the downtown coreand just in the last twelve years.I know you have a love for Cleveland, too.100 also includes some building in Cleveland, butI think we're around about 118 now.So let's talk about the most recent rehabilitation, Booktower, which was at one time the tallest building in Detroit.It's an iconic building of Detroit, andit was left completely abandoned and dilapidated after many years of decline.Paint a picture of Booktower becauseit really is a stunner.The discovery of the glass and crystal domethat had been buried under a bunch ofother construction and was discovered during the rehabilitation.That is a story in itself.But just imagine, I mean, the, the story of Booktower is really fascinating, I think, because it was built in, what, 1926 or so, and it was,as you point out, the tallest building in Detroit.And think of 1926.Detroit was one of the most prominent cities in America.Here's this street, Washington Boulevard, that was created to essentially rival any other city in the world.It was supposed to feel like Paris.And Booktower has the elegance and detail of any building in Europe.And it was built in 926, filled with offices.Very prominent companies filled it.And then as the economy turned,this building fell into disrepair.But as it was turning, as Detroit was turning, and people tried to make better use of the spaces inside,or make use of the spaces to match the market that they were in, they started covering things up.And when maintenance got too tough,they just let it go.And so it fell into disrepair.And this beautiful glass dome, which you speak,was actually covered because they created an extra floor space to rent on that floor.So you could not see the dome from the ground floor.It was covered to add additional floor spaceto the top, to second and third floors. And that was the condition underwhich Bedrock found the building.And seven years ago, I think sevenyears ago, we purchased that building.And slowly and carefully, with great consultants and agreat team of Bedrock folks, we returned this building.This historic building that was about 400,000 office inits initial life is now 117 hotel rooms.It's 229 apartments, about 50,000 office.But it's enlivened by these really wonderful retail and restaurant spaces, and one of which is, ironically, a French brasserie that just opened three weeks ago, le supreme, that has a beautiful event space and has this wonderful roof terrace bar.I mean, it's just this wonderful sense of how to take an old building that was built for a specificuse and convert it into a mixed use structure so that those who are living within it have all these wonderful amenities, but also the rest of the city can go to these wonderful restored spaces.And I talk about the restoration,but Lisa, you've seen it.I mean, it's been restored to whatI would consider to be museum quality.And the reason that's important is we recognize that as Detroit is coming back, these gems will be around another hundred years or so.And you want them to people to takeaway the memories from superior buildings and superiorarchitects that not only represents the past, but also, frankly, represents Detroit today.So, of course, Bedrock is known for its adaptive reuse, which is a very hot topic these days.City Modern is a neighborhood infill project ina historic area known as Brush Park.Yes, it really is good urbanism.There's a lot of different types and varieties of housing at different price points.Beautiful design.It's walkable, it has green space,and it's very close to downtown.Bedrock, of course, has other largescale infill projects in the works.Tell us a little bit about those and howyou're thinking about well, you know, the cities must have a variety of living spaces, right?Because at the end of the day, you want to appeal to everybody in the spectrum.You want places for the youth, you want spaces for, frankly, the elderly.You want spaces for those with high incomes andyou want spaces for those who may have alower income profile because great cities are filled withthe diversity of people and income.And so we have to in recognition of that fact,you have to create real estate that accommodates that spectrum.And city modern is a fantastic example of taking sort of an area that's slightly to the edge, if youwill, of the downtown core and using a variety of different architects to do what is a traditional master plan.Community so that each building has its own character and recreate a neighborhood asif it were built over time.And yet it was built at once with a variety of different incomes.And the proof of the pudding is in the excitement that people have those who live there.In that vein, we're looking again to the riverfront, whichwe think is another area where we can create a true diversity of both income and people and ideas adjacentto the Detroit River and more importantly, adjacent to the world class riverwalk that exists there.And we already own quite a bit of property, including offices there.We're looking at housing opportunities inthat area, certainly intermingled with parks that are programmed appropriately.And the notion, again, is to really bring that up to a level that people can totally appreciate a new way of living on the Detroit Riverfront.Speaking of the riverfront development, that is what bedrock is now doing in Cleveland, which is also acity that's had its ups and downs.Let's talk a little bit about the master planthat you have in development and also about the recently announced practice facility for the Cleveland Cavaliers.So as you recall, Lisa, Tower City was, as I think I mentioned it earlier, is one of the core assets in the downtown that I remember when I was first in Cleveland with the Browns.And unfortunately, you know, with the flight to suburbia and other areas, it's seen better days, but it's still inthe center of downtown and still seen quite fondly by many folks in Cleveland who remember its hayday.So it's just this wonderful opportunity to see if we can stitch the city centre back from the river toTawa City in a manner that is much more reminiscent of, frankly, the great riverfront communities in the world.And those riverfront communities are first and foremost accessible.The rivers are accessible.That is, the riverfront areas are fullof public plazas and spaces that a reactive and activated constantly and are safe.People feel safe.They also have commerce and retail of sorts.But we have to connect back to sort of the urban core, which is Public Square, and we believe that the bestway to do that is to go through Tower City.So a master plan has been created where towercity essentially feels more like the old fashioned marketplace,where people can come through public square from public square through tower city, buy any of the goods that they would typically get in any marketplace, have some activities inside, but actually traverse all the waydown to the riverfront through some parks and activated spaces and plazas with a really active river walk.It's so interesting because when I first saw the master plan for this, it was one of those situations that seemed so obvious and yet profound.I mean, I guess maybe because that speaks know,having grown up in Cleveland, somehow we knew something like this needed to happen, but we just didn'tcome up with the right idea.To create a safe and active place,one has to bring people down there.Not only the tourist type people, the casual recreational person, but people have to live there.And so the crux of the redevelopment is really around the creation of about 2000 homes for 2000families on that riverfront that happen to emerge.Those homes and residential living with all the commercial activity and the thoroughfares upto and through Tower City.And every master plan always seeks an anchor development thatnot only is significant enough that people recognize it as,wow, this is a big deal, and worthy of thetitle Anchor, but also actually pushes the fundamental premises ofthe theory behind the master plan.And in this particular instance, the theory behind the master plan is we will bring people from therest of the city into and to the riverfront.We will provide the attractive facilities that will bring people and attract people to the riverfront.The Cleveland Cavaliers are a very attractive organization, if you will.People in Cleveland love their Cavaliers andABS have this wonderful vision of bringing he players back from their practice.Back from Independence was about 40 minutes away,and bringing those players back to Cleveland wasa big deal for the Cleveland Cavaliers.But the Cleveland Cavaliers have teamed upwith a world class hospital and healthcare institute in the Cleveland Clinic.And the Cleveland Clinic's vision is of aglobal sports performance facility, which not only is available and accessible to the world class athletes,but also to the daily athletes.By opening it to the public means that all manner of folks who are involved in sports in some wayor another, or maybe not involved in sports, but may have an untoward sports injury, will find their way tothis facility that sits on the riverfront.And I get excited by it because I just recognize the thousands of people that will be drawnto the facility and therefore drawn to the riverfront.Either for a glimpse of the Cleveland Cavaliers and enjoying the riverfront, or actually because they may haveto tend to some physical injury or know.I've had a theory for many years that places like Cleveland and Detroit would experience a resurgence as a result of climate change, becausecoastal cities and arid climates are going to become too difficult to live great.Lake cities have fresh water, a wide variety of housing, a lot of underutilized infrastructure, and they do tend to be less prone to natural disasters. What do you think about this theory?And if true, what should Midwestern cities be doing to prepare for what could be an acceleration ofthe revitalization that's already been going on?I would say it's probably more than a theory. There are people who are beginning to create economic models around that very premise.I have a very good friend who actually works with person called Parag Khan who's written a book around sortof climate change and the natural effect of pushing people much more towards the Great Lakes region.While you have this theory and others are writing books about it, it's not necessarily something that's widely known.People are still flocking from California and going down to Phoenix, Arizona, and then wondering, or Texas wondering why they're getting hit with 115degrees heat for four weeks.Maybe when they realize that if they had realized that they could come out to the Great Lakes region and be dealing with milder summers than that they might have made the different decision.Once you acknowledge that this is areal opportunity, then you build your opportunities and potential around that acknowledgment.And I think that's important.But yes, there's more affordable housing certainly in this region, as you know, certainlymany would say it's more family friendly.You literally have to list all those things thatpeople believe are in the public perception about the Great Lakes, just list them negatively and positively.And you need to go down each and every oneof them and come up with a campaign to actively show that indeed, one, it's not quite the case they thought, or two, if it is indeed truthfully, the casethat you make some real inroads into changing the fact and then changing the perception.There are so many people today who have not been to Detroit before, and then they get here and they actively say, wow, I never thought it was like this.This is not what I thought at all.I think another interesting factor for thesecities is the investment that the UnitedStates government is making in industrial policy.Again, for the first time in maybe 50years, there's a huge investment to reboot manufacturing.And I'm wondering what you think about how cities canwelcome manufacturing back into the urban core, close to city centers so that people can take advantage of being in the city and still have manufacturing jobs.First of all, let me acknowledge you are absolutely right.The recent moves towards bringing much more industry andadvanced manufacturing to the Midwest is frankly, I can only applaud that because, let's face it, the Midwestfolks know how to build things.It's in their DNA, as I put it, and there's a lot of natural resources, frankly, around here.And there are many old industrial plants thatcould be either torn down, and that requires planning and that also requires money.So one would hope that the various political entities who are studying this are really thinking about, one,where the best places to plan these facilities and accommodate them and two, to get ahead of the game and literally start the process of clearing so that it makes the path easier for those industrial facilities to actively get into those sites.One, of the positive outcomes from COVID and the supply chain disruptions that we all saw is that many manufacturers realized that while they may want toretain some of their offshore manufacturing facilities, the disruption was so great they probably need to try to create facilities closer to the OEMs. And so that is creating high demand for, frankly,international folks who are manufacturers, who are part ofthe automobile supply chain to try to bring facilities closer to the Big Three in some fashion.And that's been healthy for certainly the Midwest.If you were going to imagine Detroit and Cleveland in 25 years, what's your best case scenario?Well, I think there would be a significant repopulation of those cities.One, because if the current trends continue, there will be more and more people seeking to come to these great two great cities to find jobs.Many of the folks currently living in those cities will stay in those cities because every opportunity they're looking for will be right there.The ones who the newly borns will not think of leaving and will stay because again, they will satisfy both their professional emotional and entertainment needs allin their cities and certainly in their regions.And therefore the population will grow.But in order for that to betrue, the cities must create the variety of opportunities that would indeed attract people.The reasons that people leave en masse have everything to do with economics for the most part.That's why many of these Midwestern cities grew so much because folks came from the south for the jobs, industrial, industrial jobs.Understanding that that trend has existed in history, I think we can recreate those trends for the future.But we have to do it knowing and understanding that we have to build cities differently.I think one of the key features is going to be not letting cities continue to sprawl ever outward to really concentrate redevelopment in a compact way.Because Detroit and Cleveland suffered population loss and yet still continued to sprawl ever outwards.Yes, but again, I think we always, always have to lookback and say, well, why did things happen the way they did in order to assure that those factors don't drive us to make those same decisions in the past?Look, Detroit was Motor City, right?And we all know the terrible history of urban renewal and then we know all about white flight out of urban areas into the suburbs.And my point is you have to know your history so that when you are recreating the future,the downtown specifically, you are making conscious choices around better transit, more livable spaces, certainly a variety of different kinds of jobs in the downtown providing the classic 15 minutes, 18 hours cities.People need to feel that they can accommodate most of their needs without necessarily getting into a car.And that's important as part of how we think about rebuilding these new cities.And in 25 years I would suspect that we're obviously into the electric vehicle age.The cars are much more like computers than there are anything else.And so we're thinking much more about autonomous vehicles in some fashion, and we have to just plan our cities to accommodate where that'sgoing, which, again, means more thinking about technology as part of the urban infrastructure, technology in the streets, technology in the lights, et cetera,to provide a greater degree of safety, toallow people, frankly, to live and be themselves.Finally, let's close with this question who do you admire and why?Well, I must say that I've been really fortunate over the course of my career to have worked with somereally interesting people who I've had the pleasure of just watching how they work, how they think.But right now, I will say that the short answerto my question is I really admire the Gilbert family.I admire them for not so much what they're doing,it's how they're doing it how they think about what they're doing, the selflessness associated with it, and frankly, the passion that they bring to the table every time.And the way we're able to have these conversations about how to think about the next ten years and the emphasis on doing what is right and where.The Gilbert family's mantra is to do things for more than profit.And that drives a number of the decisions we make.And so I've got to say, I've been fortunate enough to have been around some very successful people, but thisguiding philosophy of doing the right thing and doing things for more than profit, I think is probably one ofthe more noble things that I've experienced.And so I will say, unequivocally, theyare the ones that I most admire. Well, that sounds like a great place to end.Thank you so much, Kofi.I really appreciate it, and I look forward o seeing you in Detroit very soon.Yes, see you soon. Thank you.Lisa, that was awesome.Thank you so much for sharing that conversation you had with Kofi.It seemed like you guys could have gone on forever.He's so great to talk to you and I will be in Kofi's backyard next week as well as we head to Detroit for the World Economic Forum's Urban Transformation Summit gathering of 200 or so public and private sector leaders from around the world.I'm excited because we're going to be sitting down with multiple attendees from across the world and bringing you their insights in upcoming episodes of the City H podcast.We're going to be talking with people from all over the world, and we're going to have lots of thingsto share, from the energy transition to mobility innovations, to even a session on Activating, the 24 hours city.So that's it for today, everyone.For more about the future of cities and about the business of city building, make sure to visit cityage.com.Subscribe to our newsletter. Follow us on. LinkedIn.We will see you next time here on The City Age Podcast.