> Years ago, when detroit was in desparate throws, I thought that it was ripe for a new 'silicon valley' and they should have pushed a huge start-up market. They didnt, but they should have.

The #1 land-owner in downtown Detroit[0] (founder of Rock Financial and owner of Rocket Mortgage, Quicken Loans, and Cleveland Cavaliers) thought the same thing at the time and worked hard to make it happen[1, 1b]. It never "blew up" but the efforts did bring in some substantial amount of revitalization and additional business which perseveres through today. He also spearheaded attempts to win Amazon's bid for "HQ2" to bring amazon's new major headquarters to Detroit.[2]

Dan Gilbert went to public high school outside of Detroit, and studied at relatively low-cost state schools (Michigan State University, Wayne State University). His son recently passed at 26 from neurofibromatosis, a genetic disorder that causes tumors, that can affect the brain, spinal cord and various nerve signals.[3] His dad ran a small lounge / restaurant in Detroit which looked like this[4], and his mom was a realtor[5]. His grandfather, Manuel
Feldstein, owned car washes in Detroit[5].

And no, I'm not part of a PR effort for the family, I just like looking into where various modern-day rich people came from. Detroit had a huge role in prohibition smuggling from Canada with plenty of people rising up the economic strata a la "Great Gatsby". It's claimed that 75% of the alcohol smuggled into the USA during prohibition came into Detroit. The backdrop for the culture of "Detroit muscle cars" were speed-running alcohol cargoes across the frozen Detroit river from Canada to USA. Smugglers even built a "beer pipeline" running from a brewery in Canada to the basement of an establishment in Detroit. The mafia were heavily involved in these profits. While it's possible that the car wash and restaurants were money-laundering fronts for such endeavors, the family's choice of neighborhoods and schooling are consistent with that of their public persona. Yes, they received plenty of benefit from being white during a time of great segregation, and benefitted from connections across the Jewish community which led to his founding of Rock Financial with Ron Berman. But it doesn't appear that he was born with any particularly different advantages than my father's Catholic family or many other (white) families in that area. My grandfather went from penniless after serving in WW2 to standard middle class as middle management at Ford Motor Company and my father came home from school one to a smoldering pile of ashes on the front lawn from a cross that was burnt in opposition to my grandparents vocal support for allowing black people to buy houses in Plymouth, MI around the time of the Detroit race riots.

0: https://www.michiganradio.org/economy/2013-06-20/gilbert-own...

1: https://www.nytimes.com/2013/04/14/business/dan-gilberts-que...

1b: Alternate: https://archive.ph/abzX7

2: https://www.crainscleveland.com/article/20170914/news/135516...

3: https://www.cleveland.com/cavs/2023/05/cavs-owner-dan-gilber...

4: https://www.ebay.com/itm/295323506705

5: https://digital.bentley.umich.edu/djnews/djn.2010.08.19.001/...