[Docta_Love]

Originally Posted by LMich

You know a place is struggling when the headline for a new jail is spun favorably as job creation

Too true, ha ha ...

I consider Saginaw to be my true hometown even though I left as just a baby, on fam trips up north we would sometimes stop & stay over with family friends. I kinda loved how houses in our neighborhood had upstairs kitchens despite the logistics of it ...

Saginaw has always been a bit off though as compared to other cities in the state. Saginaw at least until the mid to late 80s was the only manufacturing town in the state that was still hiring so to speak only to see the same pattern that took place in Detroit & Flint occur just a few years later.

A possible reason for this is that just like many other cities in the Great Lakes region it "specialized" in a particular aspect of the auto industry in Saginaw's case the city housed a big piece of GM's auto-supply industry however these companies tended to be more successful in diversification.

The company my dad worked for in Saginaw when my family lived there around the time I was born was doing work for NASA specifically related to the huge fuel mixing machines ... After the challenger disaster however the company ran into problems which was a major reason he made the decision to came back here and work for Ford again.


I've had some articles in the back of my mind for a while on the Tri-Cities but I was up north in a very rustic area when I discovered this thread. This one is a general booster article about downtown developments but it's good to see the same tactics used in Detroit & Flint working their way up I-75 none the less.

Cities by the bay: Saginaw, Bay City back from the brink as downtowns rebound

By TOM HENDERSON
Crain's Detroit Business
April 08, 2018

-Saginaw Future, Bay Future have helped drive tens of millions in development in comeback downtowns
-240-acre Great Lakes Tech Park in Saginaw County is offering free shovel-ready land for approved projects
-$12 million Phoenix Building in downtown Bay City one among many historic renovation, new construction projects


Uptown Bay City is a 35-acre waterfront development that Bay Future helped shepherd with Bay City-based Shaheen Development over the last four years.

Outside the window of his office in the historic Phoenix Building on Washington Avenue, Bay City's main street, two cranes were busy working on another historic building, the Legacy-Crapo Building across the street, a $12 million project that will convert it into a mixed-use office and residential space, with plans for 26 apartments on the top three floors, two office suites on the second floor and commercial space on the ground floor. Cranes! Once as rare downtown as carrier pigeons.

In downtown Saginaw, Delta College has finished plans for a $12.7 million, 35,000-square-foot building and large green space on what is now a parking lot. It is expected to be open for the fall 2019 semester.

In both cities, vacancy rates are down sharply and no one would risk firing a cannon in the streets. Much of the progress is the result of the work of both Bay Future and its older sister nonprofit, Saginaw Future Inc.

The CMU College of Medicine hosted a grand opening of its 46,000-square-foot educational facility in Saginaw.

According to Saginaw Future's 2017 annual report, it was involved in 34 economic development projects last year that led to more than 376,000 square feet of planned expansions or new construction. County companies invested more than $177 million in projects and created or retained almost 1,400 jobs.

Other recent projects in the county include The Central Michigan College of Medicine's $25 million, 46,000-square-foot building in Saginaw. Construction began in 2014. Sixty medical students, who began school in 2013 in Mt. Pleasant, completed their third and fourth years in Saginaw and graduated last year.

And The Bancroft and Eddy buildings in the heart of downtown Saginaw are now home to 150 luxury market-rate apartments and first-floor retail and commercial space, a development by Lakeshore Management LLC of Cleveland. An out-of-state firm spending $7 million in downtown Saginaw would have seemed impossible 15 years ago.

Bay Future Inc.

This is Uptown Bay City, a 35-acre waterfront development that Bay Future helped shepherd with Saginaw-based Shaheen Development over the last four years. It also includes boutique retail shops and, atop a building housing Chemical Bank offices, 20 condos that quickly sold out, at prices ranging from $152,000 for a one-bedroom unit to $495,000 for a penthouse suite.

There is no more symbolic and tangible proof of Bay City's resurgence than this, on a former brownfield site that had been home to an iconic manufacturer for 110 years, beginning in 1873, when a group of local businessmen purchased the MacDowell Foundry Co. and began a new business called Industrial Brownhoist.

http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article...k-as-downtowns

Ascension funds $50 million in projects at hospitals in Tawas City, Saginaw, Standish

By JAY GREENE
Crain's Detroit Business
May 22, 2018

-Projects at St. Mary's in Saginaw, St. Mary's in Standish and St. Joseph Health System in Tawas City
-Ascension had considered selling the three hospital systems
-Health system has been undergoing massive strategic rethinking as it contemplates future with less inpatient and more outpatient reimbursement

The systems receiving the investment from the nation's largest nonprofit health system are St. Mary's of Michigan in Saginaw, St. Mary's of Michigan in Standish, and St. Joseph Health System in Tawas City.

"During our discernment we reviewed options including partnering with other organizations in the operation of the three health systems as well as transitioning them to different systems," Patricia Maryland, Ascension's executive vice president and president and CEO of Ascension Healthcare, said in a statement.

"However, we determined that retaining and investing in these health systems will best serve them, their associates and physicians, the communities they serve, and our integrated national health ministry."

Maryland was CEO of St. John Providence Health System in Warren before going to the St. Louis corporate office in 2013. Ascension has 15 hospitals in Michigan.

http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article...-in-tawas-city

An aerospace startup lifts off

By TOM HENDERSON
Crain's Detroit Business
April 08, 2018

O'Brien and Davis had worked together in the Bay City facility of Thomas Instrument, a Brookshire, Texas-based manufacturer of components for the Department of Defense. Davis, a mechanical engineer from the University of Michigan, was the lead engineer in what is called actuation hardware, the gears and ball joints that move various parts of a plane, including wing flaps that go up and down during flight. O'Brien ran the plant.

O'Brien said that in January 2017, management from Texas visited the Bay City facility. "They said, 'You're going great, we're giving you more work, we're going to hire more people.' On March 17, though, they said, 'We're shutting this plant down, you're gone.'"

Two weeks later, O'Brien and Davis bought three pieces of tooling equipment for well below market value from Thomas, put them into cold storage and looked into whether they should start their own aerospace supply company. They figured they could always sell the equipment if they chickened out.

"I was pissed off," said O'Brien, a journeyman tool maker who also has a business degree. "We said, 'We don't want to do this anymore, working for someone else. We should start our own company.'"

In April, they got that first contract Davis joked about, to make three pieces of equipment for the Air Force called jack assemblies for the ammunition loaders of A-10 Thunderbolt jet fighters.

So far, so good. In a year, they have landed 15 small military projects worth a total of about $250,000. And at the end of March, they hired their first employee, to help run their machines. (The G and B in the company's name is for their last names. They had a co-founder with a last name starting with a T, but he left the company soon after they launched. "We had already signed so many government forms that that T will be there forever," said Davis.)

http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article...rtup-lifts-off

From Saginaw to the cloud, Dice Corp. grows security business

By TOM HENDERSON
Crain's Detroit Business
April 08, 2018

Dice, the president and CEO, founded the company in 1992 to provide software for alarm companies around the country. He said off-site hosting and storage has been key to steady growth of 20-30 percent annually in recent years. Revenue at the company is about $7 million a year.

Dice Corp. moved to the hosting model in 2013. "Everybody told me that no one would ever host their alarm company in the cloud, but they were wrong," said Dice. He said he has nondisclosure agreements with most of his customers, but provides software or hosting services to more than 1,000 security companies nationwide.

"More than 80 percent of all retailers in the U.S. use our system for some sort of security protection and about 40 percent of Fortune 500 companies," he said, all of that through his alarm-company customers.

In 2014, Dice Corp. spun off IPtelX, a fast-growing telecom provider that is run by his son, Jordan, the president and CEO. It also has revenue of about $7 million, up from just $1.5 million when it was spun off. Dice says that IPtelX realistically could have revenue of $100 million in two years.

Both are under the umbrella of Dice Resource Holdings in the Valley Center Technology Park and employ a total of 54, with projections to be at 70 in a year. Dice said the plan is for Dice Corp. to have the largest combined data center of alarm customers in the world in five years, surpassing ADT.

http://www.crainsdetroit.com/article...urity-business