Live Midtown program inspires new incentives for Quicken Loans' downtown employees

Dan Gilbert's Quicken Loans will join several other major firms in the city to offer incentives urging their employees to live in Detroit, following the success of this year's Live Midtown program. The program will be announced later this summer.

Midtown Detroit Inc. reports 178 employees from the Detroit Medical Center, Henry Ford Hospital and Wayne State University have used the Live Midtown program to rent, buy or fund home improvements in the district since the program launched five months ago.

Gilbert says he plans to move at least 2,000 of his employees to downtown beginning this fall.

Excerpt:

Speaking Wednesday to the visiting news media, Gilbert quipped, "Building anything great is messy. A construction site is messy, but when it's done, it's usually something people can be proud of." His often-stated goal is to make downtown the lively core of a revitalized city, or what he calls Detroit 2.0.

"There is just a certain feel" to downtown, he said Wednesday. "There's a certain energy, a certain buzz, a certain closeness to everything, and people really, really are enjoying it."

Read the rest of the story here -- and look for more info on these new residential initiatives in Model D this summer.

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