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"We're No. 3!"
Well, it's not exactly the battle cry in Warren. While the city's population ranks third in the state, its dense manufacturing base puts it at the top of the charts. So keep the bronze medal, because Warren is going for the gold.
Planners, administrators and business owners are whooping it up this summer. A dozen projects in the works are cause for celebration as Warren puts the pieces in place to ensure its prominence in Southeast Michigan's economic resurgence.
Whatever success Warren has had can be attributed to a simple economic protocol jobs, cash flow and investment -- which has carried the suburb through the 1990s.
"If we do those things right, we will get whatever else we want. We're not going to go out into the street to recruit people. We're going to take care of the ones we have," explains Stephen Morris, president of the Warren/Center Line/Sterling Heights Chamber of Commerce.
Warren, a city of about 145,000 people, views itself as a service provider, standing ready to assist business owners in growing and maintaining their operations any way it can. If General Motors Corp. -- Warren's largest employer with 24,000 employees in the city -- needs a tax abatement to expand its Tech Center, city administrators are there to help.
GM is consolidating engineering services at the 7.5-million-square-foot Tech Center and upgrading some decades-old buildings on the sprawling campus. The city is offering GM a 50-percent tax break on future upgrades that raise the center's value. It's a classic win-win situation for both parties: GM gets a break on the cost of the facelift, and Warren keeps its biggest taxpayer happy without leveraging its financial future.
"It's time for us to be aware that with the aging of that investment comes the potential of our losing it," says Morris.
Warren planners have also handed Chrysler a whopping incentive to build more trucks there. The automaker recently received a $270-million tax abatement to help expand its Dodge Truck plant so Chrysler can push ahead with plans to consolidate production of its popular Dakota pickup.
By encouraging and facilitating redevelopment, Morris says, Warren hopes local companies are persuaded not only to invest in the city but to increase those investments down...