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Sometimes, all you need to know about a person's character is what you learn in the first grade.
In the early 1960s, Dan Gilbert became friends in elementary school with a core group of people he eventually went on to hire either as executives, partners or consultants for legal and real estate work.
And when Gilbert was looking for someone to be the point man for the day-to-day operations of the real estate portfolio he has been assembling, it was a member of the childhood circle: Jim Ketai.
In April, Ketai and Gilbert formed Bedrock Management Services LLC, with the two being equal partners. They started with four employees and are now up to 29.
The company, run by Ketai, will oversee the management, operations and leasing for Gilbert's real estate
holdings in Detroit, Cleveland and around the country.
"It's something we'd talked about over the years, the idea of us doing something together," Ketai said of Gilbert. "And he called me at one point and said 'I've got an idea of something we can do.' "
Other core friends who are part of the Gilbert infrastructure: David Carroll, who is now a go-to vice president at Quicken Loans Inc., David Friedman, president and CEO of Farmington Hills-based Friedman Integrated Real Estate Solutions (See companion profile story. Page 1); and Howard Luckoff, an attorney with Detroit-based Honigman Miller Schwartz and Cohn LLP, both of whom have worked closely with Gilbert on his real estate.
A shift in culture
Ketai, soon to turn 50, spent the past 21 years as an equal partner in the Farmington Hills-based Etkln Equities LLC real estate company.
It's a culture shift for Ketai from his days in a traditional real estate company--where suits were the standard dress code--as he conducts business wearing jeans and leather loafers.
On a typical Tuesday afternoon with Bedrock, Ketai and his team have a bustling office, with people moving from desk to desk, passing documents and folders for various deals....