Latest news with #Pontiac-based
Yahoo
23-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Former asphalt company president gets prison for bid rigging conspiracy
The former president of a Michigan asphalt paving company was sentenced to six months in prison and ordered to pay a $500,000 fine for his role in a years-long bid-rigging conspiracy. Daniel Israel, 63, who served as president and part-owner of Pontiac-based Asphalt Specialists LLC (ASI), pleaded guilty in October 2023 to conspiring with Al's Asphalt Paving Co. and employees from those companies to "rig bids in each other's favor," the U.S. Department of Justice announced Friday, May 23. Israel participated in the conspiracy from 2013 to 2018. Court documents show the co-conspirators coordinated bid prices to ensure preselected companies won certain contracts, submitting intentionally high or noncompetitive bids to mislead customers into believing the process was fair, according to the Justice Department. More: How asphalt firm fixed the bids to fix the damn roads — and got caught 'Economic crime — like bid rigging — is no less harmful than violent crime,' said Omeed Assefi of the Justice Department's Antitrust Division in a statement. 'Both inflict deep, lasting harm on our communities and disenfranchise those who believe in the American dream. As the defendant admitted, he conspired to eliminate competition to further enrich himself and his accomplices." Israel is one of seven individuals and three companies charged in the ongoing federal antitrust investigation, which has yielded over $8.2 million in criminal fines. ASI and another former executive and part-owner, Bruce Israel, also pleaded guilty in January 2024 for his role in the conspiracy. ASI was sentenced to pay $6.5 million in August 2024. Al's Asphalt and two of its executives entered guilty pleas in 2024. Nour Rahal is a trending and breaking news reporter. Email her: nrahal@ Follow her on Twitter @nrahal1. This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Ex-Pontiac asphalt executive gets 6 months, $500K fine for bid rigging
Yahoo
13-05-2025
- Business
- Yahoo
Rehab work finally begins on long-vacant Lee Plaza in Detroit
Redevelopment work is now officially underway on a large and long-empty Detroit high-rise after several years of delays related to the project's complicated financing. The 16-story Lee Plaza, situated a mile west of New Center at 2240 W. Grand Blvd., originally opened as a luxury residential hotel in 1929 and has been vacant since the mid-1990s, when it last operated as low-income senior housing. The building fell into disrepair during the years it was closed, much of it from vandalism. Vandals also made off with several stone lion heads on the plaza's exterior facade, some of which were reportedly used as decoration at a Chicago townhouse development. The redevelopment project's team has been attempting since 2021 to rehab and reopen the Italianate Art Deco-style building as a mix of 117 new affordable senior apartments and 65 market-rate apartments. But the process of assembling the nearly dozen layers of financing for the project's roughly $60 million phase one, including various tax breaks, tax credits and other development incentives, took longer than expected, and a spring 2023 goal date for construction start came and went. Finally, within the past two weeks, the developers successfully closed on the financing and gained title to the building from the city of Detroit. The development team is composed of Detroit-based Roxbury Group and Ethos Development Partners and Pontiac-based Lighthouse. "It's getting everybody to the table all at the same time, everybody's conditions met and being ready to fund the project," David Di Rita, principal of The Roxbury Group, told reporters during a May 13 kickoff event for the renovation work. "It's just the nature of these projects that they don't happen overnight." More: Long-vacant beauty Lee Plaza set to be restored, will feature senior apartments Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan has had a keen interest in seeing Lee Plaza brought back to life, a goal he referred to as "an obsession of mine" at the kickoff event. "There was a time when Lee Plaza was the premier luxury hotel residence in the city of Detroit," Duggan said. 'It mattered a lot — and it was absolutely beautiful.' 'It closed nearly 30 years ago," the mayor continued, "and for 30 years, everybody coming in and out I-96 saw this building on the skyline, with the roof that you can see is not there. And the easy thing was, knock it down and hope they forget. But we said 'what would happen if we renovated it ... and what would it mean to families that need affordable housing?' " The redevelopment project will be done in two phases. Phase one will create 117 affordable units for seniors with incomes at or below 50% of area median income, which is currently $35,350 for one person or $40,400 for a two-person household. Those rents would start off at about $450 per month and Section 8 vouchers will be accepted. The anticipated completion date for phase one is fall 2026. Phase two would create an additional 65 market-rate apartments on the building's top five floors. The developers have yet to close on financing for that phase, but hope to before the end of the year. The project's complex financing package is said to include: Low-Income Housing Tax Credits from the Michigan State Housing Development Authority The city of Detroit's portion of the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan Act Michigan State Housing Development Authority grant support State Legislature grant support Funding for Detroit from federal Housing and Urban Development programs. Historic and low-income housing tax credit investments from JPMorgan Chase and the Royal Bank of Canada A HUD rental subsidy Contact JC Reindl: 313-378-5460 or jcreindl@ Follow him on X @jcreindl This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Rehab work finally begins on Detroit's long-vacant Lee Plaza Error in retrieving data Sign in to access your portfolio Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data Error in retrieving data
Yahoo
04-03-2025
- General
- Yahoo
Transportation, hours, shelter beds among gaps in Oakland, Macomb homeless systems
The death of two children while sheltering in a van with their family last month has prompted the city of Detroit to extend a housing hotline's hours and work to identify people living in their vehicles, among other changes to how the city responds to homelessness. The problems in Detroit's homelessness system that led to tragedy are apparent well beyond the city limits. Homeless response systems across metro Detroit are confronting an ongoing — and long-standing — challenge: There aren't enough resources to meet the need. As the number of families and children facing homelessness increases, the services meant to connect people with housing help are stretched thin, overwhelmed and underfunded, area providers say. "The homeless service system is deeply under-resourced across the entire continuum, from the day that somebody picks up the phone to call somebody for help around their eviction, to if they get evicted looking for shelter, to rental assistance for stopping the eviction, for rehousing people, for supportive housing for people. It's all deeply under-resourced now," said Ryan Hertz, president and CEO of Pontiac-based Lighthouse, which runs family and unaccompanied youth shelters and develops affordable housing. Aside from during the COVID-19 pandemic, Hertz said he doesn't recall a time when there were enough shelter beds to meet the scope of need. Emergency funds and a moratorium on evictions helped meet the need at the time. But now, it's "significantly worse" than before the pandemic, he said. If a person calls in the middle of the night for a shelter bed in Oakland County, it would be difficult for them to find a bed, said Kirsten Elliott, president and CEO of the nonprofit Community Housing Network. Shelters are typically full and waitlists are long, making it harder to help people. "The safety net is taxed, and it is very thin, and the holes are very large," she said. It's difficult to say for certain how many people need shelter versus the number of beds that are available, but available data shows that from January to June of last year, there were 876 people experiencing homelessness in Oakland County. That same year, there were 327 year-round emergency and transitional housing beds in the county, according to a one-night count in January. Oakland County has multiple ways for people to enter its system, including going to a shelter and calling the county's Housing Resource Center. After a person reaches out, they are assessed and prioritized based on need and placed on a list for openings at housing programs. This list, which is for people who are literally homeless or fleeing domestic violence, has about 400 people waiting for housing, such as rapid rehousing, permanent supportive housing and housing choice vouchers. The Community Housing Network's Housing Resource Center has enough funding to operate Monday to Friday, 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. The center takes calls, texts, walk-ins and people can go to its website and fill out a form that asks about an individual's housing needs. The center helped more than 16,000 people last year but that actually means 35,000 contacts, which includes follow-ups and referrals. There are eight full-time and three part-time staff. One gap in Oakland County is that there aren't evening and weekend hours for this service, Elliott said. That would cost another $100,000 or so. But making matters more difficult is that there aren't enough shelter beds and affordable housing units either. Over in Macomb County, a lack of transportation, combined with the size of the county, can make it harder for people to get to a shelter, said Edward Scott, director of Macomb Community Action, an agency within Macomb County's Department of Health and Community Services. If someone is unhoused in Armada Township, it may be difficult for them to get to a facility farther south, he said. "Many of us operate on regular business hours and homelessness does not and domestic violence does not, or human trafficking does not," he said. There's limited funding and there's not enough housing stock, either. In Macomb County, people facing homelessness can reach out to several access points, from shelters to a 24/7 mental health crisis hotline, to get assessed and added to a list and then matched to available permanent housing services, such as housing choice vouchers and other programs. That list has 192 people on it, as of last week. To get into shelters, people must contact those facilities directly for bed availability. "If it were up to me, and there were unlimited resources, I would want to find a way for every facility that is a potential point of entry to be 24/7 somehow," Scott said. "I think the reality is almost all of us are operating on pretty limited shoestring budgets with the resources we're able to get, either through government sources or through philanthropy." Tasha Gray, executive director of the Homeless Action Network of Detroit (HAND) said it's not enough to just extend hours. "If you don't have access to beds after hours, it's not going to help ... it just increases access to get on a list, but it does not increase access to get into shelters. ... If we increase the hours, we also need to make sure that we're actually going to have resources available to be able to refer people to, and that's a hard conversation," she said. More than 2,700 people experienced homelessness in metro Detroit on one night in January of last year. The number of children and families experiencing homelessness has increased nationally and locally and service providers are trying to keep up. The number of children experiencing homelessness last year — sheltered and unsheltered — reached the highest number in a decade, according to a Free Press analysis of HAND data. "The city, in particular, has really made changes to add more family beds to the system, but I think we're experiencing family homelessness at a level far greater than the beds that are being added to the system," Gray said. "In addition to that, it's not just about adding beds to the system — because, obviously, for emergency shelter, it's temporary — it's also being able to have the resources to get people out of the system." Lighthouse is raising money to triple the number of emergency shelter beds for families. The goal is to break ground on the first building as soon as this summer. "We've seen kind of a slow trend of families with kids as a percentage of those facing homelessness increasing pretty much for the last 15 years, and it's just gotten to the place where it's really exponentially increased," Hertz said. Free Press staff writer Kristi Tanner contributed to this report. This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Shelter beds, hours among gaps in Oakland, Macomb homeless systems
