Dan Gilbert

Dan Gilbert

Fortune Magazine contributor (and Detroit News columnist) Laura Berman chronicles the high-stakes twists-and-turns of Detroit booster businessman Dan Gilbert in an interesting story published on Fortune’s Web site earlier today.

Berman notes that the Quicken Loans CEO is aggressively pursuing a two-state strategy, developing various business opportunities on both sides of the Ohio-Michigan state line.

But in Detroit, it looks like Gilbert could be a force for good — and evil.

Berman lays out both, beginning with the evil part (for Detroit, that is) stemming from Ohio voters Election Day passage of  a plan to bring high-stakes casino gambling to Ohio’s largest cities:

To score with voters, Gilbert and other casino backers promised Ohioans at least 14,000 new jobs. But his newfound popularity in Cleveland, where he owns the Cavaliers, isn’t resonating in Detroit, where the city’s three casinos bring in $1 billion a year or so, and Gilbert’s two-city straddle is viewed with concern.

Must admit, I stumbled a bit on the lede to Berman’s story, which says that Gilbert “wants to” move his Quicken Loans headquarters and its 1,700 employees (the force for good part) to the gleaming glass-walled tower in downtown Detroit’s Campus Martius complex. Does that choice of verb mean that the plans could yet unravel?

I’m assuming — and hoping — it doesn’t

From a companion, even more in-depth story also published today on Fortune — this one squarely on Gilbert’s plan to spark his own small, but expandable downtown Detroit revival with the headquarters relocation from its current home in the suburb of Livonia – Berman recounts Gilbert’s persuasive pitch about the present business opportunity that abounds in the heart of Michigan’s largest city:

He knows that his march into Detroit won’t be a success unless people follow, not just for sentimental or quixotic reasons, but because it makes good business sense. Right now a primary selling point is cheap rents: office space at $18 a square foot, vs. $32 in downtown Chicago, often with the first year free on a five-year lease.

“It’s the opportunity to get in low and sell high,” says Gilbert. “It’s an untapped market from an intellectual standpoint, and from a physical standpoint there are great buildings. The idea is to get to the tipping point where companies start believing that they can’t afford not to be in Detroit.”