Eric Means didn't know he was about to pass away.
But he had a pretty good idea his baby daughter was about to live.
It was Aug. 17.
The developer had earlier in the day found out 7-month-old Willow had been approved to be listed for a heart transplant when he collapsed in his office in the Buhl Building downtown while on the phone with others working on a $40 million-plus development in Highland Park and Detroit.
Means, 48, tried to add another person to the call.
He disconnected from it briefly.
Then permanently.
"Within hours of our daughter being listed, he was gone," Tracy Means, his widow, said.
Now she is shouldering the weight of a young family — Willow, now 1 and recovering from a late October heart transplant, and daughter Arie, now 3 — in addition to helping manage a pair of complex developments in Detroit and Highland Park totaling nearly $100 million.
One, the $50 million Cambria Hotel on Lafayette and Third, is nearing completion, set to open in the third quarter.
The other, a 450,000-square-foot warehouse/industrial building called Means Logistics Park, has been an uphill climb as the 40-year-old has been unexpectedly thrust into the high-octane, high-stakes world of real estate development.
"I had to get involved," said Tracy, who is vice president of market operations and strategy for Henry Ford Health System, operating in yet another high-octane, high-stakes world.
"Even though I don't work in the development field, I understand strategy, I understand ops. I have the foundation, but you have to be a quick study."
Even under normal circumstances, the development process was challenging.
Couple that with its main proponent dying in the middle of it and the project could have easily turned south very quickly.
Not long after Means' death, there were questions about whether the new building would be completed, those close to the project said.
"There was this big void," said Gary Grochowski, the director of agency leasing for the Southfield office of Colliers International Inc. who has been working on Means Logistics Park for the last three years. "In the 72 hours after Eric passed, we said, 'Is this project still going to happen? What are we going to do here?'"
"There were probably six or seven vendors I talked to. Everybody said they knew Eric was gone, but they still wanted to do this deal, even if they didn't have a contract that's valid right now. They would still move forward, even in the midst of the unknown," Grochowski said.
Beyond even that, there were — and still are — bureaucratic hurdles to clear.
"If you normally solve for two or three of these unique variables in terms of a street vacation or a rezoning, we have five of them in two different cities," said Kyle Morton, vice president of development for New York City-based industrial and warehouse developer Ashley Capital, which has an office in Canton Township and became involved with the development after Means died.
"We had 10 issues and we are now down to two," he said. "Detroit still needs street vacations and rezoning."
There were about 300 parcels that needed to be assembled across Highland Park and Detroit for the 32 acres at the Davison Freeway (M-8) and the Lodge Freeway (M-10), an area that had been ravaged by a 1997 tornado and years of economic decline.
Brian Holdwick, a consultant on the project and former Detroit Economic Growth Corp. executive who is now head of Detroit-based Holdwick Development Group, said eight different government agencies worked on things like titles, rezoning and brownfield incentives.
"We are close, but are not there yet," he said.
Vacant houses still dot the site, to be cleared for the new building.
"It was either abandoned or people took insurance proceeds and left," Grochowski said. "Then you had abandoned homes and illegal dumping and squatters in there."
He said there were 35 private properties owners that had to be negotiated with, and about half of them had homes, around 10 of which were owner occupied. He said the homes were bought for $60,000 or $70,000, when they were worth about $20,000.
In one well-publicized example, Means' company, The Means Group Inc., let longtime Highland Park resident Doris McCarver, whose house of nearly 30 years was in the building's footprint, pick out a new home in the city and completely renovated it after the company bought it for her. She moved in November 2019.
Much of the heavy lifting also had to be done at the county level, said Khalil Rahal, assistant Wayne County executive in charge of economic development.
"All these properties had title issues, really bad clouded title," Rahal said. "They had all gone through foreclosure and ended up in the (Wayne County) land bank's inventory after years and years of falling through the system."
For Morton, it's a testament to resiliency.
"I would be shocked to find another developer or someone willing to take a project of this scale with so many issues with it," Morton said of Means, a U.S. Navy veteran.
The ultimate end user for the building has not yet been finalized, although Grochowski said it's expected to be either a logistics/warehouse user or a Tier One automotive supplier because of its proximity to the General Motors Co. Hamtramck plant and the FCA USA LLC Mack Avenue plant.
Regardless, the building should come to the market at a time when industrial and warehouse space is being built at one of the briskest paces seen in recent memory.
According to the Southfield office of New York City-based brokerage firm Newmark, in the fourth quarter there was a 10-year high 5.72 million square feet of warehouse/distribution space under construction.
Between the first quarter of 2010 and the third quarter of 2014, there was no warehouse/distribution space being built. But every quarter since the fourth quarter 2016, there has been no less than 1.62 million square feet being built.
It comes as the warehouse/distribution center market is at a 10-year low for vacancy, sitting at just 1.3 percent in the fourth quarter, according to Newmark. The vacancy rate peaked in the third quarter of 2010, when the market was 28.3 percent empty.
Some are requesting more of the Means Logistics Park developers.
For example, representatives of Soulardarity, a Highland Park-based 501(c)3 nonprofit focused on solar street lighting in the city, and HOPE Village Revitalization, a Detroit community development corporation, outlined concerns in a letter that the project developers wouldn't be receptive to neighboring community needs and called for the creation of a Community Advisory Board for the project, referred to in some documents as "Project Greystone."
Quarterly meetings with the developer and the advisory board, and more frequent email communications, were requested, and it would address things like construction noise, traffic, road maintenance, clean air and water and other issues potentially arising from the project.
Jobs, renewable energy and community beautification are also among the concerns described by the groups.
"The concerns in this letter reflect the concerns raised by community members at various community meetings and hearings and come from people and organizations on both sides of the municipal border, united in our shared vision for a sustainable, just, and equitable future for our communities," the letter reads. "We believe that Project Greystone has the opportunity to be part of that vision, if you are willing to work with us."
For Tracy Means, completing her late husband's in-development projects is about both legacy and memory.
How the eventual ownership and potential disposition shakes out in the end, however, is under deliberation. At this moment, she has no long-term plans to remain in real estate development.
"I'm evaluating the portfolio to see that because I know he built them for the legacy as far as his family, so I'm trying to determine what makes sense to retain within The Means Group," she said.
There is a services component to the business — which does things like filling pot holes, for example — that will remain intact, Tracy Means said.
Regardless, those who knew Eric Means well said the Highland Park effort will be a project that reflects not only his keen eye as a developer but also his compassion and people skills.
"He had an energy to a room and to a deal that could be very positive," Grochowski said. "He wasn't a pushy salesman type of guy. He was just hardworking, charismatic and wanted to be able to keep everybody positive and going on the same path."
He had dinner with families in the neighborhoods he was building in.
He went to church with them, Tracy Means said.
"He was such a passionate person about all things community," she said. "When I say 'community,' I don't mean ZIP code. A community to him was a ZIP code, but it was the people that call that ZIP code home ... He truly cared about people, in building people up and investing in people, and that is really what drove the work he did."
"Without him falling in love with the community and seeing the opportunity in the area, this project wouldn't be here today."
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