Nolan Finley reports in The Detroit News that Detroit is getting a new development guru under Mayor-elect Mike Duggan.
On Thursday, Duggan named his attorney and longtime friend, Thomas Lewand Sr., to oversee the city’s economic growth initiatives.
It marks a major shift in how development projects will be handled in Detroit and appears to largely cut out the Detroit Economic Development Corp., the quasi-public body headed by George Jackson.
Neither Lewand nor Jackson would comment on the new arrangement, which is to be detailed as part of the announcement today of a larger power-sharing deal between Duggan and Emergency Manager Kevyn Orr that will give the new mayor control of two-thirds of city operations.
But Jackson clearly gets the short end of the development stick.
Jackson’s agency was supposed to get an expanded role in the city’s restructuring. The consent agreement between Detroit and the state shifted the city’s planing and development and workforce development departments to the DEGC.
Lewand will oversee those operations instead. Key staffers are apparently also being moved from the DEGC to the city payroll, Finley reports.
In the Free Press, Matt Helms reports Duggan and Lewand, at a press conference Thursday, downplayed questions about whether strengthened city control of economic development would reduce the influence of the DEGC, the independent agency lead by Jackson that for years has handled staff work for major city development deals.
Duggan called Jackson “a good friend of mine” and said the DEGC leader “has my full support,” but added: “I do not believe we’ve had the kind of coordination between city government and the DEGC in recent years that there has been at different times.”
Lewand said Thursday night that he expects to work well with Jackson, and that Lewand’s job as Duggan’s group executive for jobs and economic development would be to help get Jackson what he needs to promote development in the city.
