Peter Cummings back, here to stay: 'All in on Detroit'

Whole Foods' investment in Midtown was a key moment for Detroit, but for developer Peter Cummings it was a profound calling back to Detroit, like a "religious experience."

Cummings — son-in-law of famed Detroit businessman Max Fisher — was active on the development scene for years. But after Fisher died in 2005, Cummings concentrated on his Florida-based development firm. He kept his hand in Detroit but nothing like the days when he and Fisher made big deals and built big things.

But then he attended the 2013 Whole Foods ribbon-cutting, a store built in a Cummings-developed site on Woodward in Midtown.

"There were hundreds and hundreds and hundreds of people, old and young, black and white, rich and poor, a marching band, I mean the whole thing. I stood there and said to myself, 'I have not felt this good about a real estate project in a long time.' And I think the seed was planted that day that I wanted to shift my focus to working in Detroit," he said.

Since then, he has helped purchase the Fisher and Kahn buildings in a June online auction. The team, which includes HFZ Capital Group of New York, Southfield-based Redico, and John Rhea of RHEAL Capital Management, closed on the $12.2-million purchase in late July.

He has two other sites under agreement — one for a renovation of an older building and one a vacant site where he plans new construction. He won't give locations just yet, but they'll be residential projects. Those sites, plus new residential units in the Fisher and Kahn buildings could add 750 new units to the district.

And he's pitching a promising site to Whole Foods for a second Detroit store, though other developers are also in the mix. The first in Midtown proved so successful that Whole Foods has told Cummings they want their next store to be about 50% bigger than the first.

Moving to Motown

Cummings is so recommitted to Detroit he sold his interest in his Florida-based firm Ram Realty Services to his son and rented an apartment in the David Whitney Building downtown to be closer to his Detroit deals. He still has a Florida house.

He's working with two philanthropic foundations and some private individuals to develop a neighborhood initiative that would revolve around updating and improving Detroit's housing stock. Thousands of units are in need of repair in the city. "We need to do something at scale," he said. As with his other developments, the idea isn't far enough along yet to release details.

The Fisher-Kahn team came together fairly quickly. Cummings spoke of his interest in the Fisher and Kahn buildings to Dale Watchowski, president of Redico, at the International Council of Shopping Centers convention in Las Vegas in May. Watchowski had already been speaking with HFZ people in New York about the project. The team was prepared to bid a little more than they did — perhaps up to about $15 million — but suggestions that the buildings would go for the $20-$30 million range were not realistic, he said, given how much work the buildings need.

Cummings' first goal is to enliven the ornate lobby of the Fisher Building, which, like the Rivera Court in the Detroit Institute of Arts, ranks as among Detroit's most impressive public spaces. "That's our great opportunity," he said. "Our challenge is to animate it. We need to give people a reason to want to be here."

Earlier in his career, Cummings had developed the Orchestra Place development on Woodward Avenue in Midtown and, across the street, the Ellington residential project, a parking garage, and the Whole Foods site, as well as a row of townhomes on Hancock near Wayne State. All those projects helped anchor the surge in development now taking place in Midtown.

'Devotion to Detroit'

A passionate music lover, Cummings joined the Detroit Symphony Orchestra board in 1992 and served as chairman in 1998-2003. He was the primary visionary behind the sweeping development project that included the $60-million expansion of Orchestra Hall into the Max M. and Marjorie S. Fisher Music Center and the construction of the $32-million Orchestra Place office building.

Last month, the DSO honored the Fisher family's cumulative gifts of $25 million to the orchestra by adding the name of Max Fisher's wife, Marjorie, to the name of the building.

Cummings attributes much of his earlier interest in the city to his late father-in-law.

"His devotion to Detroit was extraordinary," Cummings said of Max Fisher. "And I caught that same sense of devotion and enthusiasm."

When Fisher died in 2005, Cummings found his ardor for the city beginning to wane. "Everything I was doing for the city I was doing with him. He was so curious and asked such great questions and had such a great perspective it really added a dimension that went way beyond business."

Along the way, he credits other business leaders for boosting Detroit's fortunes, including Peter Karmanos Jr., who moved his Compuware headquarters downtown in 2003, to be followed by Dan Gilbert and his Quicken Loans in 2010. Both moves helped enliven the downtown area and, along with the city's successful trip through bankruptcy, made Detroit a better opportunity for investors.

But it was attending the Whole Foods ground-breaking in 2013 that really brought him back. The ardor for Detroit he knew with Max Fisher returned to stay.

"I'm pumped up," he said. "I'm all in on Detroit."

Contact John Gallagher: 313-222-5173 or gallagher@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @jgallagherfreep. Free Press staff writer Mark Stryker contributed to this report.

Peter Cummings

Job: Real estate developer.

Accomplishments: Developed multiple projects in Detroit including Orchestra Place, the Ellington apartments, and the retail site that includes the city's first Whole Foods market. As chairman of Florida-based Ram Realty Services, he has developed multiple retail and residential projects in Florida and other Southern states.

Education: Yale University (BA, 1968) and the University of Toronto, MA in English Literature in 1969. In 1988, he completed the Owner/President Management Program at the Harvard Business School

Personal: Son-in-law to the late legendary Detroit businessman Max Fisher, Cummings helped Fisher with many of his Detroit-oriented revitalization projects.

Other: Lives in Florida but recently took an apartment in Detroit to work on projects here. Past Chairman of the Detroit Symphony Orchestra and has served on the board of the New York Philharmonic.