New Chair at Chamber Always Finds Time to Help: An Interview with Bill Milliken B-To-B, PERSON-TO-PERSON Ann Arbor Regional Business-To-Business January 2001 - Volume 21, Number 1 by Jeff Mortimer Bill Milliken, who became the new chair of the Ann Arbor Area Chamber of Commerce board of directors at the start of the year, is the owner of Ann Arbor-based Milliken Realty Company, a commercial brokerage and consulting firm, which he founded in 1996 after eight years with First Martin Corporation. The first 42 years of his life were spent in a variety of other pursuits. Born and raised in Traverse City, he attended Suffield Academy in Massachusetts, earned a degree in political science from Colorado College, served in the U.S. Army, worked for five years for Youth for Understanding, was involved in the oil business, was special assistant to the deputy attorney general in the U.S. Department of Justice, associate administrator for external affairs at the National Aeronautics and Space Administration, and worked on several political campaigns, including his father's successful re-election bid for governor of Michigan in 1974. His dad, also named William, was the state's longest-serving governor, from 1968 to 1983. He is a member of the board of Republic Bank and has been a director or board member of numerous nonprofit organizations,, including Artrain, USA; Non-Profit Enterprise at Work; Planned Parenthood of Mid-Michigan; the Professional Volunteer Corps, and the Ann Arbor Art Association. B-TO-B: What's on the agenda for the Chamber this year? Milliken: At the Chamber board's retreat, we tried to figure out what would be reasonable to address and actually got to agree that one of the things at the top of the list was growth in Washtenaw County, and how the Chamber could take a role that would help to manage the process. I don't think anybody believes that it is feasible to put growth on hold. The challenge to everybody-the business community, government, nonprofit-is to understand the growth and make it as smart a process as we can, so that we minimize the amount of tract housing in former agricultural fields. We haven't got our finger on how to take a leadership role in it but we know the Chamber of Commerce is in a unique position, with so many different business segments that the Chamber reaches into. There's a real role for the Chamber as an ombudsman between a lot of the parties that sometimes spar with each other, to help manage the type of growth that's going to be inevitable here. The temptation is always to put your arms around more things than you can address. The wisdom of the process is being able to identify several things that you can influence during the course of the year. That's the corner we're trying to turn right now. B-TO-B: What are some possible solutions? Milliken: To my way of thinking, it's a no-brainer to know that you've got to try and increase the density of existing communities, because the utilities and the police and fire protection and schools are already in place, versus reaching out into the townships to encourage development on brand-new tracts of land, where all of that infrastructure has to be put into place at great cost to somebody. IN my profession as a real estate broker, I've had an exciting time doing a lot of downtown Ann Arbor and some downtown Ypsilanti brokerage that has resulted in the acquisition and renovation of existing structures. In our business, we call it adaptive re-use, where a building that might have been an industrial building or an old retail store front can be acquired, expanded, redeveloped and serve office or residential use. B-TO-B: Where is the demand coming from? Milliken: One of the phenomena that we've seen that's been fascinating to me in my profession and also to many downtown boosters is the interest in the software companies in officing downtown. Being downtown is not on their wish list; it's mandatory. The lengths that many of the small software and technology companies will go to in order to secure some kind of downtown beachhead is pretty remarkable. Part of it's because of the requirement for connectivity, T-1 lines, highspeed communications. It's a practical matter. You can't get that in the outlying townships. Some of it is simply the ambience of downtown, all those coffee shops, the urban character, and the architectural qualities of a lot of downtown properties, a quaintness that simply isn't available in office park developments down the State Street corridor or Plymouth Road, with fresh construction and squeaky clean Class A offices. A lot of the technology companies don't think that enhances their environment. Of course, another factor is the proximity of downtown to the university and some of the university talent and university student workforce. That's an inseparable part of the software culture here. The IT Zone is another asset of downtown. The pricing in downtown Ann Arbor is sufficient that we're already seeing some overflow in Ypsilanti, some demand for downtown office space. B-TO-B: How did you get into the oil business? Milliken: After working on Illinois Gov. Jim Thompson's re-election campaign in 1978, I weighted whether or not to stay in Illinois and take a role in state government or to cast about some more, and I ended up taking a position as director of finacial affairs with Hamilton Brothers Oil Company, a privately owned, Denver-based company that developed the technology that allowed drilling and production off the floor of the North Sea. That took be into Denver in '79 for about four years of the boom times in the oil an dgas industry, until it went headlong in '83 and '84. I left Hamilton Brothers to take a position as manager of administration with Sumatra Energy Company, which was a small privately funded company. I would have been better doing it the other way around, joining a small company and moving to a larger, more stable one. When the bust came, Sumatra was one of those that got busted. The week before Christmas of 1982, I was requiredt o fire 24 people, a job which I was hoping I could at least delay until January. And then I was out of work myself in about April '83. B-TO-B: After four years in Washington, what brought you back to Michigan in 1987? Milliken: First I returned to Colorado to work on Andy Love's campaign for the Republican nomination for governor, a contest eventually won by Roy Rohmer, who was then state treasurer. When the Love campaign shut down, one of the consultants I had worked with asked me to come back to Michigan to assist George Herbert Walker Bush in his Presidential campaign here. I stayed on that fall at the behest of Spence Abraham, then the state Republican chair, and then-Senator John Engler to do fund-raising for the Michigan Republican party. At the conclusion of that campaign, it was evident to me that Michigan, which I had been out of professionally for years, had 6taged a remarkable recovery from its early '80s recession. I remember coming back to Michigan in 1980 from Denver for he Republican National Convention and the contrast between Colorado and Michigan was really struggling. But it became clear in '87 or so that Michigan had bounced back nicely, that there as a great deal of business activity here, and that's when I first began to formulate this career of commercial real estate that I've worked in since. So I met people Detroit and Ann Arbor and Lansing and Grand Rapids for several months, working to find the right fit for me for learning the commercial real estate industry, and I had an offer from Bill Martin to goin First Martin Corporation here in Ann Arbor, and that was my graduate level work in commercial real estate. I was responsible for some of the First Martin properties, which I managed, leased, and had budget responsibility for. That's where I really learned the business from the inside out. And then in '96, I went out and ran Milliken Realty Company's flag up the pole. I hadn't long-range planned it, but I saw that the real estate industry had recovered nicely. In 1990 in commercial real estate, there were the nightmares of high interest rates and very high vacancy rates, but by the mid-'90, vacancy rates were down, some new construction was coming along, there seemed to be great demand, and it seemed to me that my own brokerage and consulting business made sense at that point. B-TO-B: You seem, at least so far, to have been right. Milliken: It has been exciting. I remember watching friends that ran their own businesses work late into the night and through the weekends, and a part of me always wondered where in the world they got all the energy to do that. And I was sort of jealous because I didn't think that just anybody could muster that kind of energy, but I learned when I went out and started my own company that there are new-found reserves that you can turn to. The ability to work late and work long goes hand-in-hand with running your own business, but the exhilaration that you get from it makes it all worthwhile. My situation has been complicated somewhat because I'm not as good at saying no to the requests of a number of nonprofit agencies that have asked me to join their boards or otherwise help them in their work. The result is that I sit on a number of boards that provide me something to do with my evenings and weekends. B-To-B: What do you enjoy the most about your work? Milliken: Real estate gives you a lot of insight into other people's businesses, and it's always fascinating to see how businesses operate, what makes them successful, what their requirements are. But I think the thing that I get the biggest thrill out of is hearing my phone ring or having somebody approach me with a request for help and figuring out how I can help them solve the problem. Often it takes months, sometimes more than a year, to solve, whether it's acquiring real estate or divesting themselves of it or attempting to work out better lease terms with their landlord. It's a little corny, but I get a nice warm feeling inside when not only is a transaction closed, but the customer or client I had actually moves into their building. That's the point at which I can see the fruits of my labors. Another thing that been fun is a month or a year later, receiving a request from somebody on the other side of the transaction from, calling me for helping their next real estate transaction. That's happened fairly frequently.   Property listing data is based on information believed accurate & reliable. However, accuracy is not guaranteed. Copyright © 2005 Milliken Realty Company info@millikenrealty.com