The Brodhead Naval Armory, originally built in 1930 to house a bulging Michigan Naval militia, now stands along Jefferson Avenue, at the foot of the bridge leading to Belle Isle, a shell of its former self.
The armory, which served sailors and Marines until it closed in 2004, is now in horrible shape. A massive hole in the roof that has been there for years now allows the rain and other weather inside the building. There’s standing water inside, and the Armory’s art collection is crumbling to the ground.
But that’s not how Tony Michaels sees it.
Michaels, the president and CEO of The Parade Company – the company that oversees the Detroit Thanksgiving parade and a slew of other events – sees a vibrant centerpiece for everything the company does in the city, an excellent place to serve as The Parade Company’s new headquarters.
Michaels knows first things come first — the armory would have to be restored to its former glory — but if fate and the generosity of donors comes through, that’s exactly what will happen.
The Parade Company has begun a $45 million fundraising campaign — they’re calling it “Be a Heart of History” — designed to raise enough money to purchase the armory and make it the company’s new home.
“This building has been empty for 20 years, it’s right on the Detroit river … It just made a lot of sense for a lot of reasons,” Michaels said. (Tony Michaels talks about the Brodhead Armory, click here.) “It’s in a visible location, and the design we’re putting to this is going to be just first-class. It answers a lot of questions, not just for the Parade Company, but for the city, the neighborhood. This is a win across the board for everybody.”
Michaels said the Parade Company has entered into a development agreement with the City of Detroit to purchase the armory. In the first 15 months, he said, the drive had raised $13.5 million (Those wishing to help can find a link on the company’s website at theparade.org, or call Sandy Kempa at 313-923-7403). Many donors had already agreed to give, the company was “waiting on a bunch” of others and was “continuing to make more presentations.” (Tony Michaels talks about the plans for the new headquarters, click here.)
They also found out through U.S. Sen. Debbie Stabenow’s office there was another $3.5 million in government funding available.
“We’ve done pretty well (so far), Michaels said. “This building has been empty for 20 years, and here we come with something that will be a real game-changer on Jefferson Avenue. We’re excited, and lots of other people are excited.”
Not bad for an organization funded by the generosity of sponsors and donors. Those, Michaels pointed out, net about $1 million a year, and that’s after increasing company expenses by twice that since Michaels arrived.
“We knew we had to fix everything,” Michaels said in explaining the increase in expenses, “which we did.”
The drive for the new headquarters is all being put in motion because the Parade Company simply needs a new home. Michaels said the current Mt. Elliott location is “antiquated,” leaks when it rains and is “just the wrong place to be.”
He said it’s in the middle of the logistics center of Detroit, with “trucks everywhere and, if it is to continue to grow and be a major part of life in Detroit, it’s “time to go.” The current location, he said, “checks every box” for why a new headquarters is needed.
“It’s time to move on, and we need a great place for this great team, for these products,” said Michaels, who earned a bachelor’s degree in business and marketing from Central Michigan University. (Tony Michaels talks about the need for a new building, click here.) “The (Thanksgiving) parade is truly the heart and soul when it comes to events, with a million people on Woodward, a 25-rating on WDIV … We do good things.
“We need to become the next evolution of the Parade Company, where bringing people together gets a little closer to home,” he added.
Bob Riney, the president and CEO of Henry Ford Health who also chairs the Parade Company’s Executive Committee, agreed the armory is the perfect place for the company’s new home.
“The Brodhead Armory is an outstanding site for the new Parade Company headquarters for a number of reasons,” Riney said. “First, it complements a thriving riverfront by bringing another interactive event venue to the area and adding to downtown being an exciting destination. Second, it revitalizes and repurposes a historic site and building into a new and wonderful next chapter.”
Dan Loepp, president and CEO of Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, is past-president of the Parade Company’s Executive Committee who chaired the
Board of Directors from 2016-2021. He said the Parade Company won’t be the only beneficiary of the project.
He said the City of Detroit stands to gain, as well.
“The new location will provide a much-needed innovative headquarters for The Parade Company along with many benefits to the city,” Loepp said. “The development will increase the visibility of The Parade Company and the historic Brodhead Armory. The location on the Detroit Riverfront has great potential to become a family-oriented landmark that regularly attracts events and visitors.
The plan is to tear down the back end of the existing building and build a new, two-story, 130,000-square-foot structure. At the same time, the company will refurbish the 37,000-square-foot frontage, which is right on Jefferson, “back to its glory,” Michaels said.
The building will not only house the Parade Company and provide space to build the floats for the Thanksgiving parade, but it will house summer camps for arts and crafts for Detroit Public Schools students and host internship programs.
The Parade Company, which is partnered with the Detroit Coalition of Veterans, also plans on establishing an office and event space within the building dedicated to veterans.
There will be a new deck right on the river — “The Riverwalk will eventually come right behind the building,” Michaels said — and the building will serve as an events center.
Determining the fate of the art inside the building has presented one of the project’s biggest hurdles. While some of it is salvageable, many pieces have “been damaged badly,” according to Michaels.
The Parade Company has worked with the Historic District Commission and hired a conservator to help deal with the issue.
“We are going to salvage every piece of art that is salvageable in that building,” Michaels said.
Once that has all been ironed out, Michaels is excited about the prospects for the project.
“There is so much to this and add in (the fact) this blighted building will be reborn again in an amazing way,” Michaels said. “It’s really Parade Company 2.0.”
So, what will the armory give the Parade Company that it doesn’t have now? Space they don’t have for the floats now, as much as anything. It’s going to have state-of-the-art exhaust systems.
The additional space will provide capacity for meeting rooms, the ability to host tours in a “much more proper way” than can be done at the Mt. Elliott location, and the ability to host events the current location doesn’t have.
“People want to rent this current building all the time, and we have to say no. but they’ll be able to rent the new building,” Michaels said. “In fact, we’re already getting calls. It’s promising, it really is.”
The building, he said, will be set up in a “very professional manner” with a vision and a “dream to do things right.”
“People have confidence that we’re going to get this done,” he said. “The reaction when we did this publicly was unbelievable. People were saying the Parade Company ‘means the world to the city, region and state, and you’ve got to get this done.’”
Riney believes that confidence will translate into support from the community.
“The Parade Company has created wonderful memories for multiple generations of families and continues to be one of the nation’s premier holiday celebrations,” he said. “I am optimistic that generous donors will support this truly special company.”
The new headquarters will be the latest change Michaels has spearheaded since stepping into the CEO job after serving in the same capacity for Big Boy Restaurants.
He’d already been serving on the Parade Company board and had developed a sense of the pitfalls and the areas he felt needed fixing.
Once he decided to take the CEO job, he set about fixing them.
“What we’ve done in 13-14 years is set out to pretty much improve everything,” Michaels said. “We knew by improving everything — and that means bigger and nice floats, bigger fireworks, great volunteer treatment — all of these things that were good before, but we had to make them great.
“We changed everything top-to-bottom and, as the saying goes, ‘If you build it, they will come,’” he added. “It allowed us to grow our sponsorship in a really big way. If you make things better, people want to be a part of it. That has been probably the most gratifying, satisfying thing. We now have a massive group of sponsor/supporters, allowing us to take this organization to the next level.”
Michaels has been the guy to accomplish that next-level thinking, but it wouldn’t have happened without the family meetings he had with his wife and three children when he started considering it.
It was during the economic crunch in 2008 when, Michaels admitted, his time with Big Boy was coming to an end — “There was not a lot of things happening in a good way in those years … My run was over at Big Boy restaurants,” he said — and he was looking at options.
He didn’t want to leave the region or the state, and then the Parade Company opening popped up. The last thing he wanted to do was move out of the region and out of the state.
He wasn’t sure about checking into it but decided to go through the hiring process anyway. After interviewing him, company officials decided he was the guy.
“I went through the process, which was great to go through, and ultimately they called me and said they’d love me to do this,” Michaels said. “We had a family discussion, and it was unanimous. They said, ‘you need to do this because Detroit needs it.’ I felt good about it from Day One, but they needed a say.”
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan’s Loepp is glad Michaels took the plunge.
“Tony is as good as anybody in America at what he does,” Loepp said. “I experienced that firsthand during my time as chair. He is enthusiastic about his job and works tirelessly to promote world-class events that put a national spotlight on the city. It’s rewarding to see the joy that people experience at these events; they put smiles on everyone’s faces and create lasting memories that make us all proud to live in Michigan.”
The next step — once Michaels accepted the position — was getting the 17-member staff on board with what he wanted to do. Having observed the challenges facing the company from his seat on the board, Michaels said the team responded.
“I knew this needed to go through an evolution, and this great team really pushed it through,” he said. “When I explained what we needed to do, they said, ‘We’re all in, let’s go.’ The whole goal was to make this a company where no one would ever say again that maybe we can’t have the parade or maybe we can’t have the fireworks. Those days are gone. We have really turned a corner here in an amazing way.”
He’s proud of the way the company has turned into a team-centric organization that has turned the events the Parade Company puts on — the Thanksgiving parade, the annual fireworks show, the S3 Turkey Trot and Hob Nobble Gobble — into what Michaels says are “world-class events.”
And they’ve done it, he said, while becoming a place where team members are given every opportunity to grow in their careers.
“Leadership has a responsibility not only to the brand and the organization, but to the people willing to make this their career,” he said. “If someone makes this their career, you have to do everything to make them successful.
“By being able to grow this organization, we’ve been able to grow their careers in many ways,” he added.
The ones he’s happiest for are the people of Detroit, the region and the state who get to enjoy the events the Parade Company puts on.
After sitting on the board and even being a sponsor when he was at Big Boy, Michaels had a good idea of what the events — particularly the parade — meant to people.
But taking on the role of CEO, and being charged with running things, Michaels got to see the reactions first-hand. Pulling off a virtual edition of the parade during the pandemic in 2020 cemented their love of the event.
“Getting direct feedback from people is so heartwarming … The reaction of people to what we do and what it means in their life,” he said. “When we pulled off that virtual parade you would not have believed the reaction … the cards, emails, texts, calls we received that, even though it was more a virtual type of parade, people woke up on Thanksgiving morning, and everything felt good again.
“That really hit us that we persevered, and we did the right thing,” he added. “This rules everything. It’s a fabric of their lives. It’s our job to continually make it better and do all the right things.”
View the entire interview with Tony Michaels here.
