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Land area

Michigan

96,810 square miles, 11th largest state

Texas

268,601 square miles, 2nd largest

Population 2008 est

Michigan 10,003,422

Texas 24,326,974

Population in largest cities

1 1,953,631 Houston

2 1,188,580 Dallas

3 1,144,646 San Antonio

4 656,562 Austin

5 563,662 El Paso

6 534,694 Fort Worth

7 332,969 Arlington

8 277,454 Corpus Christi

9 222,030 Plano

10 215,768 Garland

11 199,564 Lubbock

12 191,615 Irving

1 Detroit 916,952

2 Grand Rapids 193,627

3 Warren 134,223

4 Sterling Heights 127,349

5 Ann Arbor 115,092

6 Lansing 114,947

7 Flint 114,662

8 Clinton Twp 96,253

9 Livonia 93,931

10 Dearborn 89,252

More fascinating stuff here:

http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/26000.html

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In a Wall Street Journal article, Bill George (former CEO of Medtronic), does a great analysis of bold moves that GM should take to turn things around, INCLUDING the idea of moving GM's headquarters to Dallas, Atlanta, or Grand Rapids, to drastically shake up the culture.

More talk of GM moving its HQ (although, not necessarily to Grand Rapids).

GM CEO Fritz Henderson says tasks are large to avoid bankruptcy, leaves open possibility of moving headquarters out of Detroit

Also Monday, Henderson left open the possibility that GM would move its corporate headquarters out of Detroit. The company, he said, is looking at everything within its business.

"It's not like we have that queued up at the top of our list," he said, adding that GM has a large number of people in Detroit and is proud to be here.

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I've changed my mind since then. GM leaving Detroit, even to come to GR, would be a bad thing.

I agree. GM relocating their HQ to GR would be a really bad thing.

However, who is not to say that a company like Fiat would not come and "park" their US headquarters in good ol' West Michigan?! Now wouldn't that shake our state up a little bit?!

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I agree. GM relocating their HQ to GR would be a really bad thing.

However, who is not to say that a company like Fiat would not come and "park" their US headquarters in good ol' West Michigan?! Now wouldn't that shake our state up a little bit?!

Yes, that would be interesting. And right now, I don't think Fiat has a presence anywhere in the U.S.. Not even a tech center. However, Chrysler has a big building in Auburn Hills that is probably 1/2 empty right now.

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Why would it be bad if GM relocated to Grand Rapids? Other than bad publicity I can't think of anything awful, it'd be a new company. The worst thing I can think of is bad blood between regions. Or maybe it's Grand Rapids reputation, NOT as an auto-industrial center. But these would pretty much be white collar jobs, It'd never happen, but it just doesn't seem that bad.

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Yes, that would be interesting. And right now, I don't think Fiat has a presence anywhere in the U.S.. Not even a tech center. However, Chrysler has a big building in Auburn Hills that is probably 1/2 empty right now.

Fiat actually has a huge presence in America. It owns Case New Holland, the maker of farm and heavy equipment with its HQ in suburban Chicago and factories all over the country. Fiat's CEO Sergio Marchionne is Chairman of CNH, and says he plans to take over as CEO of Chrysler when in exists bankruptcy court in a month or two. Also, I believe that Cerburus, the private equity firm that bought 80% of Daimler's stake in Chrysler, retained ownership of the Auburn Hills HQ. So Chrysler may have no reason, or right, to stay in future years. I could see a scenario in which Marchionne ends up move Chrysler's executive offices to Chicago.

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Correction to my last post...Cerberus is handing over the keys...for $1..... to the new entity that will constitute Chrysler once it exits bankruptcy court. That's $1 for what's said to be the 2nd largest office building in America, beat out only by The Pentagon.

Fiat actually has a huge presence in America. It owns Case New Holland, the maker of farm and heavy equipment with its HQ in suburban Chicago and factories all over the country. Fiat's CEO Sergio Marchionne is Chairman of CNH, and says he plans to take over as CEO of Chrysler when in exists bankruptcy court in a month or two. Also, I believe that Cerburus, the private equity firm that bought 80% of Daimler's stake in Chrysler, retained ownership of the Auburn Hills HQ. So Chrysler may have no reason, or right, to stay in future years. I could see a scenario in which Marchionne ends up move Chrysler's executive offices to Chicago.
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Correction to my last post...Cerberus is handing over the keys...for $1..... to the new entity that will constitute Chrysler once it exits bankruptcy court. That's $1 for what's said to be the 2nd largest office building in America, beat out only by The Pentagon.

Perhaps in 40 years the city of Auburn Hills will be trying to use federal stimulus money to tear down that "blight".

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Now there's a sustainable, green, well-designed, LEED community for ya. :snork:

You laugh, but the building was designed to be convertible to a mall in the likely event Chrysler failed someday. When did they build that, the early 90's? I'd say that was a "sustainable" plan. :)

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A mall? In Auburn Hills?!? Imagine that!

I am beating up on the place because I once spent about an hour on the freeway trying to get from the Silverdome area to the Square Lake Road area, which is about as far apart as Meijer Gardens and Knapp's Corner.

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Chris Knape twittered this CVB video earlier today while at the DDA:

That's pretty nice. Do you think people outside of GR recognize Brian VanderArk's voice? Or is it just for us locals to know. :ph34r:

I can't believe FMG made #13 on that list. That's amazing!

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That's pretty nice. Do you think people outside of GR recognize Brian VanderArk's voice? Or is it just for us locals to know. :ph34r:

I can't believe FMG made #13 on that list. That's amazing!

I have no idea where they're going to run this. The CVB really needs to create a different graphics and image package starting with the typface. Does everything need a logo?

Edited by Rizzo
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Is the Kellogg Company starting to identify itself with Grand Rapids?

I noticed their most recent earnings reports had "Grand Rapids" as their tagline. And so GR gets picked up by other media:

http://www.nwaonline.net/articles/2009/04/...bizwzwmtcom.txt

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2009/04/30/ap6363243.html

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Is the Kellogg Company starting to identify itself with Grand Rapids?

I noticed their most recent earnings reports had "Grand Rapids" as their tagline. And so GR gets picked up by other media:

http://www.nwaonline.net/articles/2009/04/...bizwzwmtcom.txt

http://www.forbes.com/feeds/ap/2009/04/30/ap6363243.html

To me, the content in that Forbes link just came out of AP's Grand Rapids office. Maybe due to cutbacks, this was the closest reporter they had who could write it up?

Then, the writer on the first site (NWAonline) may have just assumed that Kellogg was based in Grand Rapids because of the AP dateline? That article appears to just be the writer aggregating content from the AP and some other sources she probably found through a google search.

I would highly doubt that Kellogg is identifying itself with Grand Rapids.

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To me, the content in that Forbes link just came out of AP's Grand Rapids office. Maybe due to cutbacks, this was the closest reporter they had who could write it up?

Then, the writer on the first site (NWAonline) may have just assumed that Kellogg was based in Grand Rapids because of the AP dateline? That article appears to just be the writer aggregating content from the AP and some other sources she probably found through a google search.

I would highly doubt that Kellogg is identifying itself with Grand Rapids.

The press release from Kellogg's said "Grand Rapids." So now Grand Rapids gets repeated in all the earnings reports (and mistakenly shown as the headquarters in some of them). Just sayin. :dontknow: Maybe their PR company is in GR. Or maybe for national releases, more people have heard of Grand Rapids than Battle Creek.

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