IndyCar, NASCAR team owner Roger Penske driving force behind Detroit recovery

Brant James | USA TODAY Sports

Show Caption Hide Caption Roger Penske on love for Detroit and the GP Roger Penske talks about his love for the Detroit Belle Isle Grand Prix and the possibility of being inducted into the NASCAR Hall of Fame.

DETROIT -- Roger Penske might not be a name that comes to mind outside of Detroit when talking about key sports figures in the Motor City.

But the billionaire businessman, motor sports team owner and philanthropist, 80, who is the mastermind behind this weekend’s Verizon IndyCar Series doubleheader on Belle Isle, celebrated another milestone in his contributions to the city’s renaissance three weeks ago.

Penske had been waiting since 2006 for the opening of the QLine, a 3.3-mile light rail that runs along Woodward Avenue in the heart of downtown, so another 90 minutes didn’t bother him much, although he detests dead time in his daily schedule.

He had offered his money and time, but more important, say those associated with the QLine, he leveraged his sizable influence in a city and region M-1 Rail President and CEOMatt Cullen says often is hobbled by its “Balkanized relationships.” So Penske stood this May morning, greeting scores of politicians and business power brokers who filled this staging room in the lobby of the David Whitney Building, a historic former diamond exchange that four years ago had pigeons flying through its vaulted atrium.

“Roger is the gold standard,” Eric Larson, CEO of the Downtown Detroit Partnership, told USA TODAY Sports. “He is truly our community’s elder statesman. ... If you don’t have someone people think will do the right thing every time, there’s an issue. It’s very difficult to navigate that. And Roger was that voice that people could rely on.”

As the inaugural car glided to a halt behind the stage on Woodward Avenue, Dan Gilbert, who owns the Cleveland Cavaliers, is a Detroit native and founded Quicken Loans, concluded his remarks. Gilbert’s donation had been the largest, granting him naming rights. His investment in the city has included seeding more than 3,000 Quicken jobs. But Gilbert asserted that among the many Ps responsible for the $150 million QLine — “public, private, partnership” — Penske was the most important.

Penske laughed. But his credentials as a philanthropist had been established before he began to pull levers of power within the city and state, Cullen said.

Not about self-interest

In addition to helping the city land Super Bowl XL in 2006 as head of the host committee, he also founded the Clean Downtown program to employ the disadvantaged to tidy streets and solicited a group of business leaders to help purchase 100 police cars and 23 emergency medical service units for the city at a cost of $8 million.

As he formulated a plan to return an IndyCar race to Belle Isle on the Detroit River, he was approached by a group championing the nascent effort for what became the QLine. The tangle of bureaucracy included navigating the terms of multiple governors, mayors and city council members of varying political stripes, the loss of public funding for the project and the decision to organize a group of private backers to proceed.

That Penske has rebuffed overtures to draft him to run for Detroit mayor or U.S. Senate helps his sway, Larson said, as “often, but not always, people do something mostly because it’s the right thing to do at the time, but also because it may be for future gain.”

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan told USA TODAY Sports, “His money was important, but what was far more important was the power of his personality. He convinced us that this was the right thing to do. Once he did, it was just a matter of getting it done.”

Preferably, for Penske, discreetly.

“You can literally go through every major event in the city and Roger has had his fingerprints on it in one way or another,” Larson said, “but not in a sort of a forward-facing way.”

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Penske was born and raised in Shaker Heights, Ohio, but is very much a Detroiter. He moved to town in 1970 to sell Chevrolets at his dealership in Southfield and in 1972 purchased Michigan International Speedway, though he sold it to International Speedway Corp. in 1999. Penske moved east when he acquired the distributor rights to Detroit Diesel in the New York area but bought the company in 1988 and relocated to the Detroit area permanently. Penske Corp.’s business and motor sports headquarters are perched in a nondescript office building in Bloomfield Hills, north of downtown. Part of Penske’s affinity for Detroit is a life-long love of the grunt of a motor, harkening to his teen years selling cars he had repaired.

As for Penske’s civic efforts, Ford Performance global director Dave Pericak told USA TODAY Sports: “Roger really loves an underdog story.”

Penske agrees, but there is business pragmatism, too.

“You have some success, and this is a great way to give back,” Penske told USA TODAY Sports. “You could give it to your college, you could give it to your high school, but I think this city is so important, and it’s in our business. This is the auto capital. Why wouldn’t you get involved?”

Drivers to watch at the Chevrolet Detroit Grand Prix George Sipple of the Detroit Free Press looks ahead to which drivers could be poised to have big days.

No plans to slow down

The QLine’s route terminates downtown, near where the massive bronze embodiment of Joe Louis’ right arm brandishes a fist across the river toward Windsor, Ontario. It’s close to the GM Renaissance Center, a glass mega-structure with an ironic name when Detroit’s economic decay culminated in 2013 as the largest U.S. city to declare bankruptcy. At the steps of the hotel and office structure stretches the Detroit Riverwalk, which traces along the Detroit River to Gabriel Richard Park and the lone bridge to Belle Isle.

Penske sees the Detroit Grand Prix as the same kind of investment and infusion of civic identity to Detroit as the light rail, which he hopes eventually will link statewide, to the airport and beyond. The park on the 982-acre island has fluctuated with the city, and Penske undertook returning the Detroit GP to the IndyCar schedule in 2007 with his customary demand for detail and presentation.

“I remember when we cut the trees and we started pruning out the whole island on the western end, you didn’t even know there was water on the other side,” Penske said, slowing his black SUV on the island’s Riverbank Drive to gesture toward the yacht club. “We pulled all the dead pilings out. There must have been 250 pilings sticking up and we spent the money to pull it out.”

Pleased with the pace of track construction for the upcoming doubleheader, Penske begins to accelerate when he notices the first green grass shoots of spring protruding through cracks in the curbs. “Get that cleaned up,” he instructs a race employee.

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The Detroit Grand Prix returned to Belle Isle but went dormant again from 2009 to 2011, as the auto industry, and therefore Detroit, convulsed.

Penske Corp. has spent in excess of $13 million in refurbishing the island — now the most visited state park in Michigan — but claims a yearly $45 million in economic impact and in excess of 90,000 attendees in four of the last five installments of the doubleheader weekend.

In 2015, the Grand Prix raised $1.1 million for the Belle Isle Conservancy through its Grand Prixmiere charity event. The money funded the renewal of the iconic Scott Fountain and other refurbishments.

But as with the QLine, there has been some local resistance as various groups vie for their vision of Detroit’s attempted comeback. The city remains a disparate place, blooming in some areas downtown while geese wander through vacant lots near new apartments on Atwater Street. A group of a dozen or so protesters disapproved of the QLine not yet servicing an area greater than the downtown core.

A bicyclist with leaflets protesting the race tried to interrupt Penske as he prepared for a television interview on pit road of the 2.35-mile course, saying the race had no right to use public land, while money derived from it has paid for improvements. Penske is contracted with the city to promote the race through 2018.

“There’s always been the pushback on Belle Isle,” Penske said. “Some don’t like the noise. Some don’t like the racing; they don’t like cars. It kind of goes along with the traffic, but we’re nine weeks from the time we start on the island. We only have it closed down for one weekend, and still people can get access.

“There’s always someone on the other side.”

Cullen hopes that Penske will be amenable to whatever civic need is on the other side of the QLine.

“He talks like he’s going to slow down in that regard a little bit, but I don’t really see any signs of it,” he said. “I see the passion. He’s interesting in the sense of he wants to get stuff done. ... I’m looking to see what I can find.”

Expect Penske to be ready.

Follow James on Twitter @brantjames

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