Denise Ilitch, like most of the Regents, comes from money — but Ilitch’s family has a specific and long-running history of dispossession and false promises made to Detroit. Their fortune is primarily managed through Ilitch Holdings, a corporation managing many different entities including:
- Little Caesars Pizza, the Ilitch family’s largest business
- The National Hockey League (NHL) Detroit Red Wings
- The Major League Baseball (MLB) Detroit Tigers
- Olympia Entertainment
- Olympia Development
- Olympia Parking
- Blue Line Foodservice Distribution
- Champion Foods
- 313 Presents
- the Little Caesars Pizza Kit Fundraising Program
- Hockeytown Cafe, and a variety of venues within these entities.
Ilitch Holdings subsidiaries manage
- Detroit's Fox Theatre
- City Theatre
- Pine Knob Music Theatre
- Michigan Lottery Amphitheater
- Meadow Brook Amphitheater
- Little Caesars Arena, which replaced Joe Louis Arena after closing in July 2017
Ilitch grew up in Michigan, graduating from University of Michigan (UM) in 1977 and the University of Detroit Law School in 1980. After law school, Ilitch joined the family business, serving as vice president of Little Caesar Enterprises from 1981 to 1992. In 2000, her parents appointed her and her brother, Christopher Ilitch, co-presidents of Ilitch Holdings. She left this position in 2004 after becoming estranged from her mother and brother. Illitch became a regent of the University of Michigan in 2008, a position which she has held for over 16 years.
Ilitch Holdings’ most controversial projects have operated through Olympia Development, a real estate and construction company that has received hundreds of millions of dollars in tax subsidies with little to show for it. The single largest project from Olympia Development, which kickstarted its broader campaign of development, and which Olympia is still struggling to “catch up” to, is Little Caesars Arena (LCA), which was built to house the Ilitch-owned Detroit Red Wings and later also the Detroit Pistons.
Little Caesars Arena opened in 2017, with construction costing a total of $862 million. It was — and still is — an immensely controversial project. LCA faced lawsuits over funding from property taxes previously designated for schools without a vote from Detroiters, $34.5 million of which was attacked in the suit as relevant to the Pistons’ move to the arena but which received a total of $363 million in public funding. A judge threw out the lawsuit for its failure to demonstrate injury, though the harms are quite clear. A separate, successful, suit accused LCA of failing to hire a worker base comprising 51% of Detroiters, winning $2.9 million across 53 contractors (though this was barely a slap on the wrist for most contractors; John Papalas & Co was fined literally 26 cents). Later, a Black worker sued for “Mississippi-style discrimination,” including bullying and an unjust layoff from Hardman Construction which is one of the dozens of LCA’s construction contractors. A settlement was reached in Wilson v. Hardman Construction case in December of 2018. Most recently, workers in LCA through SEIU Local 1 brought signatures to City Hall in February 2023 for a labor relations board to oversee grievances and issue guidelines for wages, a resistance to the precarious and low-paying jobs created through the LCA project. While Ilitch takes advantage of the Detroit community, she has served as the board of directors for the Detroit Branch of the NAACP and the ACLU. She embodies hypocrisy while actively harming the community she claims to serve.
As part of the plan for the LCA, the Ilitches promised the development of five neighborhoods, complete with mixed-use housing, shopping centers, and new parking, called “The District Detroit”. But those highly-valued promises never materialized. This did not stop the Ilitches from continuing and expanding this promise after the LCA was constructed, though, acquiring last year nearly $800 million in state tax subsidies and $51.8 million from the City for the $1.5 billion-dollar District Detroit project. But after ten years these bold visions have accrued nothing but blighted buildings and tax subsidies.
Now the Ilitches are promising another expansion to The District: the University of Michigan Center for Innovation (UMCI), a major collaboration between Olympia Development and UM alum and megadonor Stephen Ross of Related Companies, who the Anti-Eviction Mapping Project profiled in 2023 as one of the “Worst Evictors of the Bay Area.” Like previous District Detroit initiatives, promises are large and public money is at stake. Olympia owned a plot of land at Grand River Avenue and West Columbia street that was donated to the University of Michigan in 2022, and is the planned site for the UMCI. The project has received $100 million from the State of Michigan, $50 million from anonymous donors, and a $100 million gift from codeveloper Stephen Ross, who stands to benefit from his company’s involvement in the project. Will the UMCI be anything more than a money laundering scheme for Ross and Related Companies, facilitated by Ilitch Holding’s Olympia Development? The history of dispossession led by Olympia Development suggests that it will not.
The self-dealing doesn’t end with Stephen Ross; in 2022, Olympia Development bought several plots of land adjacent to Comerica Park, the Wayne County-owned stadium that serves as the home of the Ilitch-owned Tigers. In 2023, Axios revealed that the profits from the sale would go right back to financing renovations for Comerica Park — which the Ilitches benefit from as the owners of the Tigers. The Ilitches pay for something once, then make a backdoor deal to get something for free in response.
What is Denise Ilitch’s role in all of this? Ilitch has made attempts to distance herself from her family’s empire, especially when the University is involved. In 2021, Denise Ilitch made a disgruntled public statement expressing “complete surprise” when it was revealed that Ilitch Holdings was participating in creating the Center for Innovation with Related and Stephen Ross, and recused herself from her Regents duties around the deal. Then-President Schlissel’s backdoor handling of negotiations with Related and Ross would be one tension point of many between the Regents and Schlissel.
Though she no longer has a formal position in her family’s companies, her political influence and persona as a leading Detroit businesswoman is only possible because of her continued association with the Little Caesars dynasty, necessitating recusals like the kind she gave in 2021. Ilitch regularly makes podcast appearances where she boasts of her family’s history of business in Detroit and her own role in coordinating their takeover of downtown Detroit. Her election and re-election campaigns were funded by several executives of Ilitch Holdings, including David Agius, Scott Fisher, Charles Jones, Ken Holland, and Michael Healy. Ilitch cites her experience “help[ing] start her family’s business” as valuable expertise in her current campaign material.
Electoral Troubles
Denise Ilitch is currently the only incumbent Regent at the University of Michigan running for re-election; Ilitch and Ron Weiser are eligible for re-election, but Weiser failed to receive his party’s nomination at the GOP Michigan Convention this summer. The campaign of Palestinian-American civil and human rights lawyer Huwaida Arraf has filed a lawsuit to contest the Michigan Democratic Party’s nomination of Ilitch and fellow regent candidate Shauna Ryder Diggs. The suit alleges that the Party broke their own proportional voting rules, costing Huwaida the nomination, and that the election lacked transparency, with Huwaida’s campaign being denied access to the Party’s tabulation area while other candidates, even Regent Paul Brown, were allowed to be present. The reason Denise Ilitch received this nomination seems clear: the Democratic Party would prefer a regent who will listen to big business over one who will listen to students.
Denise Ilitch’s campaign today tries to erase her billionaire heritage, instead sending texts to all Michigan Democratic Party members that cast her as a “first-generation” student. We know better — Ilitch coasts on the economic and social capital commanded by Ilitch Holdings, today navigating the world of Michigan elites and steadily rotating through board positions, podcasts, and TV appearances.