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CRAIN'S - January 4, 2014 [DETROIT] - It has taken seven years and an immeasurable amount of political jockeying, but the $137 millionM-1 Rail streetcar project broke ground in July and is on schedule to be running up and down Woodward Avenue in 2016. The project's conductor as CEO has been Matt Cullen, the longtime Dan Gilbert lieutenant who also was instrumental in General Motors Co.'s purchase of the Renaissance Center and was a force for riverfront improvements. It has taken seven years and an immeasurable amount of political jockeying, but the $137 millionM-1 Rail streetcar project broke ground in July and is on schedule to be running up and down Woodward Avenue in 2016.The project's conductor as CEO has been Matt Cullen, the longtime Dan Gilbert lieutenant who also was instrumental in General Motors Co.'s purchase of the Renaissance Center and was a force for riverfront improvements.

Construction of the 3.3-mile downtown rail loop between Grand Boulevard and Congress Street, which will be done in late 2016, almost never began — but Cullen led the rescue effort.In December 2011, local, state and federal officials declared the rail plan dead in favor of a $500 million regional rapid bus line proposal. "That was the toughest. We had worked so hard on it," Cullen told Crain's last fall.

Cullen led an effort by M-1's key backers, who had assembled $100 million in funding commitments, to save their project. After meetings with city, state and federal officials, they bought themselves a reprieve. Eventually, the rapid bus line fell apart as Detroit went bankrupt, and M-1 Rail moved from concept to underconstruction reality. Cullen has spent years helping assemble what is now $179.4 million to complete the system — an amount that includes $24 million for 10 years of operations and maintenance. Funding the project are private companies, foundations and hospitals, along with local, state and federal government agencies — making for a 24-part public-private financing arrangement that took seven years to negotiate and create.

M-1's plan is a mostly curbside, fixed-rail streetcar circulator system, comingled with traffic, with 20 stations at 12 stops. Its six streetcars, not all of which will be in regular daily service, will run in the median at its north and south ends. Organizers predict 5,000 to 8,000 riders a day.

Cullen also is president and CEO of Gilbert's ever-busy Rock Ventures LLC, but has said he was spending up to half his time working on M-1 Rail until construction began.