Boji Group
Businesses: Real estate, wholesale distribution, lodging, and gas station/convenience stores
Principals: Ron Boji, president
and CEO; Louie Boji, chairman
Headquarters: Birmingham
Employees: 600+
Revenue: $500M+
Shy of 30 years old and “lost in my own building,” Ron Boji heard a male voice from behind him say, “Aren’t you that young kid who just bought the tower with your father?”
Turning around in the lobby of one of Lansing’s most iconic buildings, he looked at the man who clearly knew his way around the place better than its new co-owner. Acknowledging that, yes, he and his father, Louie, had indeed just acquired the then-Michigan National Building in downtown Lansing, Boji waited to find out what the man wanted from him.
It was 1998, and it was the first time Boji met Dennis Muchmore, a longtime Lansing lobbyist who later served as chief of staff for Gov. Rick Snyder. The Iraqi-born Boji, who had come to the United States with his family in 1968 at the tender age of 150 days, spent the next three hours getting an extensive tutorial from Muchmore on how Lansing works, and how to make money there in commercial real estate.
It all seemed unreal to a young Chaldean who doesn’t mind referring to himself as a “wacky Iraqi” and was a few years removed from operating a Computer Warehouse store across the country in Sacramento, Calif. If what Muchmore was telling him was accurate, the opportunity as owner of the now-renamed Boji Tower was almost unlimited.
But as the now-54-year-old Boji readily relays, opportunity doesn’t always wait for someone to be ready.
Today, the Lansing-based Boji Group has made an impact on much of the state — and beyond. The company owns 64 buildings, including structures in Lansing, Birmingham, and Royal Oak, as well as some as far away as California. Combined, the Boji companies generate more than $500 million in annual revenue. There are also 600-plus employees.
In addition to serving as landlords to major state agencies, especially those in the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services, Boji has interests beyond commercial real estate, including wholesale distribution, lodging, and gas station/convenience stores.
Boji Group owns 12 gas stations in Michigan. The local operations are all situated along the I-96 corridor, branded as First Stop. United Wholesale, which is Boji Group’s foray into wholesale distribution, provides goods to the First Stop stations.
Boji Group also owns eight hotels — branded as Hilton, Marriott, or Holiday Inn — with locations in Grand Rapids, Warren, Sterling Heights, Woodhaven, and East Lansing (“my favorite,” says the loyal Spartan).
The eight hotels weren’t immune to the market impact of COVID-19. Boji says the pandemic and resulting lockdowns reduced the company’s hotel revenue “from hundreds of thousands a month to hundreds a month.” But three things got the eight hotels, all of which are once again thriving, through the pandemic.
The first was federal PPP loans, which Boji says were essential to keeping the hotels’ employees on board. “We did what we had to do,” he says. “We couldn’t afford to lay people off because you can’t just bring them back.”
During the period in which business was essentially nonexistent, but the employees were still on board, the company gained an advantage by keeping its hotel facilities clean and ready to go. That led to the second factor that helped — the willingness of people to spend their stimulus funds on family getaways. “As the money got pumped into the public, people did staycations,” Boji says. “A local person in Sterling Heights gets the kids and says, ‘You know what? Let’s go stay at the Holiday Inn. We’ve got extra money given to us. We’ll go to the pool.’ ”
People on staycations didn’t fill the hotels, but they boosted occupancy from zero to 15 percent or so. Under the circumstances, that was a big boost.
The third factor arose from Boji Group’s relationships with their banks. “They literally called us and said, ‘Ron, don’t make payments to us. We know you have the liquidity. We know you need to be able to save your gunpowder.’ ”
Without even being prompted, the banks offered to suspend loan payments in 90-day increments that were added to the end of the loan periods. “They didn’t go making those calls to everybody,” Boji says. “That goes back to the relationship basis I’ve talked about from day one.”
Taking stock of the company’s entire development and investment portfolio, Boji declares the company to be nothing less than the fulfillment of the American dream. And he always points back to the purchase of the Michigan National Tower as the turning point.
The journey of the Bojis to take ownership of Lansing’s tallest building was typically atypical.
His father, after bringing his family to the United States from Iraq in 1968 (and becoming a U.S. citizen in 1974), found success in the grocery and convenience store business. He specialized in finance, management, and real estate, and led the development of two major retail centers that made the Boji family a player in the commercial sector.
But the young Ron Boji wasn’t sure, at the time, that the family business was for him. He wasn’t interested in grocery stores, and he wasn’t sure the opportunity would be there for him even if he wanted it.
“I thought my dad was going to make us go bankrupt,” Boji says. “When I graduated from Michigan State University in 1993 with a building construction management degree — which is signed by Joel Ferguson, who is now a business partner of mine — there was no real development that my dad had going on.”
Instead, Boji took an opportunity to open a Computer Warehouse in Sacramento. When he experienced success there, he was offered three options for coming home: He could open a Computer Warehouse in Toledo, Grand Rapids, or Lansing. “I didn’t think Grand Rapids would be the best fit for this wacky Iraqi,” Boji says. He chose Lansing over Toledo, figuring it would do him good to be back where he went to school.
His first Computer Warehouse store was at Jolly Road and Cedar Street, followed by a second store in East Lansing. The local operation quickly grew to $15 million in annual revenue, at which point he opened a third location closer to the MSU campus.
Now the Boji family business was on a roll, and they made what appeared at the time to be a modest investment by acquiring the Ingham County Democratic Building in downtown Lansing. “Two years after we bought it, we got an unsolicited offer from someone who wanted to buy a sliver of that land,” Boji says. “We sold that sliver of land to Rite Aid for more than we bought the whole building for.”
The purchase price Rite Aid paid was so large, the Bojis were able to take advantage of a real estate investment tool called a 1031 exchange to essentially flip the land for another piece of property: the Michigan National Building.
Built in 1931, the 23-story tower encompasses more than 185,000 square feet of space and sits squarely across the street from the Capitol Building. Originally named the Olds Tower, as it was financed by automotive entrepreneur Ransom E. Olds (founder of Oldsmobile), the building became the Michigan National Tower in 1954.
The Bojis didn’t rename the tower when they first purchased it, but when Standard Federal Bank acquired Michigan National Bank in 2001, the time was right for the building to become Boji Tower. At the time, the family didn’t appreciate its strategically advantageous location. Enter Muchmore, who laid out the opportunity the day he met the young Boji in the lobby.
“He said to me, ‘Son, you aren’t buying a brick-and-mortar building,’ ” Boji recalls. “He said, ‘You’re buying an institutional, political building that’s located across the street from the State Capitol that will always be there. What you do with that opportunity is up to you.’ Hence the vision of creating a development company, Boji Group, which emphasizes public-private partnerships.”
Muchmore, who had an office in the building at the time, remembers the conversation well. Indeed, it was no accident. Louie Boji was determined to see his son do well as the company grew, and he thought Muchmore might be just the person to point him in the right direction.
“His dad is a remarkable person,” Muchmore says. “I think very highly of his father and always have. And his dad wanted Ron to succeed in everything he did, so he kind of encouraged me to talk to Ron whenever I could.”
Because of the historical importance of the building, Muchmore saw the Bojis’ acquisition as a challenge. “I told Ron, ‘You’ve bought this building, and it means something in this town, and if you’re going to put your name on it, you’ve got to make it something special,’ ” Muchmore remembers. “And he always has.”
In order to position Boji Group for success leasing to the state government, Boji made a series of moves to gain insight into the process. He hired the State of Michigan’s recently retired director of real estate, became the client of the local lobbying group Public Affairs Associates, and filled the company’s roster with other veterans of the Lansing scene.
He also looked for opportunities to procure more Lansing properties, acquiring the Hollister Building in 2005 and then commencing Boji Group’s first major development, a $51-million building that now provides offices for the state Senate.
As he got deeper into the Lansing real estate scene, Boji learned how to structure deals with state government to generate revenue — never more so than in a joint venture with fellow Lansing developer Joel Ferguson.
“We did a nine-story, 145,000-square-foot building attached to an eight-story, 284-car parking deck,” Boji says. “The issue is we were backwards. The parking deck was the revenue-generator. The office building had no tenants. I first learned what a bond transaction was all about, and I did my first public-private partnership.”
Boji later sold the building to the City of Lansing, which was attracted to the guaranteed parking revenue. It was part of the process by which Boji learned how to make such deals work. “The City didn’t care what the cost was,” Boji recalls. “All they wanted was the guaranteed revenue stream to pay the bonds. But I had to build a spec office building and put it on the tax rolls to make it work.”
The more deals he did, the more he became adept. “This was our big way of learning everything,” he says. “How to get grants, how to get leases from the State of Michigan, how to do bond transactions.”
One of the things Boji Group came to understand is that the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services is constitutionally required to have branch offices throughout the state, providing services ranging from food stamps to child protective services. Boji Group now has developed 11 such properties and knows the process well.
Today, Boji Group’s real estate portfolio totals 3 million square feet of space, over 825,000 of which is in Lansing. In addition, the company is building a new office in downtown Birmingham, which will offer a shorter commute for Boji from his home in Orchard Lake.
It’s quite a set of accomplishments to enjoy. And yet, Boji was considering an early retirement in 2015. He had just closed on a major deal with the State of Michigan that put Boji Group in an excellent position, and he told his wife, Heather, he was ready to step aside.
That changed, however, when fellow developer Jeff Surnow of Birmingham unexpectedly died. Surnow had a contract to handle construction on the new civic center in downtown Royal Oak — a public-private partnership that would include a new city hall, police headquarters, a 144,000-square-foot office building, and a 550-space parking deck.
After their father’s passing, Surnow’s sons didn’t feel they could move forward with the project and approached Boji about taking it over. The public-private partnership was right up Boji’s alley, and he jumped at the chance, taking full ownership of the deal in 2017.
But it wasn’t an easy project to finish. “We were given $5.4 million in cash from the City, but I had to guarantee $12.4 million over the next four years in property tax revenue,” Boji says.
What’s more, a group of business owners along Main Street who were affected by the project took the City to court; among their concerns was the loss of public parking spaces in the rear of their buildings. The City eventually prevailed in court and went on to invest $63 million to build a new city hall, a police station, a seven-story, 581-space parking deck, and Centennial Commons, a 2.2-acre park.
In tandem, Boji built a $40-million outpatient building south of the parking deck. The spec office building filled quickly when Henry Ford Health ended up occupying the entire thing. The deal represented a fortuitous connection, as Boji is a major supporter of Henry Ford Health, contributing more than $5 million to the organization in the past two years.
With the Royal Oak project complete, Boji Group is concentrating its attention on downtown Birmingham, where it currently is working on several major projects, including the company’s move of its headquarters into the city from Lansing.
UPTOWN DOWNTOWN
The Boji Group is making an aggregate investment of close to $170 million in downtown Birmingham. The investment includes:
- A building at the northeast corner of N. Old Woodward and Maple Road, previously occupied by Panera Bread. The top floor of the building will be the new corporate headquarters of Boji Group, while the first floor will be occupied by CB2, a modern furniture and contemporary home décor store that’s part of the Crate & Barrel company.
- 460 N. Old Woodward, next to Market North End restaurant, which will be home to a high-end supper club called Wilders Bistro. It will be operated by the Eid family, owners of two other Birmingham restaurants, Phoenicia and Forest Grill, and will have upper-floor office and residential units overlooking Booth Park. The architect is Victor Saroki.
- The former Linda Dresner Building along Maple Road, at Bates Street, which is complete and occupied by Serena & Lily, a furniture, bedding, home accessories, and interior design store.
- A building being constructed at the southwest corner of S. Old Woodward and Brown Street, which will be occupied by RH (formerly Restoration Hardware).
- This is the only one of six projects in Birmingham for which Boji Group is the developer but not the owner.
- A new mixed-use building on the site of the old Coldwell Banker Weir Manuel building on Brown Street, a block west of S. Old Woodward. It will have below-grade parking, first-floor retail, second-floor offices, and 30 luxury apartments on the third and fourth floors, along with an active rooftop deck.
- The property at 220 Park St., a 48,000-square-foot, three-story building with 32 parking spots, was acquired by the Boji Group in December 2021 and converted from vacant to 100% occupancy in less than a year. The building will be home to Farmers & Merchants State Bank, law firm Clark Hill, and Hylant Insurance.
One office building, located at 220 Park St. just north of the Hunter House restaurant in Birmingham, was a tricky deal, but Boji found a way to make it work. “A gentleman by the name of Mr. (Harold) Kassab owned it,” Boji says. “He didn’t want to invest any money in it.
The only way he would do the deal with us was that he told us his price and said you have to close in 30 days, which means you have to pay cash because you can’t get a bank loan that fast.”
Once Clark Hill committed to leasing the top two floors, Boji was comfortable writing the $12.5 million check because he figured Merchant Bank (which also was going into the building) would back the deal after the fact, as long as there were paying tenants.
“What we’ve been able to do in only four short years is take Birmingham to a level that will be known across the United States as one of the most desirable live-work-and-play, high-end communities, because it’s so walkable and everybody wants to be in Birmingham,” Boji says.
While Boji acknowledges he didn’t bargain on the price of many of the properties, he sees advantages from his long-term strategy. “Today’s expensive is tomorrow’s cheap,” Boji says. “The value is going to do nothing but go up. And I’m not buying all these assets for me. I’m buying them for my kids, and their kids. This isn’t a play where you buy and flip. This is generational.”
Of course, Boji Group’s various lines of business come with their own challenges. The gas station business, at the moment, is far from the big moneymaker some might expect. “A $3 (per gallon) gas price will earn you the same margins per gallon as $5, but the credit card processing fee will cost you more,” Boji explains. “On the $5 per gas, you make the same cents per gallon but you have more cost.”
What’s more, gas stations with convenience stores, he says, make 65 percent of their overall profit margin from sales of snacks, drinks, and tobacco products inside the store, and the rest from fuel pumps. As for future changes, Boji hears a lot of talk about the emergence of electric vehicles, but he remains skeptical and doesn’t foresee the day coming soon when his gas stations are extensively equipped with EV chargers.
At the same time, United Wholesale struggles to get product to supply the gas stations because of the current snarls in supply chains, even as they’re trying, like so many other employers, to maintain their workforce. “We tell them thank you with a $5 raise,” Boji says.
“There’s no such thing as a minimum wage of $15 anymore. And the supply chain is killing us. So, what do you do? You just keep buying in bulk.”
One of Boji’s greatest passions is being a mentor for others in the Chaldean community, and not only on business matters. It’s one of the ways he’s determined to honor his father’s legacy.
“As his only son, I saw how he lived his life,” Boji says. “I saw how Dad would spend time not only being a husband and a father, but spending a lot of time helping the community. You would see a husband and a wife come to our home having marital issues, and my father would nurture them through it. Or two business partners who weren’t getting along, and my father would make sure it all went well.”
While Louie Boji was undoubtedly Ron’s primary mentor in business, his mother, Sue, impacted him in profound ways, as well. Boji recalls his mother was mainly focused on taking care of him and his sisters, “in the role of a Chaldean mother.” For many years, she didn’t ask a lot of questions about what was happening in the business. But that changed dramatically in 2019, when her husband suffered a stroke.
“My mom was confronted with needing to understand what was going on,” Boji says. “What she has come to understand in these four years, I give her so much credit. She got a high school degree in Iraq, but she’s not formally educated in terms of degrees. But now we have quarterly meetings, discussing estate planning, why gifting is so important, and why we cannot continue creating wealth like she’s accustomed to.”
While Sue Boji has gotten up to speed on the nuances of the business, her son says her main hope for him remains more personal. “She always wanted me to make sure my family — my sisters, my in-laws — (that) from a business perspective, (I would) be there if they needed assistance,” Boji says.
Victor Saroki, president of Saroki Architecture in Birmingham, credits Boji’s success to his vision. “I’ve known Ron and his dad for more than 15 years, and one thing I noticed about Ron is he takes his vision to the finish line,” Saroki says. “He doesn’t dabble with this or that. He’s always thinking about how to get things done.”
Boji brings that same impact to the Chaldean community. He recently contributed $4 million for the development of the Isaiah Retreat Center in Oxford, where people can go for relaxation, meditation, and other forms of spiritual connection.
“Ron Boji is a true pillar of our community, and a business and philanthropic leader,” says Martin Manna, president of the Chaldean Community Foundation in Sterling Heights and the Chaldean-American Chamber of Commerce in Farmington Hills. “His partnerships and projects drive our region forward, including a recent contribution, with his family, to Henry Ford Health, and a $500,000 commitment to support a new Chaldean Foundation project in Oakland County.”
One might say he’s made good on the advice he got from Muchmore that day he was lost in his own building in 1998. And Muchmore is impressed by what Boji has done, even as he continues to hold him to the high standard set by Louie Boji.
“His father made a name for himself by climbing the ladder,” Muchmore says. “And his father had come here and built a successful business in California. He came here to Michigan because there were so many Chaldeans here, and he wanted to build a legacy for himself and his family. I always told Ron, ‘If you become half of what your father has always been, you’ll be pretty doggone successful.’ ”
Today, Muchmore credits Boji for making it well past that halfway point, although he still declares him a few rungs below his father’s ultimate level of achievement. So far.
“You only have two things in your life,” Muchmore says, “your name and your integrity. And Ron’s got both of them from his dad. Ron’s kind of a wild man, but he’s done really well with it.”
