During Thursday’s event, Crain and Forbes also talked about the complexities of running multi-generational family-owned businesses. Topics included striking a work/life balance, succession planning and ways in which younger generations can get their feet wet in the family business, among others. 

One of the focal points: Making sure younger generations gain experiences, both cultural and professional, outside the family business, Forbes said. 

“We have three boys and a daughter. Every one of our children are encouraged to explore what motivates them,” Forbes said. “There is no predetermined path for their future or careers. We think it’s important they learn outside the family business for at least two or three years. What are we learning that’s different if they just go into the family business right after high school or college?” 

Forbes also noted that as ground-up retail properties like the kind his family specializes in — namely, top-tier shopping malls including Somerset Collection as well as The Gardens Mall in Palm Beach Gardens, Fla.; The Mall at Millenia in Orlando; and Waterside Shops in Naples, Fla. — aren’t being built anymore, so the last several years his real estate interests have broadened to include things like multifamily housing in Detroit, West Bloomfield Township, Birmingham, Ann Arbor and Northville, plus Miami. 

“We’ve spun off from retail in terms of ground-up development,” Forbes said. 

Partially, that is — if the Kmart site gets developed as Forbes intends. 

In addition to the UM medical facility planned for the former Kmart site, the development could include up to 750 residential units, up to 500,000 square feet of office space, up to 300,000 square feet of retail and a hotel with up to 250 rooms and parking.

The property is owned by a joint venture between the Forbes and Frankel families. 

In March 2024, UM revealed its medical center plans for the site, which is about 40 acres. This past March, the university said it needed more land for the project. Approximately 12 acres north of Cunningham Drive are subject to a consent decree, and the development vision put forward is primarily for the 28 acres to the south.

The property had long been vacant when demolition on the hulking, 1.1-million-square-foot former office complex began in the fall of 2023.

After Kmart vacated it in the mid-2000s and moved to Illinois as a subsidiary of Sears Holding Corp., it continued its well-documented implosion across state lines.

Sidney Forbes, Nathan’s father and founder of Forbes Co., told Crain’s in 2012 that the purchase of the Kmart property “was a defensive move” after Farmington Hills-based Grand/Sakwa Development began courting Somerset Collection tenants for a retail development.

“So when we had the opportunity to buy that land, we took it,” Sidney Forbes said in 2012. Grand/Sakwa’s plans stalled at Troy City Council and there has been little action on it since.

At its peak, the Kmart property accommodated 5,000 employees. When it was sold in 2005, it had fewer than 1,900 employees, many of whom were transferred to Illinois.

Kmart’s last store in Michigan closed in November 2021, ending its run of nearly six decades after its first store opened in 1962 in Garden City. Financial woes hampered the retailer during the last two decades; it sought bankruptcy protection in 2002-03 and eventually merged with Sears, Roebuck & Co. in 2004.