Spotlights
Khalil Rahal
GVSU IR alum Khalil Rahal has just been named one of “40 under 40” who are making a difference according to Crain’s Detroit Business Journal. Khalil graduated from GVSU in 2006 and University of Detroit Mercy Law School in 2009. After working for several years in the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office, Khalil Rahal began working to promote economic development in Detroit. As the Assistant Wayne County Executive, Rahal has been leading economic development for Michigan’s largest county and the 19th largest county in the country.
Rahal has been focused on repurposing underused or vacant county-owned properties and taking on structural issues that affect metro Detroit’s economic competitiveness. Under Rahal’s direction, the county secured a deal to sell the former Standard Accident Insurance Co. building at 640 Temple St. for $11 million to a development group that plans a $65 million makeover for the building.
Rahal was the pointman for Wayne County in securing a deal with the Moroun family’s Crowne Enterprises to buy the polluted former McLouth Steel Products Corp. steel plant in Trenton. Crowne and the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency have a deal in place for a Superfund cleanup at the 180-acre steel plant site as well as an adjacent 70-acre property in Riverview.
In June 2018, Wayne County inked a deal Rahal helped engineer with Southfield-based Morgan Development to sell the long-abandoned Eloise Hospital Complex in Westland for $1. The agreement stipulated that the developer has to invest $20 million in revitalizing the one-time psychiatric asylum, which Wayne County had owned since the late 1800s.
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