“I don't view the interests of businesses and residents as being separate. Rather, I think it's the opposite side of the same coin. Everyone wants a vibrant and vital downtown, and in a vibrant downtown, businesses are successful,” said Isaac Kremer, the Downtown Development Authority executive director. He is responsible for the day-to-day management of the organization.
Much of the DDA’s work is dedicated to supporting small businesses in Royal Oak, at every stage of their life cycle. From startups to established businesses, even businesses that may be closing, they do it all.
“What makes things unique in my role is that prior to me being here, they had a manager, but they didn't have a dedicated executive director. It covers everything that you'd expect and then hundreds of things that you wouldn't even imagine,” said Kremer.
One of their largest projects that's gotten attention is the Fifth Street Pedestrian Plaza. It was projected to be a three million dollar project. The actual cost was closer to two million dollars, through engineering efficiencies and effective management.
“We're constantly developing new programs to respond to the needs, including business recruitment and retention programs. We now have over $200,000 to support those goals,” said Kremer.
After 17 years away, Kremer returned to Michigan in 2025 to take on a job he first interviewed for in 2007. Since then, he said he has handled more than 400 projects and closed out more than 72% of them, ranging from major initiatives to routine city work. Deputy Director Kalugar also brings an exceptional skill set with five years at Tech Town in Detroit. DDA Board members past and present are accountable for what has been accomplished.
“You always have to put business vitality at the center of whatever it is that you're doing. We're very fortunate in the last year to have seen over 20 businesses open in the downtown. That also means that there's 20 businesses that we want to focus on and uplift, do everything we can support so they have a chance to be here for a while,” said Kremer.
One of the shifts they have made in the last year is supporting corporate media contracts. They are hoping to reach more Royal Oak residents with their new social media contractor, giving them an enhanced capacity to get messaging out across social channels. They also recently finalized their new freestanding website for the downtown.
Kremer said, “We're very savvy about measuring our demographics. One of the ways that our program stands out from just about any other downtown is analytics tools, which helps us analyze everyone who visits downtown. There's almost 10 million visits a year, which makes us one of the top 10 most visited Main Streets in the country.”
These tools help pin down the demographic qualities, people's trip origin, ethnicity, household income and household size. When he first began at the DDA, there was about $30,000 of funding a year to the Royal Oak Restaurant Association. Since then, it has increased to $50,000 a year. They have also provided over $70,000 of gift cards, helping some businesses bring in low to mid six figures in revenue through these cards.
Kremer explained, “I've heard it said that this is a more challenging environment than during COVID. The combination of the tariffs and high fuel prices, and just the disruption that we're seeing in the economy today, makes it incredibly hard to own and operate a business.”
Kremer’s roots date back to the 1980s, when his mother owned a small veterinary clinic in Detroit. While growing up, he saw his mom, a small business owner and one of the first women to graduate from Michigan State University with a Doctor of Veterinary Medicine degree, struggle with her business.
“Whenever we can bring someone through your door for the first time, it's an opportunity to build a relationship. For many businesses, they either don't know what their customer acquisition cost is or it's so high it's not something that they consciously can invest in, but we can,” said Kremer. “The bigger reality is that Royal Oak is a gathering place, not just for the people who live within our borders, but people throughout our region, and consistently we see that we're drawing from dozens of ZIP codes outside of Royal Oak.”
There are about 115 days of programming a year, most of it is funded by the DDA. The DDA is also a part of Main Street America and Main Street Oakland County. This encourages volunteers to be involved. Last year, they had 22 volunteers contribute 1,084 hours of their time. The DDA values this at over $34,000.
“We're always seeking to bring more people into our work, even if that requires us creating opportunities to align with whatever people's interests might be. So if anyone likes what they see and wants to see more of it happen, we definitely invite people to reach out,” said Kremer, “There's always an opportunity to do more and we hold ourselves to high standards. Each day we try to create more value for the people we serve.”
“There's always an opportunity to do more and we hold ourselves to high standards. Each day we try to create more value for the people we serve.”