Barden Companies, Inc.

International Directory of Company Histories, Volume 76 (2005) by Frank Uhle

Barden Companies, Inc.

400 Renaissance Center, Suite 2400 Detroit, Michigan 48243 U.S.A. Telephone: (313) 496-2900 Fax: (313) 496-8400 Web site: http://www.fitzgeralds.com

Private Company Incorporated: 1994 Employees: 4,000 Sales: $372 million (2004 est.) NAIC: 713210 Casinos (Except Casino Hotels); 721120 Casino Hotels; 236220 Commercial and Institutional Building Construction

Barden Companies, Inc., is a holding company whose subsidiaries primarily operate gambling casinos and develops real estate. The firm owns the Majestic Star floating casino in Gary, Indiana and Fitzgeralds casinos in Tunica, Mississippi, Black Hawk Colorado, and Las Vegas, Nevada. Other Barden companies include real estate developer Waycor Development Company; Barden International, which pursues business ventures in Namibia; and Barden Entertainment, which markets a video jukebox. Headed by African American entrepreneur Don Barden, Barden Companies is one of the ten largest black-owned firms in the United States, according to Black Enterprise magazine.

Beginnings

The different enterprises that make up Barden Companies are the brainchild of Michigan native Don Barden. Born in 1943, he was the ninth of 13 children and grew up poor on a nine-acre farm in the Detroit suburb of Inkster, Michigan. He learned the value of hard work and determination from his father, who worked at the Chrysler auto plant and repaired cars on the side, and his mother, who helped the family raise animals and grow vegetables for food. When he finished high school, Barden scraped together enough money to begin attending Central Ohio University, but he was forced to drop out after a year when funds ran low. He moved in with an older brother in the city of Lorain, Ohio, near Cleveland, and took a series of jobs ranging from cafeteria manager to assistant to the president of a shipbuilding company. In 1966 Barden took $500 he had saved and opened a record shop called Donnie's, and also began to promote concerts, work as a disc jockey at parties, and release records on his own small label.

With record sales slow due to competition from discount department stores, in 1968 Barden sold his store and started a public relations and marketing firm. He had once briefly published a small newspaper with a partner, and now he started a weekly called the Lorain County Times. In 1971 Barden found out from a military recruiter that recruitment offices would soon be moving out of post offices into spaces of their own, and he quickly decided to buy a building and lease it to the military. After submitting a successful bid for office space, he received a $25,000 bank loan and bought the building. Two years later he sold it for $50,000, and then bought another building for $85,000 from Ohio Edison, which he leased back to the utility. By 1975 the real estate business had grown such that he was able to begin construction of a new $1 million building.

The early 1970s also saw Barden win election to the Lorain city council and start working for a Cleveland television station, where he served as host of a talk show and as a weekend news reporter. After using his political connections to ensure that 4 percent of the new cable television systems in Lorain and neighboring Elyria would be owned by minorities, he invested $2,000 in each. Two years later he sold his stakes for $200,000, and immediately began laying plans to buy cable franchises of his own. In 1981 he formed Barden Communications, Inc., which bid on cable franchises in seven cities around the United States.

Wiring Detroit For Cable in the 1980s

Barden moved to Detroit in late 1984 and immediately began the complicated process of laying out the cable system. To help fund the massive undertaking, he partnered with Toronto, Canada-based Maclean Hunter Ltd., a conglomerate with interests in cable television, magazines, and newspapers. Maclean arranged to provide $100 million in financing, and took a 49 percent ownership stake in the system.

In 1986 the five-year wiring process began. More than 100 miles were laid underground, at a cost of $350,000 per mile, with the rest strung across utility poles for $20,000 per mile. During this time Barden sold the Romulus and Van Buren systems while he continued to expand his real estate interests, founding Waycor Development Co. in 1988 to build the $61.5 million Wayne County Detention Facility in Hamtramck. Later projects included an apartment complex in Detroit and a Department of Veterans Affairs clinic in Canton, Ohio. Another business that attracted Barden's attention was radio, and in the late 1980s he won licenses to build stations in several states. He would go on to build or acquire five stations in the Chicago, Illinois metropolitan area.

Not all of Barden's ventures were successful, however. His attempt to turn the vacant Stouffer's Northland Hotel in Southfield, Michigan into a senior citizen's housing center was abandoned after he spent $1.5 million to buy it, and another $1 million was invested in a Pontiac, Michigan savings and loan which was later taken over by the Resolution Trust Corporation.