Dave Friedrichs is a man of dreams. Not of fast cars or extravagant luxuries, but of making people’s lives and livelihoods better. In his seventy-six years, he’s promoted cooperative enterprises, solar energy, and, most recently, a “Tunnel of Dreams” that could make Detroit a global transit gateway. 

“I was schooled in economics and came of age in the idealism of the Sixties, so I’ve believed that many things can and should be done differently,” Friedrichs explains. “My beliefs fit somewhere in the middle between capitalism and socialism.” 

Two decades ago, state economists, engineers, and rail enthusiasts created detailed plans for a tunnel capable of handling double-stacked freight cars to be built under the existing Detroit-Windsor rail tunnel. Now Friedrichs is single-handedly trying to bring it back to life. 

He sees parallels with the Field of Dreams theme: “If you build it, they will come.” He admits that Michigan’s highway system and air links are excellent. “But we lack the third element of critical infrastructure: rail.” With infrastructure funding available from the pandemic-era American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA), he believes, “the time is right—right now.” 

 

Photo by J. Adrian Wylie

Ann Arborites since 1971, Friedrichs and his wife Kathleen raised their sons Reid and Ryan in a Cape Cod house they built on Miller Rd. A decade ago, Kathleen retired as a U-M distance learning specialist, while Dave continued a career focused on cooperative ventures, his lifelong passion. 

Friedrichs’ family moved to Michigan in 1959, when his father was hired as principal of Livonia High School. He headed to MSU for college, meeting his wife, Kathleen, when they were both residential advisors. He graduated in 1968 with a degree in economics. 

A Fulbright Scholarship took him to Brazil to study international development. “I had lived in Brazil as a teen, so I spoke Portuguese fluently and had friends there,” he recalls. But his plans for a career in international affairs changed when JFK’s “New Frontier” initiative ended. 

Instead, he headed to the University of Wisconsin for graduate studies in international economics. There, a friend introduced him to the potential of member-owned cooperative businesses, and in the summer of 1970, he led thirty students to Brazil to work on co-op community service projects. 

That in turn led him to the North American Student Cooperative Organization, and then to managing twenty-five Inter-Cooperative Council houses on U-M’s North Campus. Their nearly 600 student residents still own the property. 

Three years later, Friedrichs left to launch a cooperative automobile service center. Co-op Auto eventually grew to 2,000 members, who paid $50 at first (later $100) annually. The center offered professional services during the week, classes, and a weekend U-Do-It program. Ralph Nader visited and wrote a glowing review.

In 1979, after Congress created the National Consumer Cooperative Bank, Friedrichs went to work there. “In one day, I went from working under the hood of a car to wearing a suit and working in a bank,” he recalls. 

When the bank was privatized during the Reagan Administration, he segued over to cooperative real estate. In 1983, when Arrowhead Hills on Pontiac Tr. faced foreclosure, residents convinced Friedrichs to become manager. 

The mortgage was $800,000 in arrears, seventy-five townhouses were vacant, and the complex needed $3 million in rehab work. Friedrichs earned his builder’s license and worked with residents and contractors to complete the rehabilitation. He later worked with other local co-ops, including Pinelake Village and Ypsi’s Glen Oaks. 

 

Trips to Brazil in 2001, 2002, and 2003 as team leader for Habitat for Humanity International heightened his interest in energy and the environment. Soon after, he launched Homeland Builders, focusing on “green” Energy Star building in Genesee County. When the recession of 2008 terminated those projects, he decided to focus his energies closer to home. 

When the First Unitarian Universalist Church moved to its current forty-acre property on Ann Arbor–Saline Rd., Friedrichs and a Green Sanctuary group erected a wind turbine, solar tracker, and 102 solar panels. 

This project convinced him to change his company name and focus to Homeland Solar, and it has been a highly visible presence in Ann Arbor ever since. He’s installed solar panels on hundreds of homes, the Michigan Theater, Washtenaw Dairy, Miller Manor, Food Gatherers, Zingermans’ Mail Order, and the First Congregational Church. Current projects include installations at Bryant Elementary, Westerman Family Center, Pioneer High, and a dozen Ann Arbor Parks & Rec facilities.

“We believe that optimizing the life-affirming use of the sun’s nearly unlimited energy is the greatest challenge of our time,” Friedrichs emails. “I characterize my work life as D2-E2-I2: Diversity & democracy; Equality & economics; Inclusion & infrastructure.”

This brings him back to the Tunnel of Dreams. Twenty years ago, the Michigan Economic Development Corporation developed plans with the Canadian Pacific Railroad to establish Detroit as a “21st-century intermodal hub for national logistics and distribution.” The key component would be a new, higher-capacity railroad tunnel under the Detroit River. Economists agreed that it could reduce costs and time for transporting goods to the Atlantic coast by 20 percent, and Michigan’s manufacturing, agriculture, and distribution would all benefit. 

Everything looked like a go—until Detroit’s bankruptcy. The plans were shelved. But in a recent Crain’s Detroit Weekly op-ed, Friedrichs reminded everyone that the plans still exist. 

“Now is the time to dust them off and see Detroit’s location potential realized—by completing the missing rail link infrastructure,” he wrote. The reality of a global gateway, he believes, is much closer at hand than most realize—and he hopes to see it in his lifetime.

“All that we can achieve (or what transpires) in our work and lives relies and depends on others,” the idealist says. “I’m very fond of the adage attributed to JFK: ‘a rising tide lifts all boats.’ That metaphor might be on par with the proclamation from the Mount that each shall ‘do unto others as you would have them do unto you.’”

He adds wistfully, “I wish I were twenty again, to start all over. There’s so much to do! The work is never done.”