New RiverWalk park plants a question: How do you spend $1.2B on deadline?

A pack of notables dug ceremonial dirt out of the ground last week at the groundbreaking for Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Centennial Park, the latest piece of a 5½-mile-long miracle along the Detroit riverfront.

The actual Ralph C. Wilson Jr. would have loved everything about the day except seeing his name on the signs.

You get 22 prime acres of Detroit RiverWalk named for you, though, when the foundation that also carries your name donates $40 million to the project and throws in a $10 million endowment to pay staffers and ask the community what it would actually like the park to contain.

As for the Ralph C. Wilson Jr. Foundation, its mission continues, even if it sometimes seems to be treading water.

Its goal is to do a wide range of valuable things in and around Detroit and Buffalo, New York, and that part is going swimmingly. But by charter, it needs to spend itself out of existence by Jan. 8, 2035 — and there, it's swimming upstream.

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Wilson owned the NFL's Buffalo Bills and succeeded in a long list of marginally connected fields, among them insurance, car hauling, highway paving, mining and thoroughbred racing.

A bequest launched his posthumous foundation with $1.2 billion in 2015. In its first full year, 2016, it dispersed $56 million, a fairly tidy sum for most of us. But its investments brought in $57 million, so as president and CEO Dave Egner noted, he was already $1 million in the hole.

Fast-forward to 2022, and "in terms of spending and commitments, we're at $915 million," Egner says. Sounds promising. But meantime, the foundation's finance committee and money managers have been busy: "We're still sitting at over a billion dollars."

Ask whether he's concerned about that deadline looming in 13 years, and he responds with a gentle but precise correction.

Counting from today, "it's 12 years, seven months and 23 days."

Incognito in Grosse Pointe

Wilson enjoyed his celebrity in Buffalo, where he was beloved for not moving his football team someplace larger and warmer. But he lived in Grosse Pointe Shores and cherished his anonymity in Detroit.

“My biggest regret in this is that I didn’t know him,” Egner says. The foundation’s four original trustees remain active, however, and he says their stories have helped bring Wilson to life.

From what he’s told, “I think Mr. Wilson would have resisted" having his name on the park, Egner says. Given that his widow, Mary, was standing next to Egner with a shovel, Wilson might have been overruled anyway.

Ralph Wilson's instructions for the foundation were deliberately imprecise. Seeding it with most of the $1.4 billion from the sale of the Bills in 2014, he focused it on 16 counties in southeast Michigan and western New York, and set the 20-year timer for what's known as a spend-down operation.

"He said, 'Let's put this out there to make a difference now. I don't want it to be made in 100 years,' " Egner says.

Wilson had commanded a minesweeper in World War II. His instinct was to confront problems, not skirt them.

The trustees decided to charge into four main areas — preparation for success, keeping people active, entrepreneurship and economic development, and supporting caregivers. Among the investments so far are $200 million for parks and trails, $1 million to Lawrence Tech for a program that jump-starts small manufacturers, and $4.1 million for Generator Z, which actually asked teenagers what they craved in after-school activities and then supported the agencies that met those needs.

The foundation is headquartered in Midtown, but its website was designed in Buffalo. The staff keeps careful score of where the dollars land and which region might periodically be getting more of them. Each area will have a Wilson Centennial Park, with the same money to make it happen.

"We're at 48% in one market and 52 in the other," Egner says. "I'm not telling you which is the 52."

OK, it's Michigan. But things will even out over time — specifically, just more than 12½ years.

Endowments will keep on giving

Wilson died at 95 in March 2014. Egner is 60, which will clock him in at 73 when the deadline arrives to zero out the bank accounts.

He’s planning to stick around to sign the final check, with two photos in his office to keep him focused.

One is Wilson aboard the his ship, peering through binoculars, which “reminds me he was always looking forward.”

The other is Wilson in the Bills’ locker room chatting with offensive lineman Conrad Dobler, who cheerfully acknowledged being the dirtiest player in pro football.

“That,” Egner says, “reminds me that Mr. Wilson was intimidated by very little.”

He surely knew that dispensing $1.2 billion on a deadline would be a challenge. He likely expected his trustees to be creative.

One of their go-tos is tucking millions of dollars into endowments, creating gifts that will keep on giving after Egner and his staff turn out the lights.

Exactly what that last moment will look and feel like, it’s too early to say.

“We may walk out together in a group hug,” he says, like the cast of “The Mary Tyler Moore Show.”

That bunch was singing “It’s a Long Way to Tipperary,” a bit old-fashioned for Egner's team.

If they're inclined, they can start discussing their own playlist Monday. Give them 12 years, seven months and 22 days, and they'll come up with something ideal.

You can reach Neal Rubin at NARubin@freepress.com, or follow him on Twitter at @nealrubin_fp, or even do both.

This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: Wilson Foundation lays out $50 million for Detroit riverfront park