Dan Gilbert to Lead Detroit's Super Bowl-Type Bid for Amazon HQ2

crainsdetroit.com

14 points·rmason··7 comments

Detroit was built on an industry so large that nothing has matched it since in scale.

I think that to restore Detroit to its former glory is not really possible because there is no industry big enough to support it, nor is Detroit necessarily the best area to put that industry if it existed.

It just so happened that Henry Ford was born here and transformed a small trading town into a huge manufacturing hub by chance of his business growing so large at the right time.

As a Michigan resident.. I would like to see it happen. But I don't think Detroit is a particularly attractive destination for top software engineering talent.

Good luck. It has the airport and cheap housing, but no educated workforce or mass transit.

In my reading, Philadelphia and Atlanta have to be towards the top of the list, with Toronto a plausible dark-horse candidate.

Ann Arbor is nearby?

I didn't read Amazon's requirements doc; was an out-of-the-box "educated workforce" a requirement? It seems like that could be seeded with new grad hires and existing Amazon employees who are willing to relocate for much lower cost of living. If Amazon is thinking big enough and long term enough they could also invest in improving the education system in the area at the secondary and higher level (e.g., grants for faculty hires and curriculum development).

Toronto homes are like a million bucks each, good luck.

As a Detroit resident, I would love to see this happen. Detroit doesn't have the resources to invest in infrastructure and Michigan doesn't have the will to do so.

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