Questions surround Michigan's downtown innovation center
Add Axios as your preferred source to
see more of our stories on Google.
Renderings shown on stage at an event in 2021 celebrating the announcement of U of M's Detroit Center for Innovation, planned at 2121 Cass Ave. Photo: Courtesy of the city of Detroit via Flickr
The University of Michigan's planned $250 million Center for Innovation (UMCI) is in a time crunch.
Why it matters: The proposed school would have a major impact on the city, drawing in hundreds of new students to downtown.
- There are concerns from advocates that while U of M has said it's committed to serving Detroiters, it hasn't adequately addressed how it plans to engage them or how the new school would meet their needs.
Details: The university, which has a presence in the city on Woodward, plans to build a 200,000-square-foot building in the District Detroit. The land to be donated by the Ilitches' Olympia Development is between the Fox Theatre and DTE's headquarters.
- It'll house a graduate school focused on tech, robotics and computer science — plus "community development" work like job training.
The intrigue: UMCI's funding includes $100 million from billionaire Stephen Ross and a $100 million publicly funded earmark in the state's budget.
- But while U of M is required to break ground before the end of the year to secure the public dollars, per media reports, UMCI hasn't finalized the necessary approval from the school's Board of Regents — and it only meets two more times this year.
- Plus, construction season is waning and cold conditions make it more difficult and expensive to build, Crain's reports.
Of note: U of M declined our requests for comment.
State of play: Despite UMCI's high profile and impact, it doesn't qualify for the city's community benefits process because it hasn't sought city-owned land or local tax breaks, per a statement to Axios from Anthony Zander, Detroit's director of civil rights, inclusion and opportunity.
- Still, there have been calls for the university to go through the process voluntarily, including a petition cited by Outlier signed by U of M faculty and alumni who live in Detroit.
- "While they talk a good game about community involvement, I'm not always convinced the community is as involved in decision-making as they should be," Chinyere Neale, a city resident and retired director of programs for U of M's Office of Global Public Health, tells Axios. "They're coming to our city; we should benefit in some kind of way."
Flashback: UMCI has a history with billionaires. It was first unveiled in 2019 as a joint project between Ross and Dan Gilbert on the Gratiot site of a failed jail development.
- The developers split, but then in 2021, Ross and the Ilitches teamed up to build it in the District instead. Some observers viewed Ross' graduate school project as a potential catalyst for the Ilitches' mostly languishing development vision.
- But since then, the UMCI has appeared to increasingly separate from the Ross-Ilitch vision despite it still being seen as a major anchor for the broader $1.5 billion Ilitch-Ross developments.
- Development duties shifted from Ross to the university this year.