Questions surround Michigan's downtown innovation center
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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.
