Ross, Gilbert teaming on $300 million UM innovation center at former jail site in Detroit

Ross plans to formally announce the project Wednesday morning at a news conference at the vacant land at I-375 and Gratiot Avenue alongside Duggan, UM President Mark Schlissel, Gov. Gretchen Whitmer, Wayne County Executive Warren Evans and Matt Cullen, CEO of Gilbert’s Bedrock real estate development firm. Gilbert is still recovering from a stroke he suffered in late May and has not made public appearances since then.

“This is what great cities have — they have these kind of educational opportunities,” Duggan said in an interview before the announcement. “And when you partner with Stephen Ross in an incubator site adjacent (to the innovation center), the potential for the best students to become (entrepreneurs and) startup businesses in Detroit and build them in Detroit is a really big deal.”

Ross wants to break ground on the innovation center building along Gratiot Avenue by 2021 and have it complete by 2023, Schlissel said.

Crain’s first reported in mid-May that Gilbert and Ross were in talks to build a tech center for UM on the Gratiot Avenue land that Gilbert acquired from Wayne County in a deal to build a criminal justice complex outside of the central business district at I-75 and East Warren Avenue.

The innovation center will create a substantially larger footprint for the UM in Detroit. It now operates a small Detroit Center outpost in Midtown and the Horace Rackham Educational Memorial Building on Woodward Avenue next to the Detroit Institute of Arts. UM’s School of Education is a main partner in Detroit Public School Community District’s new early childhood-through-college center at the campus of Marygrove College on the city’s northwest side.

UM plans to move its undergraduate admissions office in the Rackham building, along with a robotics engineering program for Detroit high school students and its Poverty Solutions research initiative, Schlissel said.

Ross, who has already donated nearly $400 million of his wealth to UM, declined to say how much he’s personally donating to the project, but said fundraising is underway.

“It will be significant,” Ross said of his forthcoming gift to UM. “At this point, we’re raising money from other leaders and foundations. And my gift, I’ll be there to make sure it happens.”

Gilbert also intends to make a financial gift to the project, Cullen said.

Fundraising efforts for the main $300 million academic building are being aimed at philanthropic foundations and corporations that may be interested in having a presence in the business incubation center, which will be a separate building, Cullen said.

“There’s money to be raised,” Cullen told Crain’s. “There’s work to be done in defining all of those budgets and understanding what the philanthropic gap is, if you will.”

Ross envisions the Gratiot Avenue site to mirror Cornell University’s Cornell Tech urban campus on Roosevelt Island in New York City. Ross sits on the board of Cornell Tech, and his Related Cos. was involved in the school’s development on the narrow island in New York’s East River between Manhattan and Queens.