Mayor Duggan delivering his victory speech on Aug. 8, 2017. (DD photo)
Mayor Duggan delivering his victory speech on Aug. 8, 2017. (DD photo)
A New York Times analysis, citing criteria from the Amazon's request for proposals for a second headquarters location, found that Detroit would be crossed off the list after the first criteria: Strong job growth.
But Mayor Mike Duggan disagrees with the analysis and says people shouldn’t underestimate the importance of that last criteria: space, which the comeback city has in spades, writes Rochelle Riley of the Detroit Free Press.
“We’re talking 500,000 square feet of office space initially, but could be 8 million square feet over time,” Duggan tells Riiley. “I don’t expect that all to be in the downtown area. One thing that is unique is: There is the ability to build several million square feet of office space in downtown Detroit in a series of buildings woven into downtown. That’s an opportunity that they’re not going to find in any downtown in any other city in the country. So the concept that Amazon has, a campus woven into an urban community, is one that Detroit is uniquely positioned to offer.”
“The governor called me from a bus in Japan the day the RFP (request for proposal) came out to say his team was all in on this,” Duggan said. “I was very impressed with that. I was impressed that he had phone service on a bus in Japan.
Duggan has turned to Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert to recruit a regional team to present a single proposal to Amazon.
