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Detroit ranks near the bottom of an index of 35 U.S. metropolitan areas based on Amazon Inc.'s criteria for a second headquarters, as Crain's reports.
Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert, leading the campaign to lure the plug project, thinks the l ist by Anderson Economic Groupis garbage.
"I am not sure what is worse," Gilbert texts Crain's editor and publisher Ron Fournier. "The flawed trash in this incompetent silly report or the fact that the hometown newspaper would publish and tweet it."
Fournier writes:
The first thing he did was punch holes in the Anderson's analysis of the labor and transportation situation in metro Detroit. While acknowledging the region's deficiencies, Gilbert and his team argued that they've learned from direct talks with Amazon that the firm is taking a broader view than Detroit's critics assume.
One example: The lack of a regional transit system will be offset by downtown Detroit's walkability, Gilbert said. On the issue of talent and education, Amazon is taking into account universities within a five-hour driving distance of potential headquarters, he revealed, which allows Detroit to claim a rich vein of engineering graduates from technology meccas like Pittsburgh's Carnegie-Mellon.
