Let’s dream a little.
If Amazon were to pick Detroit and Windsor as the site for its new second headquarters, we might one day see a cable car spanning the Detroit River connecting Amazon’s buildings in both downtowns. And there could be a ferry service linking Amazon’s campuses in each city’s downtown, and shuttles running between the two campuses through the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel.
Those are just some of the possibilities discussed by the team that wrote the proposal submitted to Amazon on Thursday to pick the Detroit-Windsor area for its sought-after second headquarters, with its 50,000 jobs and billions in new investment. Businessman Dan Gilbert and his team submitted the cities’ joint bid in two-inch thick binders packed with images and data and bearing the title “Move Here. Move the World.”.
Though confidential, Gilbert described the main themes in an exclusive interview with the Free Press. Among those points:
- Talent is key to Amazon, and the Detroit-Windsor region’s many universities would play a major role supplying that talent to Amazon, including Canada’s University of Waterloo, where its highly rated computer science program has earned the university the nickname of the “MIT of Canada.”
- What may be Detroit’s weak point — the lack of a robust public transit network that Amazon said it wants — is addressed in the bid in two ways. First, the bid cites the Regional Transit Authority’s plan for expanded transit options in Southeast Michigan, including so-called bus rapid transit routes throughout the region – a plan, of course, that still must be approved by voters. And, second, the bid cites Detroit’s central role in the creation of self-driving vehicles and other future modes of mobility that could aid Amazon.
- Detroit’s underused Coleman A. Young International Airport, the former City Airport, could play host to Amazon’s corporate jets and provide easy access to downtown.
Gilbert said the title of Detroit’s proposal—“Move Here. Move the World”—was chosen to capture several meanings. First, there’s the direct plea to Amazon to “move” its second headquarters here. Second, there’s the meaning of “move” as in future mobility options. And then Amazon could “move” the world emotionally by being part of Detroit’s rebuilding story.
“There’s no better place,” Gilbert said Thursday after the bid was submitted. “You have logistics, transportation, and all that background history and now you’ve got the brain part, the technology, the universities, the technology businesses plus the people. The one-campus-two-countries bit — it’s huge and it’s highly unique.”
The bid includes an executive summary or vision statement, backed up by deep dives into every aspect that might interest Amazon from cost-of-living data to the availability of a bi-national pool of tech-savvy graduates from both nations. The proposal, which has been kept confidential at Amazon’s request, appeared thick with illustrations and data tables.
The efforts were coordinated in a “war room” papered with photos and data charts in the offices of Bedrock, Gilbert’s real estate entity, in downtown Detroit.
Asked what national analysts miss when they place Detroit far down the list of possible candidates for Amazon, Gilbert said, “Everything… the gap between what’s in peoples mind about Detroit from fifty or sixty years of reputation compared to when they get here.”
Though considered a sleeper candidate by many, Detroit has some advantages that others may overlook, Gilbert said. Among those: Amazon already has an engineering center in downtown Detroit that’s grown recently from 300 staffers to 600, as well as three fulfillment center warehouses open or under construction in the suburbs.
“It’s talent and the ability to draw talent is probably number one,” Gilbert said of Amazon’s needs. “I don’t think they respond to gimmicky stuff… They’ve figured out they can hire engineers here, computer guys. That’s what people forget about the talent side” in Detroit and Windsor.
Gilbert said that just putting together the thick proposal has helped the region.
“Really this was an exercise in taking all this information that was in all these different places, government agencies, private industry, academics that keep things, and just trying to curate it and then package it in a form that’s digestible,” Gilbert said. “This is really helpful no matter what happens.”
Mayor Mike Duggan and his aides have echoed Gilbert’s optimism.
“I think we put together a really top notch presentation that I hope opens people’s eyes to the possibilities in this area,” said Jed Howbert, Duggan’s group executive for planning, housing, and development, who contributed to the proposal.
“You get the access to the best of both U.S. and Canada,” he added. “And number two, there’s a great real-estate solution. They build a great campus right in the heart of downtown.”
Windsor Mayor Drew Dilkens said last week that a gondola-type link between the two downtowns becomes realistic with Amazon coming here.
“We have had conversations about that,” Dilkens said of the cable-car idea, discussed with Gilbert’s team. “It’s an expensive proposition but it’s not impossible. We’ve also had discussions with respect to a ferry service between the two downtowns.
“It would be nothing, literally nothing, for us to say we’ll have a bus that goes right from your front door of your Amazon headquarters in Windsor to your front door of your Amazon headquarters in Detroit,” Dilkens said. “There are no two cities in the United States and Canada that can do what we’re proposing here.”
The Detroit-Windsor bid for Amazon’s second headquarters was delivered Thursday to Amazon via FedEx and electronically.
Amazon has indicated that it expected to get more than 100 proposals from metro areas around the United States and Canada. A first cut down to about 20 or so finalist cities could come before the end of the year. After that, site visits and on-the-scene interviews could follow. Amazon has said it will announce a winning city in 2018.
Most analyses of Amazon’s criteria have cited cities like Denver, Toronto, Chicago, or Atlanta as more likely winners, with Detroit eliminated early. But Gilbert and other civic and business leaders here scoff at that.
“We feel very good making the first cut, exceptionally good,” Sandy Baruah, CEO of the Detroit Regional Chamber who contributed to the proposal, said last week. “Amazon is looking for a place they can call home and grow with. We feel very good about talking to Amazon about this. We are a renaissance story par excellence.”
He added, “We’re in it to win it, but if we don’t win it, there’s still incredible positives that come out of this.”
For example, even if Detroit just makes the short list, that will help.
“Think about the prestige in terms of the next big project if we can say we came in in the top tier of the Amazon exercise,” Baruah said. “This has been a codification of how well this region is working collaboratively and well together. It shows that this region really has some muscle memory now on how to work together, how to work collaboratively, and everyone really understands that we’re all in this together.”
That such a complex proposal could be put together in a few weeks itself seems remarkable. In the weeks since Amazon kicked off a feeding frenzy among cities by announcing its search for a second headquarters city, Gilbert, asked by Duggan to head up the city’s proposal, assembled dozens of government, business, and civic leaders to work on the bid.
Dilkens said when Amazon announced its search, he sent an email to Gilbert asking, “Have you thought about including Windsor because I think we can make a really great and unique business case?” Within an hour or two, Gilbert responded, “‘This email is so timely, I can’t you believe you sent it. I was going to call you.’”
The effort led to the creation of a “deputies group” including Baruah, Gilbert aide Matt Cullen, Duggan aide Tom Lewand, and Gov. Rick Snyder’s adviser Rich Baird, who spoke daily to keep the dozens of staffers on track.
And it led to discussions about how to make crossing the river seamless for Amazon employees, even if that means cable cars over the river.
“We said, to stitch these communities further together, we will absolutely explore additional options to make it all that much easier to get across the border,” Howbert said.
So now, with the bids submitted, everybody waits for Amazon to winnow down the several dozen applications to a short list. And if the Detroit-Windsor bid makes that short list, the two cities may soon be hosting an Amazon delegation on a site visit that could prove crucial to both cities’ future.
“We said to Amazon, ‘There is a reason to come visit,'” Howbert said. “This is not the end of the game, this is the start of the game. We just have to get them to come here.”
Or as Gilbert said Thursday, “Now the real work begins.”
