The University of Michigan is upping its investment in Detroit big time, with its $250 million center for innovation, a mammoth project that will also transform an underutilized corner of the city’s downtown.
Ground was broken late last year for the six-storey tiered and angled glass-enclosed structure with an opening date in 2027.
For U of M, one of the nation’s elite public research institutions, the move in a way marks a return home to where the school was initially founded.
“The university was founded in Detroit but then kind of famously, or infamously, left. I think that’s been a bit of a sore spot, both in Detroit and both in the university, frankly,” Scott Shireman, UMCI’s director said.
U of M is based just down the road in leafy Ann Arbor, less than an hour’s drive away but a vast contrast to the somewhat post-industrial and economically deprived city of Detroit.
The university’s new president Santa Ono has made it a point for the university to invest in its one-time home.
“Ono has made the statement that we want to be the University for Michigan not only the University of Michigan,” Shireman said.
It’s not the university’s first foray into the Motor City. A decade ago the university opened its Detroit Center in the heart of the renaissance midtown district. It also owns the eminent Rackham Auditorium and has ongoing “100 different initiatives by different faculties,” Shireman said. But the UMCI three-building campus will undoubtedly be a game-changer.
The campus is being constructed between Cass Avenue, infamous for its drug and prostitution past, and Grand River Boulevard, a major “spoke” in the great street arteries that radiate from the city’s downtown nucleus. Until recently it had been paved into parking lots for fans of the Detroit Tigers and Red Wings, whose stadiums are nearby.
The center itself will also be something new for the university.
Shireman, who has been its director since January, said U of M was anomalous in not having such an academy. Coming from UC Berkeley “it was kind of shocking to me as I was looking at this opportunity that Michigan doesn’t have something in this space doing workforce development,” he said.
The building will be open to students from everywhere, but it will have a definitive focus on Detroit and training city students for technical careers and in business startups.
“The goal is, we want to catalyze economic development and job creation in Detroit,” Shireman said.
The $250 million is for the largest academic building but two more buildings will be constructed adjacent to it. One will be a business incubator and the other a student residence. They’re being built by Olympia Development as part of its massive multi-block The District Detroit combination of office, commercial and retail buildings.
But the glazed edifice, amounting to 200,000-square-feet, is designed to be transparent – literally – with open concept first and second floors, then traditional academic classrooms on three floors above, and an event space with ambience and sight views that can be rented for public gatherings.
The overall design, by New York’s Kohn Pedersen Fox Associates (KPF), has a sense of momentum.
“It almost looks like a building in motion. I think that’s a nod to the history of mobility and automotive and all of that in Detroit,” Shireman said.
The first two floors will be devoted to community programming including pre-university grades where, for example, “high school kids will come in and build and play with robots,” Shireman said.
He added the idea is to make indoor activity visible from the street and even invite the public in. “And we’re going to have all kinds of programs designed to do that.”
KPF is closely associated with New York developer Stephen Ross, chairman of Related Companies, whose work includes Manhattan’s new westside Hudson Yards. Ross is a Detroit native and donated $100 million towards the center. KPF also designed the new U of M Ann Arbor business school named after Ross, its chief benefactor.
Shireman said UMCI’s location should help build out the nascent growth that is spreading from the nearby entertainment and sports districts and spark development along a derelict strip near the (I-75) Fisher Freeway.
“There’s a nice little pedestrian corridor that’s forming right outside of Comerica Park that’s going to have restaurants. We’re going to be kind of connected to it,” he said. “I think that area is going to develop, there’s going to be nice housing there, restaurants, so I definitely see advantages.”
The contractor is Detroit-based Walbridge.
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