Gov. Gretchen Whitmer joined megadeveloper Stephen Ross and other civic and business leaders for a ceremonial groundbreaking Thursday for a long-awaited academic research center in downtown Detroit known as the University of Michigan Center for Innovation.

The $250 million U-M academic building, expected to take about 2½ years to construct, will be where students can work on university graduate degrees in areas such as robotics, computer engineering, entrepreneurship and sustainability. It also will house job training and certificate programs for the metro Detroit workforce and local nonuniversity students.

University officials, including U-M President Santa Ono, said they anticipate the center becoming a catalyst for job creation, innovation and economic development in Detroit and across the state. “Today will be a day that will have a great legacy for this great state and this great city,” Ono said during the late afternoon event, held inside a large event tent.


The 200,000-square-foot center, or UMCI, is being built on land behind the Fox Theatre on what is now surface parking lots. The Ilitch organization previously owned the land and donated it for the project. Ross, a Detroit native who started New York-based development firm The Related Cos., has been pushing to build the UMCI for about five years. He is donating $100 million for the UMCI; an additional $100 million is coming from the state and U-M is fundraising for $50 million more. Originally known as the "Detroit Center for Innovation," the project was initially proposed for the site of the scrubbed Wayne County Jail project off Gratiot at the entrance to downtown.

It was first announced in 2019 as a joint development involving Ross' The Related Cos. and Dan Gilbert's Bedrock real estate firm. But the Gilbert-Ross collaboration dissolved for unspecified reasons in 2021. And the new UMCI location — and new Ilitch organization partnership — was announced in December 2021.

Several speakers at Thursday's groundbreaking remarked on the length of time it took to get the project underway.
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