Detroit Mayor (Not Cleveland's) Taps Cavs Owner Gilbert To Lead Amazon HQ Effort

DETROIT, MI — Dan Gilbert, the the owner of the Cleveland Cavaliers, has been tapped by the Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan to lead that city’s effort to land a second headquarters for online retailing giant Amazon. Gilbert’s first task will be to recruit a panel of top regional civic and business leaders to formulate the proposal that will sent off to Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos.

It's a natural fit that Gilbert, the founder and chairman of Quicken Loans, will lead the charge. The businessman made his name — and his fortune — in the Motor City.

So far, here in Cleveland, many local business and government officials say they would love to have the headquarters, but they have not revealed any specific plans or even confirmed if they will go after the Amazon headquarters. In one report, posted Thursday by WEWS-TV, Akron Mayor Dan Horrigan told the TV station that he is interested in the Amazon HQ.

Northeast Ohio is certainly on Amazon's radar. This summer, the company announced plans it would build a fulfillment center in the old Randall Park Mall, where it would have some 2,000 employees in a 855,000-square-foot complex in north Randall.

Meanwhile, cities across the nation, including Boston, Chicago, Denver and Pittsburgh.

Detroit Regional Chamber of Commerce CEO Sandy Baruah told the Detroit Free Press that the Detroit team could be assembled within two days. Many local officials, citing the renaissance that has occurred in the city’s downtown, say Detroit is ripe to land such economic development jewel.

And, indeed, it would be a gem.

Amazon announced last week it would spend more than $5 billion to build another HQ in North America that would house some 50,000 employees, while maintaining its current operation in Seattle, which has 33 buildings, 23 restaurants and 40,000 employees. (For more local news, click here to sign up for real-time news alerts and newsletters from Cleveland Patch, and click here to find your local Ohio Patch. If you have an iPhone, click here to get the free Patch iPhone app.)

Among the requirements: The retailer wants to be near a metropolitan area with more than a million people; be able to attract top technical talent; be within 45 minutes of an international airport; have direct access to mass transit; and be able to expand that headquarters to as much as 8 million square feet in the next decade.

As for turning to Gilbert to lead the charge? That makes sense, writes the Free Press, noting that Duggan "is smart to let two billionaires (Gilbert and Bezos) come together in this effort to possibly do something unexpected, something monumental for an American city." The Free Press also notes that Gilbert and Bezos have a vacation spot in common.

Duggan told the Free Press that the city wants one proposal from metropolitan Detroit that would include input from across the region, including the suburbs. “We’re going to try to put together the broadest coalition we can,” Duggan told the Free Press. He also noted that unlike

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.”

Read the full story in the Detroit Free Press.
Image by Gene J. Puskar/AP