DETROIT – Quicken Loans founder Dan Gilbert sat down for an interview on "A Drink With" this week, shedding some light on his vision for the future of Detroit.
"A Drink With" asked Gilbert what it could feel like to work and live in Detroit in 10 years. Here's some of what he said:
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If someone would have said five years ago that we’re going to be out of office space and residential units, 100 percent occupancy downtown and Midtown it would be unfathomable and you would have said, “You’re crazy, that’s impossible.” But since that is the case here, the only way to grow is vertically. I think when you say five or 10 years from now you’re going to see big projects completely done, the whole skyline is going to be completely different. That will be the main thing people notice. I’m hoping that in 10 years Detroit is one of the handful of technology, entertainment and marketing centers of the United States or maybe the world. People like you for instance, who have their own business, 30 years old, they’re a creative class, this is the place to be. This is where the action is. What the manifestation of that will look like I don’t know exactly but those are the themes. And we are growing. That is the key thing. The population is growing, things are happening.
He was also asked about what would define the city in the next decade:
Car technology. I went to CES in Las Vegas, the Consumer Electronic Show, and all they want to talk about is car technology. In my meetings with the big three here and Waymo — which is google’s automated car technology — [we talk about how they] are coming to Detroit. They are opening offices in Detroit. It’s a sea change that is going to drive the economy over the next ten years and Detroit is ground zero of that. We can’t blow it. That’s a big, big deal for Detroit. I’m very, very optimistic about Detroit.
Gilbert was asked if there was ever time he had turned his back on Detroit, like so many others:
I wouldn’t say turned my back on the city, but what I had done like a lot of entrepreneurs — it sounds like I’m a real old man but I did start young — for the first 20 years I had my head down and we were just grinding our one business and building, building, building. I never really looked up and paid much attention. I was just focused on our business. In a sense, it was turning your back because you weren’t paying attention. We had a name for folks in the suburbs and I may have been one of them for a long time. We called them “dozers.” We were just sleeping on it. I will tell you one thing though, when we moved, we only moved 1,500 people the very first day and I was one of them. From the day — not the second day — we got down here you just knew in your bones that it’s going to be so much better than being in a suburban office. Nothing against the suburbs, I’ve lived there my whole life. I grew up the first five years in the city. There is just an energy, collaboration, connectivity and a buzz you’re not going to get in Livonia or Troy, it’s not going to happen.