Dan Gilbert has become a very well known ambassador for the City of Detroit. After moving his company's headquarters to Detroit in 2010, Gilbert has been the most active developer in the greater downtown area. While Quicken Loans and its family of companies employ tens of thousands, Gilbert expects his new projects to generate 24,000 new temporary and permanent jobs in the city. Rock Ventures is now heading several massive developments which includes a proposed skyscraper set to be the tallest in the state of Michigan. The skyscraper will be build on the site of the former Hudson's building right in the heart of downtown. Another major project will be the restoration of the 100 year old Book Tower, a commercial office building which was among Detroit's most prominent addresses up through the 1980's. Over the last two decades the historic building has fallen into disrepair as it changed hands between multiple owners. Now, Gilbert's Bedrock Real Estate is in the midst of a $313M restoration of the building which will feature 180,000 sq ft of office and retail space. 

Perhaps the most interesting part of Gilbert's speech, set in the lobby of the Book Tower, was the mention of e-commerce giant Amazon. Gilbert believes Detroit could lure the company to build a second headquarters in Detroit, which would represent a $5Bil investment and could create up to 50,000 jobs. According to the Detroit Free Press, the projects are set to be completed within the next 5 years and will represent 3.2 million sq ft of office, retail, and residential space. One of the challenges discussed during the press conference was the shortage of skilled workers to complete the projects. The City of Detroit is expected to require a specific number of the construction jobs to be allocated to city residents.