Stephen Ross, an American real estate billionaire, donated a $100M earmark for U-M’s Detroit Center for Innovation in partnership with the Ilitch organization, which is collaborating on the University of Michigan‘s planned project. Ross’ Related Companies expect to begin constructing the DIC worth $250 million in 2023. It will become the academic research center for the UM. The Related Companies, L.P. is a New York-based real estate firm with offices in 5 countries. This firm will construct the center, then donate the building to the university. The conceptual representations include the new construction and adaptive reuse of existing buildings, which would be located within Detroit’s sports venue district, known as The District Detroit.

The 200,000-square-foot DCI building is to be part of a three-building campus on what is now Ilitch-owned land and parking lots west of the Fox Theatre in downtown Detroit. “The DCI will accelerate the development and retention of homegrown talent, provide new educational pathways, propel job creation, drive and diversify inclusive economic growth statewide and attract new businesses to Michigan,” – the press release said. Mr. Ross himself graduated from the University of Michigan with a Bachelor of Business Administration degree. Then in 2004, after he became the single largest donor to the university, the UM renamed its business school the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan.