Was Detroit's bid for Amazon's second headquarters a colossal waste of time and effort?

Hardly.

Despite the handwringing over whether the Seattle-based online retail behemoth planned all along to establish new corporate offices in the suburbs of New York City and Washington, D.C., the Amazon fever that swept over Detroit a year ago was a flu worth catching.

There hasn't been a single economic expansion opportunity in decades that has spurred Southeast Michigan's business and political leaders into collective action like the Amazon bid did in pursuit of 50,000 high-wage white-collar jobs.

Even L. Brooks Patterson threw in his support for Detroit.

The frenzied race for Amazon's attention forced our leaders to take a serious look at our strengths as a region and our all-too-obvious shortcomings (see: pockmarked roads, low-performing schools, fractured regional transit systems, the subpar percentage of adults with four-year degrees and our "radioactive-like" reputation).

Before Amazon issued its Request For Proposals just after Labor Day 2017, the state's economic planners were plodding along, chasing the usual assortment of auto industry investments, intrastate relocations and a collection of Amazon package fulfillment centers with low-wage warehouse jobs.

Earlier that summer, Gov. Rick Snyder and Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan made a serious play for a Foxconn liquid crystal display screen manufacturing plant, but lost the bidding war to Wisconsin. But even Foxconn's promised 13,000 jobs paled in comparison to the transformational economic tsunami that Amazon was stirring up.

For Detroit and Michigan, the failed bid for Amazon's second corporate headquarters suddenly got our leaders talking — and, in some cases, arguing — about what Michigan really needs to compete for 21st century knowledge-economy jobs.

And this time, the conversation didn't revolve entirely around how fat of a tax subsidy check could Michigan offer (though it took months of prodding by Crain's to get state officials to cough up that $4 billion figure).

Instead, there was a robust debate about Detroit's ability to meet Amazon's needs in attracting talent.

Suddenly, quality of life mattered.

The availability of bright minds mattered.

And public transportation for those bright minds to get to work mattered.

At the Woodward Avenue headquarters of Dan Gilbert's Bedrock LLC, which served as a central clearinghouse for Detroit's Amazon bid, officials strategized in a "war room" over how to overcome Detroit and Michigan's pitfalls.

To address the talent shortage, they drew a circle within a five-hour drive of Detroit to show the top-tier universities that could be tapped for talent from as far away as Pittsburgh, Chicago and Toronto.

In pulling together a bid committee, those involved connected dots that no one had previously taken time to connect before.

Like the fact that Amazon's Seattle headquarters is the No. 1 destination for University of Michigan's computer science and engineering graduates.

Amazon also has hired more MBA graduates from Ann Arbor since 2010 than from any other university in the country, according to UM President Mark Schlissel.

Those were data points that some leaders at UM were unaware of until the Amazon bid committee went searching for positive talking points.

And until the Amazon opportunity came along, expanding metro Detroit's regional transit system was a philosophical argument that proponents did a lousy job of explaining in the failed 2016 ballot campaign.

Amazon company officials told metro Detroit leaders in no uncertain terms that our fractured and limited system was a serious shortcoming in our bid for their business (Foxconn company officials also were fixated on bus routes, according to Duggan).

That ignited a debate between Detroit and its suburbs over what kind of bus system we should have to move people to jobs and how we should pay for it — a debate that's far from settled.

The Suburban Mobility Authority for Regional Transportation (SMART) and the Detroit Department of Transportation (DDOT) have both upped their games since the Amazon bid, accelerating efforts to have a seamless universal fare card system and expanding limited-stop routes on Woodward, Gratiot and Michigan avenues.

SMART also has added its FAST bus service from downtown to Detroit Metropolitan Airport that embarassingly didn't exist when the authors of Detroit's Amazon bid had to scratch it into the plan.

Before the Amazon bid, a group of the region's top corporate CEOs had already been quietly mapping out strategies to enhance mass transit and better market Southeast Michigan for business relocation and expansion opportunities.

Detroit's Amazon proposal was pulled together in six short weeks, as employees at Gilbert's Bedrock and outside consultants hired on the fly worked to put together a marketing package for metro Detroit that didn't previously exist. They churned out a 242-page spiral-bound book.

"As we all stood back after the fact and said, 'Look, if there's any perfect demonstration of our need to be much better at having this information ready to go and available to respond to anything that comes into the region, this is a great example,' " said Gerry Anderson, chairman and CEO of DTE Energy Co., who served on the 60-member regional Amazon bid committee.

Anderson leads a no-name group of CEOs that are in the middle of standing up a new regional economic development organization that will be set up to do just what Gilbert's company did on the fly in marshaling the bid for Amazon HQ2.

Before Amazon launched its HQ2 sweepstakes, the CEOs had been discussing forming the new business-attraction organization for a year, Anderson said.

"The Amazon bid was definitely a punctuation of the need," Anderson said in an interview. "This gave it a kick in the pants."

Since Amazon formally knocked Detroit out of the running in January, hardly a week has gone by in which business, civic and political leaders haven't publicly discussed the lessons learned from the Amazon bid.

The failure to win over Amazon was repeatedly talked about in the governor's race this year, which means it can help guide Gov.-elect Gretchen Whitmer's decsion-making on talent development, transit and business-attraction efforts in the new year.

In many ways, the hard truths laid bare by Detroit's failed Amazon bid were just the kick in the pants this region needed.

Chad Livengood: (313) 446-1654

Twitter: @ChadLivengood