Ford Motor Co. board member Edsel B. Ford II said Monday that the automaker's board of directors "has been briefed" on fast-moving plans to purchase the long-vacant Michigan Central Station in Detroit as part of a "big redevelopment" of Corktown.

Ford's comments mark the first time a member of the Ford family or any company official has confirmed the automaker is pursuing purchase of the train station, which Crain's first reported March 19.

Ford, the great-grandson of company founder Henry Ford, commented on the company's efforts to establish a campus for employees working in the development of electric and autonomous vehicles of the future following a ceremony at Campus Martius honoring his work on the Detroit 300 Conservancy group that was instrumental in creating the park.

The Ford Motor Co. board plans to discuss the train station deal at its May 10 meeting and could take a vote on the major real estate acquisition proposal, Edsel Ford II said.

"It doesn't need a vote, but it requires buy-in," Ford said.

Internally at the Dearborn automaker, Ford Executive Chairman Bill Ford Jr. has been said to be driving the push for the company to re-establish a major presence in Detroit some two decades after the company's last employees left the Renaissance Center, whose construction was led by Edsel Ford II's father, Henry Ford II.

"Bill's excited about it, and I'm excited about it," Edsel Ford II said, calling it a potential "big redevelopment of southwest Detroit."

Ford cautioned there's no done deal yet to purchase the train station from the family of billionaire trucking mogul Manual "Matty" Moroun.

"There's T's to cross and i's to dot and nothing is — as you know — officially announced yet," Ford told reporters.

The push to establish a campus in Corktown beyond the building Ford purchased in December at the corner of Michigan Avenue and Rosa Parks Boulevard is driven by a desire to "cluster" the autonomous and electric vehicle units in one spot, Ford said.

"I think that's what's really driving it," he said.

The Michigan Central Station has sat vacant since the last Amtrak train left the station in January 1988 and become an internationally recognized symbol of the city's late 20th century decline. The Moroun family's Crown Enterprises has said it spent $8 million installing 1,100 new windows in the once-cavernous building in 2015 after Mayor Mike Duggan pressed businessman Matthew Moroun to make improvements.

But there's an unknown cost of rehabilitating the station and its 13-floor office tower atop of the 110,000-square-foot first-floor concourse that sat open to the elements for years — a challenge the Ford scion acknowledged Monday.

"I don't know how long it's going to take to redevelop all of that if we did buy the building," Edsel Ford II told reporters. "But it seems to me that the building is in somewhat disrepair, so we would have to spend some time and effort and redo it all."

Duggan sidestepped a question Monday about whether the city has offered Ford a tax incentive package to redevelop the train station.

"I never talk about any deal until it's done. ... We'll see," Duggan said after the Detroit Financial Review Commision voted to end direct oversight of city finances.