F. Thomas Lewand, the architect of Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan's efforts to bring automotive jobs back to the Motor City, plans to retire at the end of the year after six years as the mayor's group executive for Jobs & the Economy.

Lewand, 73, has been one of the driving forces on Duggan's team behind securing Fiat Chrysler Automobiles' $2.5 billion investment in two Detroit auto plants and convincing Ford Motor Co. to purchase Michigan Central Station and build out a Corktown campus for autonomous and electric vehicles.

A longtime politically connected dealmaker in Detroit, Lewand also played a key role in getting the Detroit Pistons to move back to the city, following a three-decade suburban hiatus in Oakland County.

Lewand came out of retirement from the Bodman PLC law firm in 2014 to join Duggan's administration while the mayor was partially sidelined by state-imposed emergency management and a historic Chapter 9 municipal bankruptcy.

"In 2013, Tom was retired and attending art school when I recruited him to spend a couple of years to help us rebuild the city's planning and economic development team and to help land the first couple of deals," Duggan said in a statement. "Tom is as fine a negotiator as I've ever met. He has exceeded by far every expectation I could have had for transforming Detroit's reputation as a great place for business development."

At Bodman, Lewand's decades of legal work in the public and private sector included serving as a special master in the long-standing federal court oversight of the Detroit Water and Sewerage Department and serving as former Gov. Jennifer Granholm's facilitator in restructuring governance at Detroit Medical Center.

The mayor's office says more than 15,000 new jobs have been created since 2014 under Lewand's watch.

Lewand's other major job-attraction deals included Flex-N-Gate's new east side auto parts plant, Sakthi Automotive's expansion in southwest Detroit and auto-financing bank Ally Financial's downtown headquarters.

In a statement, Lewand indicated his second retirement is for good.

"It's time for me to let others take on the full-time challenge of creating new opportunities for growth in this great city and time for me to return to being a full-time husband, father and grandfather," he said.

Lewand is the father of Tom Lewand, CEO of watch and luxury goods maker Shinola/Detroit LLC and a former Detroit Lions team president.

His principal deputies on the mayor's Jobs & Economy team are Basil Cherian and Matt Walters.