Ford Motor Co. officials told shareholders last week that the Dearborn automaker will "grow our presence in Detroit" and did not deny the company is pursuing purchase of the long-vacant Michigan Central Station in the city's historic Corktown neighborhood.

The automaker on Tuesday released a transcript of questions it fielded from shareholders during the company's May 10 virtual meeting. One unidentified shareholder had a pointed question about the strategic value of buying the train station from the family of billionaire Manuel "Matty" Moroun.

"Given the company's dismal stock performance, please explain how the purchase of an abandoned train depot will add to shareholder value. If Ford does buy the Detroit rail station building in Detroit, will the building be devoted to just Ford or will parts of the building be leased out to other tenants?" the shareholder asked, according to a transcript.

Ford officials did not directly answer the shareholder's question about how it intends to use the train station, but the company's answer to shareholders hinted at the reasoning behind expanding its workforce presence in Detroit beyond The Factory building on Michigan Avenue that the company already has said will house 200-plus employees from its electric and autonomous vehicle teams.

"As a company we are in a race for talent when it comes to the vehicle, software and data engineers that are developing the autonomous technology and creating mobility experiences and services that will transform the way people connect and interact," the company said.

"That is why we continue to build out our presence in Palo Alto, advance our software capabilities at FordLabs in Ann Arbor, transform our Dearborn campus, and why we are moving our AV and EV teams to Corktown in Detroit. We expect to grow our presence in Detroit and will share more details in the future."

It's unclear just how much of Ford's AV and EV teams will be relocated to Detroit.

The company has not formally commented on its effort to build out a campus in Corktown and declined to say whether Ford's board of directors discussed purchasing the train station during a May 9 meeting, one day before the shareholder meeting.

In January, Sherif Marakby, vice president of autonomous vehicles and electrification for Ford, told Crain's that the 200 employees the company was embedding in The Factory building at Michigan Avenue and Rosa Parks Boulevard would be limited to the business development of fully electric and autonomous vehicles, while engineering remained in Dearborn and other locations.

Internally, the Ford employees working to bring up to 16 electric vehicles to market by 2022 are known as Team Edison.

"We see being in Corktown as a big advantage," Marakby told Crain's at the North American International Auto Show in January. "And it has actually, in many ways, increased the interest in working on the team — internally and externally."

Company officials have said small groups of Ford employees will start moving into The Factory at 1907 and 1927 Michigan Ave. this month.

Edsel B. Ford II, a member of the board of directors and great-grandson of founder Henry Ford, said in an interview last month that the automaker wants to cluster the "driverless car people" together in an urban setting.

"I think that's what's really driving it," said Ford, whose comments marked the first time a Ford company official had confirmed the automaker is trying to buy the train station.

Edsel Ford also addressed the condition of the train station, which has sat vacant since 1988 and has long been an international symbol of Detroit's late 20th century decline.

"I don't know how long it's going to take to redevelop all of that if we did buy the building," Ford told reporters after an event in Campus Martius. "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."