A waterfront of high-rise buildings, a transit system on Jefferson Avenue and integrating empty industrial buildings with new development were among the ideas presented this week by the six architectural teams vying to design plans for Detroit’s East Riverfront area.

The groups, some of which have worked on other Detroit redevelopment projects, described their experience and qualifications with hourlong talks and slide shows to a panel of redevelopment experts and members of the public.

Among the experts were Maurice Cox, planning director for the city of Detroit; Mark Wallace, president and CEO of the Detroit RiverFront Conservancy; Richard Hosey, owner of Hosey Development LLC in Detroit; Dorothee Imbert, Ohio State University professor; and William Gilchrist, director of place-based planning for the city of New Orleans.

The team to win the bid will be tasked with designing a plan to redevelop the 400-acre, 2-mile-long stretch of land east of downtown between Jefferson Avenue and the Detroit River.

The event was hosted by the Detroit RiverFront Conservancy and Detroit Planning Department at the Outdoor Adventure Center in a neighborhood that through the years has been called Rivertown, the Warehouse District and the River District. The meeting was open to the public and drew close to 200 people Tuesday.

The panel will choose the winning team at the beginning of February. The project to design plans for development will start in the spring and take about four months, Wallace said.

“A framework plan will be done to raise questions about the future of the district,” Wallace said. “We want to get a vision. Community engagement will be integrated into the planning process.”

Several nonprofit and local companies have committed to funding the design plans. They include the Kresge Foundation, the Knight Foundation, Hudson-Webber, Fifth Third Bank, Ford UAW, Rock Ventures and Detroit Metro Convention & Visitors Bureau. The city of Detroit is also participating.

Wallace would not disclose the cost of the project.

The candidates were chosen from 24 submissions by local and national architecture teams based on a November request for qualifications issued by the conservancy and city. None of the six companies chosen to present this week are based in the Detroit area. The companies, in collaboration with other architectural firms, that applied for the project are:

Stoss Landscape Urbanism , Boston

, Boston BJH Advisors , New York City

, New York City Partnership for Architecture and Urbanism , New York City

, New York City Utile , Boston

, Boston Gensler , San Francisco

, San Francisco Skidmore Owings and Merrill, Chicago

“Most of our work is in the public realm. We thrive in that environment,” Chris Reed, founding principal of Stoss Landscape Urbanism, said during his company’s presentation.

Cox asked several of the bidders what they would do to make Detroit’s riverfront distinctive.

“We have spent time wandering around and there are great, old industrial resources that exist here. We’d explore if that kind of building has a future here,” Reed said.

Vishaan Chakrabarti, Partnership for Architecture and Urbanism founder, stressed that half of his firm’s team is in Detroit and has worked on other projects here.

Having done high-rise buildings along other city’s waterfronts, he posed the question, “Is there skyline potential here?”

Wallace pointed out that much of the land along the East Riverfront is privately owned, which could present a challenge in redevelopment.

Chakrabarti said that kind of situation existed and was overcome in developing New York City’s High Line. Some of those same solutions could be used in Detroit, he said.