If a born-in-Detroit business like Ford Motor Co. can come back to the Motor City, why couldn't an iconic brand like Stroh's beer have its own brewery in the city again?

Given Ford's big bet on Corktown and the long-ago-left-for-dead Michigan Central Station, it doesn't seem like such a wild idea anymore that the Stroh Brewery Co. would at least build a microbrewery in Detroit to complement the throwback beers the company is bottling at Brew Detroit, a contract brewer in Corktown.

Stroh's closed its Detroit brewery on Gratiot Avenue 33 years ago this summer as the debt-ridden Stroh family struggled to hold onto to a company that was founded in Detroit 11 years before the Civil War broke out. The fall of the Stroh's beer empire was symbolic of Detroit's late 20th century decline and predated Ford's exit from the city a decade later when the automaker decamped from the Renaissance Center.

In an interview for the Crain's "Detroit Rising" podcast, Stroh's brand manager Andy Gurjian was seemingly caught off guard when I asked him if Stroh could have its own brewery in Detroit again.

"I don't know. That's tough," Gurjian said. "I think it's one step at a time. We were able to get back here in 2016. We found a way to do that."