Across the Potomac River from the nation's capital, Virginia Tech is developing a 1 million-square-foot innovation campus in Alexandria, Va., that's two Metro commuter train stops away from the second North American headquarters Amazon is building.

In New York City, Cornell University's tech campus on Roosevelt Island has positioned the prestigious upstate New York school as an urban university across the East River from Long Island City, where Amazon planned to build another headquarters.

Manhattan real estate developer Stephen Ross points to these two strategic locations for world-class universities as the reason why he believes his alma mater, the University of Michigan, needs to have a significant footprint in downtown Detroit.

"Corporations go to urban areas because of the talent they generate," Ross said in an exclusive interview with Crain's. "When Amazon was going to come to New York, it was because of Cornell Tech and the students that it was generating for senior management. ... So there's a lot of lessons to be drawn."

The $300 million Detroit Center for Innovation that Ross and fellow billionaire Dan Gilbert want to build for UM is effectively their answer for Amazon quickly passing over Detroit in its nationwide sweepstakes for a second headquarters outside of Seattle.

That Ross and Gilbert want to plant a satellite UM campus on a 15-acre tract of downtown land that a decade ago was destined to be a jail incarcerating Detroiters underscores the dramatic change in Detroit's trajectory from the depths of the bankruptcies of General Motors, Fiat Chrysler and later the city itself.

UM's Detroit Center for Innovation will offer master's-level courses automotive mobility, artificial intelligence, sustainability, cybersecurity, financial technology — fields of study the likes of Amazon, Google, Apple, GM, Ford Motor Co. and Gilbert's Quicken Loans Inc. are looking for in their next generation of innovators.

Instead of a razor wire-ringed fortress on Gratiot Avenue, Ross and Gilbert want to construct an "iconic" and futuristic structure that will attract top minds from around the world who will want to live, work, study and invent new technologies at the business incubation building planned for this campus.

"The block M does have that global brand that people want to be part of," said Khalil Rahal, Wayne County's assistant county executive in charge of economic development. "And right now, not everybody has the ability to get that education."

Backers of the project want to stop Michigan's brain drain that was exposed in Detroit's failed 2017 bid for Amazon HQ2 by the fact the state's flagship university in Ann Arbor exports more computer science and engineering and MBA graduates to Amazon's Seattle headquarters than any other university in America.

"One of our motivations for being part of this collaboration is to have a situation where more of our students look first to employers in Detroit, Southeast Michigan and this part of the country," UM President Mark Schlissel said in an interview before Wednesday's announcement. "Right now, many of our master students end up getting recruited out to the big companies in Seattle and Silicon Valley, to the Bay Area as a whole, to Boston, to New York. As more and more opportunities exist in Detroit, I really want to give those businesses a competitive advantage in attracting Michigan-trained, highly educated students — all to the good of the regional economy."

The project isn't fully baked.

There are several benchmarks that need to be met, not the least of which is raising an unspecified sum of the $300 million cost from foundations, philanthropists and corporations — getting them to buy into the concept and need for UM to have a bigger presence than the research initiatives and admissions office outpost the Ann Arbor university has maintained for years in the city of its founding.

Gilbert and Ross are pledging to fill in the fundraising gap; their real estate development companies plan to co-develop the rest of the "fail jail" site with residential midrise towers, business incubation space and a hotel and conference center.

The innovation center plans to offer high-level certificates to retrain workers whose jobs and needed skills will change with the advent of artificial intelligence.

"Being in the city (within) walking distance of these major businesses and employers gives the University of Michigan very good access to a new and growing community of current and future learners," Schlissel said.

During the failed Amazon bid, Gilbert's team always scoffed at the notion that there's a dearth of available talent given how close UM, Gilbert's alma mater of Michigan State University and any number of world-class universities that are within a five-hour drive from Detroit.

"We always push back on the lack of talent," said Matt Cullen, a top Gilbert lieutenant and CEO of Bedrock LLC. "But to have this kind of factory in the middle of the city generating 1,000 graduates a year, it certainly pushes back on that."

Cullen uses the word "factory" on purpose to emphasize the volume of brain power that could be attracted to advance their education in Detroit.

Ultimately, the goal with the UM innovation center is a strategic play for developing the talents of Detroit's next Dan Gilbert to innovate and disrupt an industry like Gilbert's internet-based Quicken Loans has done with mortgages.

"We are in hand to hand combat with Silicon Valley for automotive-related tech companies as cars become more computers on wheels," Mayor Mike Duggan said. "This is a huge advantage to us."

The hope is, if you build it, they will stay.

"This will attract jobs and bring corporations here. It will really act as the economic development tool … for Detroit to continue its renaissance," Ross said. "It's not just educating elite students. It's really opening itself up to really help grow the city and participate in the rebirth of the city of Detroit."