Dan Gilbert talks jobs, new office tenants, and more skyscrapers in Detroit

The North American International Auto Show has kicked off in Detroit and already, Dan Gilbert is making news. Sunday night, he sat down for an interview with Bloomberg Television anchor Betty Liu and said that a major new office tenant would be moving into downtown soon.

Sources tell the Free Press and Crain’s that Microsoft, which has an office in Southfield, is expected to move downtown into a building owned by Dan Gilbert. According to the Free Press, Gilbert said, “We have a 50,000 square-foot tenant we’re announcing in a week or so, and we have to displace Quicken Loans employees and we have to put them somewhere else."

Gilbert has discussed the need for more office and residential space lately, and has unveiled plans to build office towers on the Monroe block downtown. Even more recently, he’s talked about building near the Ren Center along the riverfront. We should know the final plans for the Hudson’s site soon, which will likely include retail, office, and residential.

According to the Free Press, “The next step is new construction, and he predicted that 10 to 15 new skyscraper projects of 25 or more stories will get underway in the next five to seven years.”

The full video can be found here and his interview starts at about 12:30.