Communities · 2018 · Proposal

An afternoon to imagine what a station could become

Reimagining Detroit Tech

I facilitated a table at Ford's 2018 design day inside Michigan Central Station. We started with who would use the building, then worked our way to a plan.

A printed board hung on a line in the station concourse: a ground-floor plan of Michigan Central Station coloured pink, teal and yellow, hand-annotated, with a Moonshot panel of radiating handwritten notes at right — Fig. 1 — The table's programme board hung in the concourse at the end of the session, 17 August 2018. Dominic Gelfuso. Pink: public and event; teal: office; yellow: commercial.

Role: Table facilitator (Ford Thirty Under 30 fellow)
Years: 2018
Project status: Proposal
Organisation: Ford Motor Company
Collaborators: Table of six participants: Candace Wimberley, Theresa Jarvis, Briant Campbell, Derek Mehraban, Sara Mahmood, Satish Malnaik (spellings from the board; consent to be named pending)
Categories: Communities
Sources: S32, S13, S15

Design day: Held 17 August 2018
Table concept and programme board: Delivered on the day
Contest: Won (per Dominic's record of the day)
Adopted into the station's plan: Not claimed

04Situation

In June 2018 Ford bought Michigan Central Station, the Beaux-Arts depot that had stood empty over Corktown since 1988, and said it would become the centre of a mobility campus. ^[S32] I was in the crowd on the day the company celebrated the purchase, with the building still open to the sky.

Michigan Central Station's eighteen-storey facade, windows still unglazed, with a crowd in front of a stage and blue Ford banners hung in the arches — Fig. 2 — Michigan Central Station on the day Ford celebrated its purchase, 19 June 2018. Dominic Gelfuso.

Two months later, before there was a plan for the building, Ford brought nearly two hundred people from across the region into the station for a day of design challenges and workshops on what the depot and Corktown could become. Members of Ford's Thirty Under 30 programme led the design sessions; ^[S32] I was one of that year's fellows, ^[S13]^[S15] and I facilitated a table.

The station's concourse: tall brick walls scrawled with graffiti, a steel truss roof open to the sky, standing water on the floor and a small group of people posing in the middle — Fig. 3 — The concourse the day before the workshop, 16 August 2018. Dominic Gelfuso. The venue, as found.

05The day

Each table had a printed plan of the station's ground floor, three colours of marker and an afternoon. The brief was open: reimagine the building as the home of a tech and entrepreneur ecosystem that the neighbourhood could use.

My table's first move was to write down what we were not going to do. The first card on the table says Don't Do Nonsense — a teacher's phrase I have carried since university — and the cards after it are questions rather than answers: What would be ideal? How might Detroit be better than Silicon Valley? How might we foster collaboration? What would make people come to Detroit for venture money instead of Los Angeles? And one measurable: Anyone can get anywhere in Detroit in five minutes.

Twelve blue sticky notes in a grid, handwritten: Don't Do Nonsense; What would be IDEAL; Train station be where the top entrepreneurs come to start the next Google; Maker Mecca; Attracting talent to Detroit; How might Detroit be BETTER than Silicon Valley; How might we foster collaboration; People come to Detroit for VC money instead of L.A.; Ford's multi-building Corktown campus; Framework for Detroit's innovation ecosystem; The community of Detroit can build any idea in one day; Anyone can get anywhere in Detroit in 5 mins — Fig. 4 — The table's framing cards, 17 August 2018. Dominic Gelfuso. Written in the first twenty minutes; the plan followed from them.

The plan that followed zoned the ground floor three ways — public and event space in the centre, office at the north end, commercial along the street edges — and then filled the public zone with reasons for the neighbourhood to walk in: revolving exhibits of local art and STEAM work, a hall of fame, space for a resident artist, a library and computer lab with an incubator beside it, history tours in VR, pop-up retail and a coffee lounge along the facade. A separate Moonshot panel argued for a magnetic-rail link from the station to Chicago, which is the kind of thing a train station is for.

The table's printed board: a ground-floor plan of Michigan Central Station coloured pink for public and event space, teal for office and yellow for commercial, annotated by hand with programme ideas; a Moonshot panel at right radiates handwritten notes from a sketch of the station; participants' names are written along the bottom — Fig. 5 — The table's board at the end of the session, 17 August 2018. Dominic Gelfuso. Pink: public and event. Teal: office. Yellow: commercial. The handwriting is the table's.

Five people lean over the plan on a table, one pointing at a sticky note, under the station's arched windows — Fig. 6 — Working the plan, 17 August 2018. Dominic Gelfuso.

06Decision

I pushed the table to spend time on questions before drawing the plan: who would come here on an ordinary Tuesday, and what would bring them in? We wrote down what success might look like, then used the floor plan to work toward it. Taking that time early gave the group something to test its ideas against.

07Outcome

At the end of the afternoon, the boards were hung in the concourse and each table presented. Ours won the day's contest. That was the outcome of the workshop; I have no basis to connect our proposal to the station's later redevelopment.

Printed boards hung on a line across the station concourse, with people walking along them reading — Fig. 7 — The boards hung for review, 17 August 2018. Dominic Gelfuso.

Eight people, conference lanyards on, in front of the hung boards, one pointing up at the table's plan — Fig. 8 — The table in front of its board, 17 August 2018. Photographed by a colleague on Dominic's phone.

About twenty people on a stage under blue light holding blue Ford tote bags, with a photographer in front and a REIMAGINING DETROIT TECH banner along the stage edge — Fig. 9 — The winning tables on stage, 17 August 2018. Photographer unknown; shared with the participants. Low-resolution copy.

I remember the setting as much as the board. Nearly two hundred people were working inside a building with no glass in its windows, trying to give it a future. Having the conversation there made the question feel immediate.

The station's vaulted waiting room, plaster stripped to brick, a great arched window at right and a handful of people on the floor far below — Fig. 10 — The waiting room, 16 August 2018. Dominic Gelfuso.

References & documentation

1. S32
Michigan Central — Ford Opens Historic Train Station To Listen To New Ideas, Voices Of Corktown Community — Ford's own account (18 Aug 2018) of the design day at Michigan Central Station: nearly 200 participants, design challenges and workshops on Corktown's future, design sessions led by Thirty Under 30 fellows; the largest community activity at the station since the June 2018 open house
Calls the event 'Reimagined Detroit Tech' (the printed boards say 'Reimagining'); does not name a date, a contest or a winning table — those rest on Dominic's photographs from the day. First-party to Ford. Added 2026-10-23.
2. S13
Ford Philanthropy - Thirty Under 30 — Program purpose and 2018 class-year entry
Generic program video is not proven First Step team recap
3. S15
RPI Every Day Matters — Rensselaer Graduate Named to Ford's 30 Under 30 — Independent university coverage of Dominic's selection for the 2018 Ford Thirty Under 30 fellowship; linked the (now unavailable) application video
Covers selection, not the First Step project outcome; the video it linked was the Swersey tribute, not the team recap. Added 2026-10-23 from Dominic's archive search.