The future of the downtown site at Gratiot and St. Antoine has been in flux for over a decade. Construction began on a new Wayne County jail in 2011, but stalled midway in 2013 due to cost overruns and corruption charges. In 2016, Dan Gilbert and Detroit Pistons owner Tom Gores proposed building a Major League Soccer stadium; the plans were later scrapped. Dan Gilbert's Bedrock took ownership of the site in 2018 through a land swap deal, in which Bedrock would develop a new jail (currently under construction) at I-75 and Warren and pay part of the costs. The so-called "fail jail" on Gratiot was demolished that year. In 2019, Bedrock announced a partnership with developer Stephen Ross and the University of Michigan to build the Detroit Center for Innovation on the site; in July 2021 that partnership dissolved and a new home for DCI in the District Detroit was announced. Bedrock still intends to develop a large mixed-use "innovation district." In August 2021, the real estate management company announced a partnership with the World Economic Forum to launch a new Global Centre for Urban Transformation in Detroit, to initially be located in another downtown Bedrock property, with the intention to relocate to the Gratiot site in the future.

Sources: Detroit News, Detroit Free Press, Urbanize Detroit