Microsoft is taking its Detroit operation downtown

Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan and businessman Dan Gilbert are set to announce Microsoft is moving downtown from the suburbs. TechCrunch has confirmed the move with several trusted sources and learned that Microsoft will occupy 50,000 square feet in One Campus Martius, a building owned in part by Dan Gilbert and home to a large chunk of the Quicken Loans team.

Microsoft’s Detroit operation is currently housed in Southfield, Mich. The staff is mostly sales people. It’s unknown at this time if the entire Southfield workforce will be relocated to this new location.

The announcement is scheduled for tomorrow morning, February 3rd, at 9:00 am EST.

During my chat with Dan Gilbert at CES 2017, he announced that a major tech firm was moving downtown but wouldn’t say who. He talked about his quest to turn Detroit into a financial technology hub and Microsoft nabbing a location there, even though it’s mostly a sales office, goes a long way to support that effort. Gilbert has long claimed his largest company, Quicken Loans, is a tech firm rather than a mortgage provider.

Since moving his company downtown in 2011, Dan Gilbert has been snapping up real estate at a rapid pace. He’s also trying to construct new buildings, claiming there is a lack of workable office space. And now, after Microsoft moves in, there will be even less.