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Ford Motor Co. aims to have 2,500 employees in Corktown and wants to renovate the Michigan Central Station by 2022 as part of a campus in Detroit focused on developing self-driving vehicles of the future, company Executive Chairman Bill Ford Jr. said.

The Ford scion and great-grandson of the company's founder envisions creating a autonomous-vehicle technology hub in Corktown that goes beyond his own company, with up to 2,500 additional workers from suppliers and partner companies working in Ford-owned facilities in Detroit's oldest neighborhood.

"I would love for this to be like the Sand Hill Road of Michigan, where entrepreneurs, startups (and) partners all want to come and be part of this creation process," Ford said, referring to the California road where venture capitalists fueled the meteoric rise of Silicon Valley.

"That would be amazing to me, and I think that can happen. Because the future of mobility should be created in Detroit — and I believe it will be."

Bill Ford detailed the automaker's plans for transforming Detroit's long-vacant train station into a hub for both autonomous vehicle development and deployment during a wide-ranging joint interview with Crain's Detroit Business and Automotive News ahead of a public event Ford Motor Co. is hosting Tuesday outside of the train station.

"It will very much be part of the fabric of the new transportation model," Ford said of the 104-year-old train station. "And our future at Ford will be largely invented there."

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The automaker's bid to use the derelict train station as the anchor for a 1.2 million-square-foot Corktown campus hinges on getting suppliers and technology companies involved in the development of autonomous vehicles to join them in Detroit.

In the train station, Bill Ford sees a building and urban neighborhood steeped in Motor City history that will give the automaker a recruiting edge for the best minds in the world to come work for the Blue Oval instead of other automakers and tech giants like Google and Apple in the race to build autonomous vehicles.

"We're in a war for talent," Ford said. "And there will be no place in the country that anybody will be able to work that's a place like that. That means beautiful Silicon Valley campuses … none of them will have something like this."

Dave Dubensky, chairman and CEO of Ford Land Development Co., the automaker's real estate arm, has estimated that renovating the train station could take four years to complete, Bill Ford said.

But the construction time frame is not firm.

"If it's wrong, it's wrong," Ford told Crain's and Automotive News. "But so much could happen in four years."

An untold bill awaits Ford Motor Co. to rehabilitate the once-ornate train station, with its towering columns and Roman bathhouse-like concourse that greeted passengers from Christmas of 1913 to the first few days of 1988, when the last Amtrak trains left the station.

Take a look back: The history of Michigan Central Station

Bill Ford declined to reveal how much the company paid billionaire Manuel "Matty" Moroun's Crown Enterprises Inc. for the station and the former Detroit schools book depository next to the depot on 14th Street. There are no plans yet for how the book depository will be used, Ford said.

Ford also wouldn't say how much the company intends to spend rehabilitating Michigan Central Station or the depository, also known as the Roosevelt Warehouse, which was ravaged by a fire in 1987.

The cost of the renovation is already built into the automaker's five-year facilities spending plans it adopted in 2016 as part of a renovation of its Dearborn headquarters and research and engineering facilities. Those projects in Dearborn remain in progress, Ford said, and the Glass House will remain the company's world headquarters.

But Ford said tax incentives the automaker could receive played a role in purchasing the Detroit train station, though he wouldn't divulge how much those subsidies could be worth.

"If we didn't get this on the right terms and feel we got the right incentives and feel this made really good business sense, we wouldn't have done it," he said.

Since late last year, Ford Motor Co. says it has purchased through real estate holding companies the train station, book depository building The Factory at Michigan and Rosa Parks and vacant land adjacent to the Police Athletic League headquarters and baseball field where old Tiger Stadium once stood.

In late May, about 220 employees from Ford's electric and autonomous vehicle teams moved into The Factory building, a 50,000-square-foot former hosiery factory. Those Ford employees include Bill Ford's daughter, Alexandra English, who is part of the autonomous vehicles business team. "She loves it," Ford said. "They all do, because of the energy."

Bill Ford indicated the company is not done buying property in Corktown.

He said the automaker is "close" to purchasing The Alchemy building next door to The Factory, which is listed for $2.5 million.

"We haven't yet laid out a master plan for who's going where and what it will all look like," Ford said. "But we'll have a big presence there where our employees can move around from facility to facility and then get back and forth to Dearborn very quickly."

The automaker will formally detail its Corktown and train station plans at Tuesday's event — a long-awaited homecoming of sorts for a company Henry Ford founded in Detroit 115 years ago this month.

Ford's last employees left the Renaissance Center in 1996 for Dearborn after the company sold the riverfront skyscrapers developed in the mid-1970s by Henry Ford II to crosstown rival General Motors Co.

Unlike the RenCen, Bill Ford Jr. wants the train station to be accessible to Detroiters and visitors alike.

Ford said the first-floor concourse of the train station would be open to the public, filled with restaurants and retail. He envisions it as a gathering place similar to New York's Hudson Yards and San Francisco's ferry terminal.

"One thing that's very important to me is that this is not seen as a corporate takeover of Corktown," Ford said.

The automaker is trying to forge new relationships in the neighborhood, a trendy area west of downtown that's already seeing a spike in real estate prices following news of Ford's arrival.

Ford Motor's event in front of the train station in Roosevelt Park on Tuesday is open to the public on a first-come, first-served basis. Ford is planning to open the train station up to the public June 22-24 for a community open house.

"It's really important that we become part of the community and that we're not isolated or insulated from it," Ford said.

The goal, Bill Ford said, is to ensure the train station doesn't become "a corporate island."

Ford's cautious approach mirrors the past sentiments of the train station's now-former caretaker, businessman Matthew Moroun, who quarterbacked the sale of the depot, which his aging 91-year-old father, Matty, bought in 1992.

"I don't want it to be a castle," Moroun told Crain's last September. "It would be really cool if some Fortune 500 company made it their headquarters in Detroit — and I wouldn't turn down that opportunity."

Indeed, as Moroun was preparing last fall to showcase the station at the Crain's Detroit Homecoming opening dinner on Sept. 14, Ford was already on the hunt for property in Detroit.

Bill Ford said he attended an event at The Factory last summer and thought it was "a terrific building."

"Coincidently, our Team Edison, which is the AV/EV team that was being formed, and they were looking for their own space," Ford said. "So we (bought) The Factory."

Businessman Thomas Buhl, who renovated The Factory with his brother, Robbie, set up a meeting in mid-October between Moroun and Ford officials, Moroun said.

Matthew Moroun and Bill Ford Jr., the scions of two of metro Detroit's wealthiest families, both described the negotiations as respectful.

"We never really hit any stumbling points with Matt along the way, which is obviously also important," Ford said.

Moroun's family has faced years of criticism for sitting on the depot building and only recently installing windows to placate Mayor Mike Duggan in a deal for riverfront land the Morouns needed to build a new Ambassador Bridge.

In announcing the sale of the station last week, Moroun said Ford's vision for one of Detroit's most iconic buildings was "the grand development I was looking for."

"I know that the city was looking for a moonshot with Amazon," Moroun said. "But I think we got what's really fitting for our city."

Bill Ford, who has been the automaker's chairman since 1999, said the Corktown campus "dwarfs" his past major projects to modernize the Ford Rouge plant and move the Lions football franchise back to Detroit in 2002.

When asked if the train station will be his legacy, Ford replied: "Don't put the shovel on me yet. I'm hoping I have a little bit of a runway yet and certainly wouldn't like this to be my final act."