“Five years ago you couldn’t get a meeting [at RECon],” said Dan Mullen, president and chief marketing officer of Bedrock Detroit (development arm of Quicken Loans), at a recent Detroit Regional Chamber meeting, according to The Detroit News. Mullen attended RECon last month. "This year everyone wanted to talk about Detroit."

The success of existing retailers in the downtown — Lululemon, Nike and Warby Parker, among others — is a sign that the city is ready for another wave of prominent retailers, such as Apple, H&M and Zara, officials say.

“There are a lot of deals on the edge of getting done,” said Bedrock co-founder and CEO Jim Ketai, according to the newspaper. “Ideally, there are going to be a lot of announcements coming very soon.”

A critical mass of office workers and residents has been reached in the downtown to entice retailers, executives said. According to Bedrock, the retail portions of future mixed-use projects will be planned and opened at the same time as the office and residential segments, rather than later.