The Packard Automotive Plant is a former automobile-manufacturing factory in

Detroit Detroit ( , ; , ) is the largest city in the U.S. state of Michigan. It is also the largest U.S. city on the United States–Canada border, and the seat of government of Wayne County. The City of Detroit had a population of 639,111 at th ...

Michigan Michigan () is a state in the Great Lakes region of the upper Midwestern United States. With a population of nearly 10.12 million and an area of nearly , Michigan is the 10th-largest state by population, the 11th-largest by area, and the ...

, where luxury cars were made by the

Packard Packard or Packard Motor Car Company was an American luxury automobile company located in Detroit, Michigan. The first Packard automobiles were produced in 1899, and the last Packards were built in South Bend, Indiana in 1958. One of the "Thr ...

Motor Car Company and later by the

Studebaker-Packard Corporation The Studebaker-Packard Corporation was the entity created in 1954 by the purchase of the Studebaker Corporation of South Bend, Indiana, by the Packard Motor Car Company of Detroit, Michigan. While Studebaker was the larger of the two companies, P ...

. In 2022, it was scheduled for demolition, which began on October 27.

Design and operation

Under Packard

The 3,500,000-square-foot (325,000 m²), designed by

Albert Kahn Associates Albert Kahn Associates is an architectural design firm in Detroit, Michigan with a second office located in Miami, Florida. It was established in 1895 and is still active. Recent work includes being awarded third place in thVirtual Modeling Sta ...

using

Trussed Concrete Steel Company The Trussed Concrete Steel Company was founded in 1903 by Julius Kahn, an engineer and inventor. Its headquarters were in Detroit, Michigan, and its steel factory was in Youngstown, Ohio. The long company name changed to a shortened versi ...

products is located on of land on East Grand Boulevard on Detroit's east side. It included the first use of reinforced concrete in the United States for industrial construction in the automobile industry. The Packard plant was opened in 1903 and contained 10,000 square feet of floor space and at the time was considered the most modern automobile manufacturing facility in the world: modern, efficient, and massive in scale. By 1908, when an enlargement for the construction of trucks was announced, the factory was already six times larger than when constructed and occupied over fourteen acres of space. At its peak the complex employed 40,000 people, including skilled craftsmen involved in over eighty trades. The plant turned out Packard automobiles from 1903 to 1956, except during World War II, when production was shifted to war material, particularly the

Packard V-1650 Merlin The Packard V-1650 Merlin is a version of the Rolls-Royce Merlin aircraft engine, produced under license in the United States by the Packard Motor Car Company.Gunston 1995, p. 144. The engine was licensed to expand production of the Rolls-Roy ...

, which powered the

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fighter plane. Some experimental television broadcasts were conducted from the building, including a condensed production in 1939 of ''

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'', featuring a teenaged

Betty White Betty Marion White (January 17, 1922December 31, 2021) was an American actress and comedian. A pioneer of early television, with a television career spanning almost seven decades, White was noted for her vast work in the entertainment indust ...

After Packard

The factory complex closed in 1958, though other businesses operated on the premises or used it for storage until the late 1990s. In the 1990s, the buildings were used to host infamous "underground" raves and techno parties, including the Spastik party hosted by

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. The majority of the property was claimed by the city of Detroit in 1994 after former owners failed to pay back taxes. A number of the outer buildings were in use by businesses up through the early 2000s. In 2010, the last remaining tenant, Chemical Processing, announced its intention to vacate the premises after 52 years. The site was subsequently used as a filming location for many movies and TV shows.

Current status

Since its abandonment, the plant has been a haven for

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artists,

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paintball Paintball is a competitive team shooting sport in which players eliminate opponents from play by hitting them with spherical dye-filled gelatin capsules called paintballs that break upon impact. Paintballs are usually shot using low-energy ai ...

ers and auto scrappers, and much of the wiring and other building materials have been removed from the site. In one incident, vandals pushed a dump truck from the fourth floor. Karen Nagher, the executive director of the nonprofit organization Preservation Wayne, stated that she was irked to see people come from "all over the world" to poke around Detroit. "Piece by piece, they're disassembling those buildings, making it harder and harder to restore them". Despite many years of neglect and abuse, the reinforced concrete structures remain mostly intact and structurally sound. Portions of the upper floors of several small sections in various buildings have collapsed or been partly demolished and lie in ruins in the wake of several aborted attempts at demolition over the years. The City of Detroit has pledged legal action to have the property demolished or secured. Dominic Cristini, whose claim of ownership is disputed, was said to be conducting construction surveys in advance of full-scale demolition as of early 2012. On February 5, 2013, it was reported that aluminum letter placards spelling the Nazi slogan "

Arbeit macht frei () is a German phrase meaning "Work sets you free" or "Work makes one free". The slogan is known for appearing on the entrance of Auschwitz and other Nazi concentration camps. Origin The expression comes from the title of an 1873 novel by Ge ...

" (work makes one free) were placed in the windows of the E. Grand Boulevard bridge. Community volunteers promptly removed the letters. In April 2013, it was announced that AMC's '' Low Winter Sun'' would be filming around the location. In June 2018,

Amazon Amazon most often refers to: * Amazons, a tribe of female warriors in Greek mythology * Amazon rainforest, a rainforest covering most of the Amazon basin * Amazon River, in South America * Amazon (company), an American multinational technology c ...

The Grand Tour ''The Grand Tour'' is a British motoring television series, created by Jeremy Clarkson, Richard Hammond, James May and Andy Wilman, made for Amazon exclusively for its online streaming service Amazon Prime Video, and premiered on 18 Novembe ...

filmed their first episode of Season 3 in Detroit which prominently showed the Packard Plant; the episode debuted on January 18, 2019. On January 23, 2019, the bridge over Grand Boulevard collapsed. No injuries were reported. In February 2019 a section of the plant owned by the city of Detroit was demolished.

Sale

Due to tax delinquency, the 43 parcels composing the plant were put up for auction in September 2013. The starting bid was $975,000 (the amount owed in taxes) and there were no takers. Another auction in October 2013 posted a starting bid of $21,000, or about $500 per parcel. This auction closed with a top bid of $6,038,000 by Dr. Jill Van Horn, a

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-based physician who announced in an email that she would team up with "partners and investors from Detroit, Wall Street and international firms," to turn the site into an "economic engine", refurbishing the plant grounds for a manufactured-house assembly facility. However, the deadline for full payment was missed, prompting Wayne County to initiate talks with the second-highest bidder, Bill Hults, a

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-area developer who placed a $2,003,000 bid in the October auction. In a separate email, Dr. Van Horn stated, "It seemed (David Szymanski, Deputy Wayne County Treasurer) had already made up his mind to talk to the second bidder". Hults then made several non-refundable down-payments on the plant, but he ultimately failed to raise the entire sum of his bid. Around the same time in October 2013, a Spanish investor, Fernando Palazuelo, also expressed interest in securing the Packard Plant. It was purchased for $405,000 on December 12, 2013. Palazuelo, who has developed historic buildings in Spain and Peru, planned on moving into the plant by April 9, his 59th birthday. He planned on having six different uses for the Packard Plant Project (residential, retail, offices, light industry, recreation and art), estimated to cost about $350 million over the next 10 to 15 years. He hoped to bring a big-3 automotive-parts manufacturer to the plant in exchange for a few years of free rent. He also hoped to create a work space for local artists and an upscale go-kart track. As of August 2016, no redevelopment had taken place at the historic 40-acre site on Detroit's east side. At the time, many remained skeptical that the enormous effort would ever succeed — or even get off the ground — given the nearly half-billion-dollar price tag of the project that Palazuelo had envisioned.

Renovation

In May 2017, Arte Express, the holding company for Palazuelo, held a ground breaking ceremony for phase I of the project which will include the former 121,000-square-foot administrative building on the site. On August 12, 2017, the inaugural public tour of the property was conducted, which included access to the second floor of the administration building on the complex's western side.

Bust and demolition

The city demolished several structures on parcels it owns at the Packard Plant in 2017. In October 2020, it was announced that the original redevelopment vision for the site had been abandoned, and Palazuelo would be placing the property up for sale, with an eye toward large-scale demolition to repurpose the site for industrial use. On April 7, 2022, Wayne County Circuit Court Judge Brian Sullivan ordered the demolition of the Packard auto plant in Detroit, finding that it had become a public nuisance. The city began a search for contractors in May 2022. In late July 2022, Detroit City Council approved a nearly $1.7 million contract for the demolition of a portion of the Packard Plant. Demolition began on October 27, 2022.

References

Bibliography

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External links

1921 photo
with

Alvan Macauley James Alvan Macauley Sr. was the president of Packard Motor Company from 1916 until 1939. Early life and education Alvan, as he preferred to be called, was born in Wheeling, West Virginia, to James A. Macauley and Rebecca Jane Mills. Macauley' ...

- Detroit Public Library
1920-1923 Packard photo - Detroit Public Library

1956 factory photo - Detroit Public Library

"Largest Abandoned Factory in the World: The Packard Factory, Detroit."
''Sometimes Interesting''. 15 Aug 2011
Detroit News

at Detroiturbex.com
Packard Plant photos

blog.hemmings.com on Planned demolition mid-2012

Recent photos of the Packard Plant

Detroit Free Press photos - then and now

Packard images in IR