{"id":124386,"date":"2018-03-20T11:04:04","date_gmt":"2018-03-20T15:04:04","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.thedetroitbureau.com\/?p=124386"},"modified":"2018-03-20T18:51:17","modified_gmt":"2018-03-20T22:51:17","slug":"ford-negotiating-deal-to-revive-long-time-symbol-of-detroit-decay","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/2018\/03\/ford-negotiating-deal-to-revive-long-time-symbol-of-detroit-decay\/","title":{"rendered":"Ford Negotiating Deal to Revive Long-Time Symbol of Detroit Decay"},"content":{"rendered":"
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The 18-story Michigan Central Station was once the world's tallest railroad depot.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

Ford Motor Co. is negotiating the purchase of the old Michigan Central train station a mile from the city\u2019s downtown, according to numerous sources.<\/p>\n

The 500,000 square-foot tower, once the world\u2019s tallest railroad depot, has served as a symbol of the Motor City\u2019s decay since closing three decades ago. But if the deal comes together, insiders suggest, it could serve as a sign that Detroit\u2019s nascent renaissance is truly taking hold.<\/p>\n

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Industry News!<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

It would also bring Ford back in a big way to the city where it was born. The automaker was incorporated along the Detroit riverfront and founder Henry Ford\u2019s earliest factories were just miles away from the Michigan Central Station. But for most of the last century, Ford has centered its operations in Dearborn, a suburb to the west of Detroit that largely escaped the economic collapse of Motown.<\/p>\n

(Ford reveals tidal wave of new product coming. <\/em>Click Here<\/span><\/a> for more.)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

<\/em><\/strong>Henry Ford II, the grandson of the company\u2019s founder, bet big on Detroit in the mid-1970s, serving as a major funder of the massive riverfront Renaissance Center complex. But after his death, Ford began moving operations from the RenCen back to Dearborn and, in 1996 sold the seven-tower complex to rival General Motors for a paltry $70 million. GM moved its headquarters into the facility and has since invested over $1 billion in upgrades.<\/p>\n

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The lobby of the station in better times.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

GM\u2019s investment was one of the catalysts that has helped the Motor City begin its unexpected rebound. Dan Gilbert, the owner of Quicken Loans and Rock Mortgage, among other ventures, has purchased over 100 buildings over the past decade encouraging a broader flood of new jobs and investments. Even with new housing projects, meanwhile, residential occupancy rates have surged to an estimated 98%, according to city data.<\/p>\n

But the abandoned Michigan Central building, which towers over the mostly residential Corktown neighborhood, has continued to serve as an icon of decay, stubbornly reminding city and business officials of the challenges that remain.<\/p>\n

For its part, Ford recently dipped its toe into the Detroit revival when it purchased a low-rise former manufacturing site, known as \u201cThe Factory,\u201d late last year. It is expected to begin serving as the headquarters of the automaker\u2019s autonomous and electrified vehicle programs once the first of a planned 200 workers begin moving in this coming May.<\/p>\n

During a preview of the site last December, several Ford executives strongly hinted to TheDetroitBureau.com that they were considering other options within the city. And that was underscored by a statement issued by Ford this week that said, \u201cwe anticipate our presence will grow\u201d as the autonomous and electrified vehicle programs expand. That said, the automaker cautioned that is has \u201cnothing further to announce at this time.\u201d<\/p>\n

(What’s going on at “The Factory”? <\/em>Click Here<\/span><\/a> for more on Ford’s new project.)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

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What's left of the station's lobby today.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

According to several reports, the bid to purchase the Michigan Central Station is being driven by the latest heir to the Ford throne, Henry Ford\u2019s great-grandson Bill Ford Jr. The automaker\u2019s current chairman, Ford told TheDetroitBureau.com in December he was committed to aiding Detroit\u2019s turnaround.<\/p>\n

Were he to pull off a purchase, Ford Motor Co. would have plenty of work before it could use the facility. The old depot is in dreadful shape.<\/p>\n

The facility was opened after a December 1913 fire destroyed the old Michigan Central Railroad terminal in downtown Detroit. At its peak, it served over 200 trains a day, but as the automobile took root, rail travel declined and even Amtrak abandoned the station in 1986.<\/p>\n

A series of plans have failed to come to fruition and vandals largely destroyed the once-elegant facility\u2019s gran lobby and fa\u00e7ade over the years. Current owner Manuel \u201cMatty\u201d Moroun, has been repeatedly faulted for failing to maintain the building, though he has made some moves over the last several years, including replacing the station\u2019s windows and fixing some of its elevators, at an estimated cost of $8 million. But it has been unclear whether the billionaire investor was hoping to eventually rebuild the station on his own or just make it more appealing to a buyer.<\/p>\n

By some estimates, the 18-story tower would provide room for 1,000 or so workers. But projections of the renovation costs have nudged into the hundreds of millions of dollars. There\u2019s not even a parking structure on the site currently.<\/p>\n

According to several Detroit media reports, the automaker is hoping to lock down a deal by May. How long it would take to make the once-grand Grand Central Station usable again is uncertain but would likely take several years, at the least, according to observers.<\/p>\n

(Fatal crash of autonomous Uber<\/em> could threaten pace of self-driving tech development. <\/em>Click Here<\/span><\/a> for the latest.)<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ford could be ready to kick-start the revival of the Motor City with the purchase of the abandoned Michigan Central Station, long the symbol of Detroit’s urban decay. TheDetroitBureau.com has the story.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":124387,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_mo_disable_npp":"","footnotes":""},"categories":[7,5],"tags":[],"make":[56,58],"post-state":[],"category_old":[123,299,248,243,125],"acf":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124386"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=124386"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/124386\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/124387"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=124386"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=124386"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=124386"},{"taxonomy":"make","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/make?post=124386"},{"taxonomy":"post-state","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/post-state?post=124386"},{"taxonomy":"category_old","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/thedetroitbureau.com\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/category_old?post=124386"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}