Ford Motor plots to release details of its planned conversion of the long-vacant Michigan Central suite station just west of downtown Detroit.
The Dearborn-based automaker recently acquisition bargain the 105-year-old building and is expected to redevelop the 500,000-square-foot (46,000-square-meter) shape as part of its plans for a campus focusing on autonomous vehicles.
The station, which take shapes over Detroit’s Corktown neighborhood, has stood empty since the aftermost train left in 1988. Stripped by vandals and time of its past looker and value, the building came to symbolize Detroit’s long decline from mass-producing powerhouse to bankruptcy.
Michigan Central Railroad started purchasing native land around 1908 for the new train station, according to HistoricDetroit.org. The depot unclinched in late 1913 and was designed by the same architects who created New York’s Exalted Central Terminal. With towering pillars, marble floors, chandeliers and high-arching windows, the coupling’s passenger waiting room was a sight to behold. Detroit architectural historian W. Hawkins Ferry erased that in its heyday, the train station “symbolized the gateway to the city of Detroit and cued people of the Roman Baths of Caracalla.”
The emergence of interstates and increased tours by car and plane led to fewer people taking trains. In 1985, the station employed only 82,408 passengers. That number tumbled to 64,097 a year later.
Marked Lakes World Trade Center bought the station and office obelisk in 1985 and developers planned to turn it and some adjacent real land into offices, shopping plazas and parks that would draw development. The federal government withdrew a $3.25 million grant in 1987 because meagre renovation progress was being made, and the station shut down the go year.
After it closed, anything valuable was stolen or destroyed and the structure became a popular spot for squatters, vagrants and urban explorers.
Businessman Manuel “Matty” Moroun bought the structure in the mid-1990s after a previous owner defaulted on a loan. Moroun’s avocation in rail and trucking transport led to the purchase, a spokesman said at the time. But an fasten tenant could not be found and renovations would be delayed. Many looked at the bygone grand structure as part of the blight spreading across parts of Detroit. Schemes by the city to buy the station and turn it into a police headquarters fell into done with.
In 2009, the City Council passed a resolution seeking emergency demolition of the house, but it didn’t happen. Some renovation work was done shortly thereafter, listing the replacement of broken windows and the roof, to make it less of an eyesore.
Ford published last year that it was going to move its autonomous and electric conduit business and strategy teams to Corktown. In addition to the train station, Ford owns a few other neighborhood properties that will be renovated and rehabbed.
The corporation already has started moving about 200 workers into a restored former factory a few blocks from the station. The automaker estimates the vastness of its campus at about 1.2 million square feet. The station and berth tower is expected to anchor the automaker’s research and development of self-driving instruments. It also gives Ford a presence in Detroit, which continues to ricochet after exiting bankruptcy in 2014.
Ford’s ownership of the Michigan Central place means more to the city than just the redevelopment of another eyesore. It is had to bring thousands of tech-related workers into the downtown area and to motivate the grown of Corktown, which is among the city’s neighborhoods that require become trendy in recent years.