Any viable efforts on the future of the Packard Plant site?

Hi all, I am seeing some conflicting information about the future of the Packard plant. I saw that it is being torn down [[I saw some of the demolished sections recently myself), but also that the demolition has stopped.

I assume that the Packard Plant Project any any efforts like it are dead at this point, even though their websites and Facebook groups are still up. Is that true? Or perhaps there are still viable efforts to do something with the site [[after demolition) that recognizes the history of the site?

So far what's left of the Packard Plant is now a 'Parthenon-like ' ruins of the old days of the auto industry.

I love that the "present" picture on that website shows the bridge still standing.

Considering the city owns several parcels there,including 1/2 of the walkway and the building attached to the other side of it,or what used to be there,they are just as guilty when it comes to demolition by neglect and not addressing blight with the same vigor that they accuse others of all of these years.

What would someone build on that property?

I was under the impression it would almost certainly test out as a brownfield. [The rehab of which would add considerably to the costs, Unless some govt entity sticks us taxpayers with the bill].

It's also not in a good location for residential. It's surrounded by I-94/GM Plant to the North, commercial trucking / rail-line to the West, Cemetery to the South/ West, and burned out hood to the SouthEast and East.

I can't imagine residential having any legs there. Office space is having record low occ rates these days, and may well for the next decade or forever, so that won't work.

Amazon warehouse perhaps?

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Originally Posted by Rocket

It's also not in a good location for residential. It's surrounded by I-94/GM Plant to the North, commercial trucking / rail-line to the West, Cemetery to the South/ West, and burned out hood to the SouthEast and East.

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Looks like the rail tracks that used to service the full industrial corridor down Bellevue St still go past the Packard, down to Warren. That track connects to the Amtrak line via the north side of the GM Hamtramck factory. If this were a town that cared about transit, it would just take a bit of track rehab and building a couple stations [[Warren/Bellevue, Grand/Bellevue) to connect that whole neighborhood to New Center in what would definitely be an <10m ride. From there it starts to look more viable for residential.

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But without a sense of connection, it's just an old relic surrounded by industrial land and neighborhoods drained of population, and sadly too isolated to be an intriguing place to live i'm afraid.

According to public record the state EPA surveyed the property years ago,the only contamination found was in a small section where some transformers were illegally dumped,so it does not or did not qualify for brownfield.

Thats not to say past and recent demolitions of not done properly could have made it a brownfield.

The city plans show it as zoned medium heavy industrial,so no residential or office without major headaches,add to that the $50m cap on projects where if you go over that you have to provide millions in neighborhood improvement,those extra funds have to be justified in funding sources,which is hard to do.

That whole area is zoned the same,medium or heavy manufacturing,the idea was to create a heavy industrial zone there.

But even at that there are still other owners of parcels there so it is still not a continuous parcel and the existing owners are going to hold out for top dollar if somebody was interested.

The only thing accomplished by the recent demolition was what they said they wanted to do.

Change the optics.

From mentions in past threads it would be simular to what happened in the past when there was some big sports event coming to the city,demolish everything so it looks pretty,because it is easier then being innovative.

It is always referred to as The Packard Plant and in peoples mind and in the media it is viewed as it was originally built,you have to take the word Packard from the equation and look at it like any other neighborhood in the city,there can be 50 houses on the street,demolish 10 burnt out structures and it does not make it a continuous parcel a block long.

Its not sure what parcels the city had control of and out of those which ones were demolished,along with the other ones that they recently took control of.

The other owner does own the administration building across the street,the removal of the walkway severed that tether with the city owned building across the street.

Before it collapsed the responsibility of it would have been 1/2 the city and 1/2 the administration building owner as common property.

All it would have taken would have been the city saying they were not going to put any money into the upkeep of it and you get what you got,it falling into the street.

Another way to look at it is it is a block of row houses all individually owned,you can gain control of one or demolish one but somebody still owns the others.

So you really cannot demolish it and build anything in its place because unless you control every parcel that makes up the totality of the parcel you are not accomplishing anything but spending money on optics.

Its now become a dead duck property.

I am not sure if it is still the same but in the past the city had a habit of declaring individual buildings enterprise zones,not the entire neighborhood,just that individual building which gave tax breaks and encouraged speculation.

That in essence gave that singular building control over future improvements in the entire surrounding neighborhoods.

Detroit as a city had many factories located within residential neighborhoods and it is easy to see the impact on neighborhoods when one commercial building controls development over the entire area and who benefited from the implementation of that one decision.

Remove the $50m cap

If it has not been changed already stop with the individual building enterprise zone and include the entire surrounding neighborhood as an enterprise zone to encourage development.

Thanks everyone for the discussion!

hopefully, at minimum, the derelict buildings can be razed.

The city is looking for demolition contractors to continue demolition there,what happened to the last one? They gave up?

Despite what it may look like it has to be a demolition nightmare the way it was built.