Couple of Packard Plant Questions

[stromberg2]

Hey hey, I'm half Finnish!!

Stromberg2

[MidTownMs]

The only thing I remember about the Packard Plant facility is that about 1976 or 1977 I worked for a company named Essex Wire & Cable. They were located in some part of the plant. We entered on Concord Street. I didn't work there that long. But if I'm not mistaken they were bought by United Technologies [[I think that was the name of it) and left Detroit. Many of the engineers left and went with the new company. Maybe this may ring a bell to someone who can fill in the blanks.

[56packman]

Essex wire was a big tenant at the Packard plant.

[Forwardlook]

Hey hey, I'm half Finnish!!

Stromberg2

OK, I won't hold that against you

[ja!mz]

I used to service copy machines and I remember driving up a spiral ramp to the 3rd or 4th floor and repairing a machine for a wood working company that made store displays, this would have been in the early '90's

[Forwardlook]

Thank you for the insight, I was under the impression that things have gone much more rapidly downhill in recent times but didn't realize that there was such a clear turningpoint.It is sad to see the complex slowly vanish like this but what makes it a tragedy is that the politicians are responsible for the final nail in the coffin. It seems that Detroit has been shooting itself in the leg a long time. 117 tenants...what made it possible for the one, that's left, to stay? I can only imagine their security issues...

[56packman]

The last tenant just stayed put, and negotiated to pay his rent to the city, which acted as an improper owner. He dealt with many, many vandalism issues, the main one being the wires that fed power to his business from the utility pole would be stolen about 4 times a year.
This is a long, deep, dramatic story that I should put into print someday. Its unbelievable. Greed, pure and simple at work, on several levels.

[WaCoTS]

the only Packard-related item i ever found at the plant was a piece of wood that used to be part of a shipping crate or parts-bin...i found it on the roof of Building 13 [[office wing), surprisingly enough exposed to the elements in a place i had been a million times before. [[this was in 2006). the piece of wood had the words "PACKARD BODY DIVISION, DETROIT" stenciled on it in old-timey black paint. the nice thing is it was broken in an aesthetically pleasing way, so as almost to look like a piece of driftwood, lol. so i hung it over my bar, haha

[Forwardlook]

The last tenant just stayed put, and negotiated to pay his rent to the city, which acted as an improper owner. He dealt with many, many vandalism issues, the main one being the wires that fed power to his business from the utility pole would be stolen about 4 times a year.
This is a long, deep, dramatic story that I should put into print someday. Its unbelievable. Greed, pure and simple at work, on several levels.

Yet another example of real life stories that are many times more intriguing than fiction. I would love a book about Packard although it would for sure be quite frustrating to read a lot of it. There seems to be people enough in the know right here on this forum for a book to materialize....

[Forwardlook]

the only Packard-related item i ever found at the plant was a piece of wood that used to be part of a shipping crate or parts-bin...i found it on the roof of Building 13 [[office wing), surprisingly enough exposed to the elements in a place i had been a million times before. [[this was in 2006). the piece of wood had the words "PACKARD BODY DIVISION, DETROIT" stenciled on it in old-timey black paint. the nice thing is it was broken in an aesthetically pleasing way, so as almost to look like a piece of driftwood, lol. so i hung it over my bar, haha

Always interesting to hear about findings...amazing that there are still Packard related items 50 years later considering what goes down in there...how much of the complex was rented out at its peak after Packard left?

[56packman]

Good question--The plant had a very stable operation that carried on Packard's defense contracts to the government in the north half of the building after the takeover of Studebaker-Packard by Curtis-Wright and the subsequent shut-down of "all Detroit operations" which meant Packard. The defense business lived on for a number of years as "the Utica-Bend corporation" and they occupied a large area in the plant, that was a small portion of the total space. Another auto vendor stored seat padding material in the building, that lead to the big fire of February 9-13 1959.
When I started going there in the early 80s there were a lot of tenants, but I doubt the complex was more than 1/3 occupied.