Packard Plant and GM Poletown Plant

For us non-native Detroiters, I have often wondered why it was necessary to demolish this neighborhood when there was plenty of industrial space available at that time that could have been renovated and refurbished [[e.g, Packard Plant, Fisher Body factory, etc.). Wouldn't this have been win-win option for all involved? GM could have refurbished this landmark faciltity built by one of the greatest industrial architects of the 20th century, the city of Detroit could have put derelict land to back into production, and a historic neighborhood could have been saved. Was this ever seriously considered at the time?

See the Coleman Young thread.

No, look at what they built and look what all modern manufacturing facilities are [[look fast, manufacturing is all going to China) --single floor factories. This has been the standard of the industry since WWII, when the war work plants were all built as single floor buildings. Plants like the Packard plant were obsolete by the time WWII ended, and Packard even had plans to build a new single floor plant in Utica, on Mound, next to the engine plant they had there. There was a lot of hope at the time of the Poletown plant's construction that the Packard plant would benefit greatly from its location as a just-in-time storage facility, but the ceiling heights in the old Albert Kahn buildings there were shorter than the new 24 foot standard, so nothing became of that. The Packard plant was not derelict in the early 80s, it was a busy place with over 100 tenants [[117 as I recall) and there was storage and light manufacturing and distribution going on in segments of the plant. The city killed that during the 1999 land grab attempt, shooed out all of us tenants. The Packard plant prior to that was in equally good repair as the Ford Highland park plant or the Russell Industrial center was at the time. It was vastly underutilized though, had the GM storage thing worked it would have been great for the plant.

What kills me about Poletown is that much of the land taken wasn't really used for anything but [[at best) parking. Nobody thought that if instead of having a vast field of asphalt, that a few parking decks would have saved some people's homes AND provided a shorter walk from the car to the plant that would have been at least partially sheltered from the elements [[gasp!)

"[[T)here was storage and light manufacturing and distribution going on in segments of the plant. The city killed that during the 1999 land grab attempt..." [[clearly because C.A.Y. was a _____.)

This site sums it up pretty well: http://freedomkeys.com/poletown.htm

This was believed to be the last US GM factory ever to be built. GM made the case of reasons why it shouldn't be done. Wayne County and Detroit took this and went ahead anyway with evictions and later paid dearly in settlements. If this stupid plan had never materialized, Dodge Main would have been another Highland Park Industrial Park, Russell Industrial Center or Packard Plant Industrial Park[[before Archer decided to fuck it). The land use on this site is abominable because the original plans were much bigger.

One of the big motivators behind the Hudson-Nash and Packard-Studebaker mergers were that the Hudson and Packard plants in Detroit were functionally obsolete and pretty much worn out from WWII production. Neither company had the cash to "start over" in Detroit.