Detroit factory questions

[Steve203]

When did Kelsey Hayes vacate the plants on McGraw and Military? Did the plant in Romulus replace one, or both, of them, or was it an addition?

Around 51, Packard bought a plant on Mt Elliott to make forgings for it's J-47 plant in Utica. The source material I have says it was 325,000 sq ft, located at 8500 Mt Elliott and had been bought from "a steel company". 8500 Mt Elliott is a vacant lot now, and the block looks too small for 325,000 sq ft. The building next door at 8650, now Monarch Steel, R C Mahon in the 40s, looks to be the right size and used by companies dealing in steel. Is 8650 actually the building Packard bought?

The route for what is now the Edsel Ford Expressway had been planned to follow Harper for years. Early drafts of the right of way were published in Feb 41. When the Expressway was cut through in the mid 50s, it narrowly missed Packard building 22, and took off about 100,000 sqft of building 84/84A, the two new buildings built during the war for the Merlin program. Did Packard realise it was encroaching on the Expressway right of way when those buildings were built?

Thanks!

[kryptonite]

I don't recall the details but I had an uncle that worked for Kelsey Hayes in Detroit, they lived near Delray at the time. Later they moved to Garden City and he was working at the Romulus plant at that time. I believe the Detroit factory was K-H for quite a few years after he was transferred to Romulus.

[Packman41]

Probably not. I seriously doubt if the ROW for the Ford Expressway was even developed in the late 1930s when that section of the plant was built.

When the ROW for the expressway was laid out it would be a simple matter of eminent domain to acquire the land and buildings from the then owner of the PMCC plant.

[Steve203]

when that section of the plant was built.

Packard won the Merlin contract in fall 40, so 22 and 84 had to be built 41-42. I did see somewhere that a preliminary route for the Expressway, running along Harper, was drawn in Feb 41, so it's close to a tie. Packard appears to have known 84 was doomed as they only used it for a warehouse after the war.

it would be a simple matter of eminent domain to acquire the land and buildings from the then owner of the PMCC plant.

The expressway planners did their best to avoid disrupting Packard. They threaded the ROW between the main plant and Packard's foundry, narrowing the ROW and using retaining walls to squeeze past 22, but missing 84 would have required moving the S curve farther west, which would have taken out Gemmer Steering Gear.

The pic shows 84 and 22 before 84A was built, so probably summer 42. Anyone have a photo of the north end of the plant from before the war? I suspect that all that was there was the remains of the test track, and the expressway could have been cut through without disturbing Harper at all.

[Steve203]

The Kelsey plant in Romulus has an interesting history. Found a post from several years ago with a magazine article about Ford opening Wayne Assembly in 52, which mentioned there was space at Wayne for producing jet engine parts, for a plant then under construction "four miles south of Wayne" for the Lincoln-Mercury division to built J-40 engines under a Navy contract.

Found a timeline for Kelsey Hayes that said "moved headquarters into former military jet engine plant in Romulus in 1959"

Found a real estate for sale listing in the March 6th, 59 issue of the Toledo Blade, from the General Services Administration, with a pic of what became the Kelsey plant, saying "built in 1953 for jet engine construction, but never used"

"Never used"? So I looked up the J-40 and found out the engine had been a failure, underpowered and unreliable and a large contributor to Westinghouse's withdrawl from the jet engine industry.

So, it was largely due to a spectacular failure on the part of Westinghouse, and a cratered Navy aircraft program, that lead to that plant being available to Kelsey.