A legendary and iconic Detroit plant closes.



"Less than two months after acquiring AK Steel in a $1.1 billion deal, Cleveland-Cliffs Inc. is permanently shuttering the famed Dearborn Works plant.

The Ohio-based steelmaker plans to begin terminating the approximately 343 employees on July 5, the company said in a Worker Adjustment and Retraining Notification Act of 1988 notice to the state of Michigan.

The former Rouge Steel plant, once part of the world's largest manufacturing complex in Dearborn, fell on hard times after Ford Motor Co. spun it off in 1989 into an independent steel company.

Russian steelmaker OAO Severstal acquired the assets of the bankrupt steel mill for $285 million in 2004. The company made several acquisitions of U.S. steel plants totaling $2.7 billion in transactions over the next few years, increasing production capacity from 2.5 million tons in Dearborn to 11.4 million tons of capacity across the U.S."