A final phase of demolition got underway Monday at the Packard Plant on Detroit’s east side as the mayor declared that most of what’s left of the infamous graffiti-scrawled ruins will all be down by year’s end.
“By the end of 2024, the Packard Plant will finally be history,” Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan said at an afternoon news conference outside 5409 Concord St., shortly before a hydraulic excavator from Detroit-based Adamo Group ripped through a section of brick wall.
The city will preserve two structures of the Packard Plant for their historical significance, he said. Those structures, on opposing sides of East Grand Boulevard, once were connected by an iconic bridge that spanned across the boulevard before it collapsed in January 2019.
The city will in coming months start soliciting proposals for redeveloping the post-demolition Packard Plant site, Duggan said, presumably for auto supplier operations, given its proximity to General Motors’ Factory Zero and the Stellantis Jefferson North Assembly Plant.
The mayor noted two recent successful redevelopments in the city of demolished sites of similar industrial ruins: Lear Corp. brought a seat manufacturing operation — and hundreds of jobs — to the old site of the long-empty Cadillac Stamping Plant, and industrial developer NorthPoint Development is nearly done with a new facility on the former site of American Motors Corp.’s headquarters on the west side.
“We’re going to go out for proposals, but I’ve had a number contact me,” Duggan said of prospects for the Packard Plant site.
“Nobody wanted to bid on this (when) they thought they were going to spend $15 million or $20 million on demolition. The numbers wouldn’t have worked,” the mayor said. “Now that we have the demolition handled, our goal is to award this to somebody to redevelop it as the last of the walls are coming down.”
Demolition of the Packard Plant began in fall 2022 after the city won a judgement in Wayne County Circuit Court against a firm belonging to international developer Fernando Palazuelo that had owned most of the 40-acre property.
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Total costs for the demolition is about $26 million, city officials said, with the vast majority of demo money coming from the $1.9 trillion American Rescue Plan. That third COVID-19 federal stimulus package, which also included $1,400 per-individual checks, was signed by President Joe Biden in March 2021.
“I didn‘t know if we were ever going to get a chance to do this, but it’s really good to have Joe Biden as your friend,” Duggan said. “I sent him a note this morning to thank him.”
The Packard Plant’s previous owner, Palazuelo, picked up the property for $405,000 in Wayne County’s 2013 tax foreclosure auction. But he ultimately fell short in his vision to rehab the structure as an eclectic mixed-use development of offices, events space and art-themed attractions — even a techno club collaboration with world-renowned German nightclub owner Dimitri Hegemann.
The Albert Kahn-designed Packard Plant opened in 1903 and built its last Packard car in the 1950s. It lost most of its remaining industrial tenants in the 1990s and became known for hosting rave parties.
Contact JC Reindl: 313-378-5460 or jcreindl@freepress.com. Follow him on X @jcreindl.
