FORD PURCHASES THE MICHIGAN
CENTRAL TRAIN STATION
Fords
purchase of the Michigan Central Train Station following the purchase of the
“Factory” is brilliant. The factory brought in 125 people working on mobility
originally and will grow to 220 soon.
Now with the purchase of the Michigan Train Station known as the
Mobility Campus we expect great innovations to be brought to life. Hoping that
what they do will make life better for people just as Henry Ford originally
envisioned when he brought the $5.00 minimum pay to his workers.
Ford
states the Campus will be operational by 2022. After that they hope to bring an
estimated 2500 workers to the new Ford Campus to work on future transportation,
fuels, Artificial Intelligence, battery powered vehicles and even autonomous
vehicles will make the Blue Oval even a bigger player in the future of
transportation. The space will
house office, retail, and residential housing space.
What
ends up inside the station's public spaces depends, in part, on what Corktown
and southwest Detroit residents say they want to see inside the
long-blighted building. And the same goes for the outside of a building added
to the National Register of Historic Places in 1975.
Twenty
minutes to Dearborn. The Rouge, American Center for Mobility at Willow
Run, and the Ann Arbor technology centers are close to both Dearborn and
Corktown. This allows for Ford to move from campus to factories and research
centers with ease. Employees at Ford are already asking if they can move to the
future Mobility Campus. The
surrounding area is enticing all ages to move back to Detroit and experience
the revitalization, which Ford will be playing a major role. Look at what they
have done with Ford field! Ford is spending a billion to redesign the Dearborn
campus and some of those funds will be used in Corktown. Ford feels Dearborn
and Corktown will work together with all the other centers.
The company's goal is to establish its
Corktown site at the east end of an evolving mobility corridor evoking
Michigan Avenue's earlier road to the Arsenal of Democracy.
"
The
Train Station was a place to visited years past. It was the Ellis Island for
Detroit. It is in Corktown that was vibrant and a beautiful town. Being one of
the oldest towns Detroit, Wayne County and Corktown are excited and see the
future of the area blossoming again thanks in part to the major investments
Ford has made and will make in the future.
The
amount Ford paid for the Train Station is not known. Bill Ford Jr. could not
give a price on renovations. The renovations will turn the Train Station in to
a place where people will want to be and visit. Look at my aerials I took for the previous owners to
determine what could be done with the Train Station.
The tower of the train
Station is 500,000 approximately. It was known as the tallest rail depot. During
its heyday it had 200 trains a day moving people and goods around. From 1884
until 1913, the Michigan Central Railroad ran out of a depot downtown at Third and
Jefferson.
The railroad’s business was growing, and the company had started an underwater
tunnel in southwest Detroit in 1906. It was decided another, much larger depot
should be built near the entrance to the tunnel, and Michigan Central began
buying up land in the city’s Corktown neighborhood just outside of downtown in
the fall of 1908.
By spring 1910, about fifty
acres of property for the depot had been acquired with about three hundred
small, wooden-frame homes being bought or condemned. The city paid more than $680,619.99 ($14.75 million today, when adjusted for
inflation) in condemnation proceedings on Aug. 6, 1915, to acquire the land for
the depot and the land in front of it for a park. The idea was part of the City
Beautiful movement of the time, which called for grand public buildings at the
end of dramatic vistas. The park was named Roosevelt Park in honor of President
Theodore Roosevelt, who had died in January 1919, and the landscaping was more
or less completed the following year. Construction on the station began after
permits were obtained May 16, 1910. The steel framework of the building was in
place in December 1912.
Michigan Central Railroad
was a subsidiary of the New York Central Railroad, which was owned by rail
tycoon William Vanderbilt. For the new station and office building — one
fitting for the growing city it served — the railroad turned to the architects
Warren & Wetmore of New York and Reed & Stem of St. Paul, Minn. The architectural
firms had teamed up on the Grand Central Terminal in New York. Charles A. Reed
and Allen Stem were known for their designs of railroad stations, while Whitney
Warren and Charles D. Wetmore were considered experts in hotel design, which
explains the hotel-like appearance of the building’s office tower.
The depot was to be formally
dedicated on Jan. 4, 1914, but a fire that started at 2:10 p.m. on Dec. 26,
1913, rendered the old depot unusable and forced MCS to be rushed into service
early to avoid a disruption of service. And rushed into service was an
understatement: Newspapers reported at the time that within a half hour after
officials were certain the old station was doomed, arrangements were made for
trains to start using the new one. At 5:20 p.m., the first train left the new
station for Saginaw and Bay City, Mich.; an hour later, the first train
arrived, having steamed in from Chicago.
The Michigan Central Railroad
saw hard times in the 50’s, 60’s, 70’s and the Detroit Riot’s led to decay of
the Corktown community and the Michigan Central Train Station. Cars were replacing trains and train
transportation fell. 400 Plus train stations were sold in North America and
train transportation fell continually. Penn and Amtrak went bankrupt their
assets were sold. Billionaire Matty Moroun and his company purchased the
bankrupt MCS for expansion of their trucking businesses and the operations of
the Ambassador Bridge. Offices for commercial clients could fill the
structure. It never was done so
the MCS was vacant and vandalized for 15 years.
On Oct. 3, 2003, Detroit
Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s office announced he had selected the building to be
renovated into the city’s new police headquarters. The waiting room was to
become a public space with a restaurant and police museum, and the building,
now nearly 100 years old, was found to be structurally sound. In his State of
the City address on Feb. 24, 2004, Kilpatrick challenged Detroiters to “dare mighty
things”.
The Moroun’s have tried
everything to develop the “Historic Designated” Michigan Central Train Station.
The Morouns offered to the Federal Government the Jewel for Homeland Security
offices.
If Michigan Central Station
cannot be the centerpiece of the city’s rebirth, it should not stand solely as
a testament to its decline.
The Moroun family has spent
a lot of money in recent years cleaning the depot up, doing asbestos
remediation and adding landscaping and architectural lighting. Seeing it lit up
at night is truly a breathtaking sight. It instills hope for both the city, and
for saving this architectural marvel.
If the Michigan Central
Train Station were to be restored, it would be making a bold statement about
the city’s future and preservation of its past. And it’s not like other grand
train stations — such as Union Station Kansas City and the Nashville Union
Station in Tennessee — have not been resuscitated from abandoned eyesores to
gleaming city treasures. But finding the will and the hundreds of millions of
dollars such a resurrection would require are formidable challenges in a city
with Detroit’s economic and social challenges. Bill Ford Jr., the Ford family
and Ford Motor Company are making this dream come true.
Governor
Snyder, Mayor Duggan and Wayne County’s Warren Evans gave great speeches at a
rally of nearly 5,000 people. Media, TV, cameras every place we looked. The
Mayor even recalls when Detroit City Council voted to tear it down! Fortunately
they did not have enough money to go forward.
The
success Ford did with the Rouge and other buildings show me that they will do
nothing but a first class renovation of the Michigan Central Train Station. It
is rumored that Ford will keep the train tracks. If so maybe some trains will be
coming to MCS?
Bill
Ford Jr. stated at the press conference that "Mobility makes freedom and
progress possible," challenging the attendees to imagine new ways of the
poor and elderly getting groceries and health care, and people without cars
getting to work. "Ford wants to be a leader in reimagining cities … that
should be the point of technology, to make the world better." Stated just
as Henry Ford would have envisioned.
Ford
announced that the History channel would present “revival of Detroit”
documentary July 1. The history
channels moderator stated the following. “There's an
important symbolic value in restoring the station, because of what it
represents and has represented in Detroit's history. I think the goal is to
make Detroit once again the Silicon Valley of the 21st Century and have
the station be the spark that helps make that possible,"
said Gillon.
BRUCE HUBBARD
BONNIE LYNCH
AUTO ADVISOR GROUP
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