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Hello,

No, it wasn't Palmer. But I vividly recall all of the trips we had to make to Belleville in the 1950s and it was quite a jaunt. I believe my grandmother knew some people named Palmer in the area, however.

RE: Canton... Yes, I know exactly where it is and I have a cousin who lives there in a house he had built...also retired.

RE: Willow Run... It was so far away from Detroit that when there were airplanes landing there and the talk was of making it into a new civilian airport, people could not wrap their minds around going that far away for a plane. The ground gap between Detroit City Airport over on the east side of Detroit and Willow Run in those days was considered gigantic. Thus evolved Detroit Metropolitan Airport which was much closer in, but still considered out in the sticks for those times.

I am told that the Packard company plane was kept for a time at Willow Run, but I know it was also at Detroit City Airport for a long time.

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This will be my absolute, final comment on the rail/train situation at East Grand Blvd. and the Packard Plant there. I am only concerned about when the plant was in operation and nothing from today matters-be it GPS, Google maps, photos, 21st-century opinions or whatever.

I grew up in Detroit and I saw brand new Packards being loaded on trains and trucks regularly. I am not guessing or opining about this. And there was never an issue getting raw goods in or cars out via train or truck. This is a fact. None of this hindered Packard-whether it "sucks" today or not.

Most of the rail head and spurs that were in the loading area and storage lot were torn up and gone long, long, long ago. So it is senseless to argue over photos showing a decrepit line and the spur from the petroleum storage and coal storage today and attack that! And these two facilities don't even have one block of concrete, one brick or one girder left standing anyway. This is like looking at an ingrown toe nail on a corpse and pronouncing that this is the reason the person died!

I also worked for several major car companies and there was no gargantuan rail yard to others either. Not at Hudson. Not at Mercury. Not at Dodge (which was HUGE as plants go). Not at De Soto... not at Cadillac...not at Ford Rouge... and heaven knows if anyplace deserved such a rail yard, they sure did! It was one of the few factories that literally took raw ore in one side and spit out finished automobiles on the other! There was a huge rail yard over in an area that served Chrysler and Plymouth... but it served numerous other factories too! Gargantuan rail yards would never have guaranteed success to an automobile company.

RE: single-story plants... This is academic since (contrary to modern myth) Conner Avenue was not a single-story plant. And yes... it was indeed quickly torn down and made into a shopping mall anchored by Crowley's Department Store. I saw it happen.

The thing that makes Grand Blvd. expensive to tear down is not merely that it is multi-story but the fact that it was built of poured, reinforced concrete-no matter how the cars inside were being built. Until more recent times when demo-by-implosion became popular on such structures they were nightmares to get rid of.

It took an eternity to tear down the Hudson Plant in Detroit-which was also made similar to the Packard Plant. I know... I watched them from my family's store as day after day, month after month they swung wrecking balls at the thing and it did nothing but shake a little.

Anyway, these are my absolute, final comments on the trains at Grand Blvd. and the construction of the plant... and the so-called "single-story" of the Conner Plant. So I will not be responding further on this...

<i>Thus evolved Detroit Metropolitan Airport which was much closer in, but still considered out in the sticks for those times.</i>

If I trace a path from the bomber plant to Middlebelt, where the entrance to Metro used to be, it's about 15 miles.

For chuckles, I found a photo of Metro, or "Detroit-Wayne Major Airport", from 1949. There is a subdivision on the west side of Middlebelt just north of the highway. I looked on a current satellite photo. The streets of that subdivision are still there, but almost all the houses are gone. Guess they didn't like living right under the approch to the runways.

<i>I am told that the Packard company plane was kept for a time at Willow Run, but I know it was also at Detroit City Airport for a long time.</i>

Packard did a lot of work in aircraft engines in the 20s, using both City Airport and a runway in the infield of the high speed track at PPG. for test flights. I learned some time back that the PT boat engines were developed from an aircraft engine Packard designed in the late 20s. The Henry Ford museum had a plane with one of Packard's experimental diesels on display in the 60s.

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<i>It took an eternity to tear down the Hudson Plant in Detroit-which was also made similar to the Packard Plant. I know... I watched them from my family's store as day after day, month after month they swung wrecking balls at the thing and it did nothing but shake a little.</i>

Somewhere, I saw an estimate that it would have cost Packard $1M to tear EGB down in the 50s.

As it is, the scrappers have made quite an attack in recent years. As all the more valuable metal was stripped years ago, they are going after the steel roof trusses and rebar now. They figured out that if they started a fire, the heat would weaken the concrete, making it easier to break up to get at the rebar. There are areas now where the top floor is almost gone. A year or two back people in the neighborhood had to get a crew out from Channel 2 to film the rubble that had fallen into Concord St, when a section of top floor wall collapsed, because the city had been ignoring their calls.

Yes. I remember very vividly my dad owned commercial property on Mt. Elliot not far from the Packard Plant in the 1950s. Right next door to one of my dad's buildings was a construction company and my dad knew the owner. That man had friends in the building demolition biz.

One day we were having lunch around 1957-58 when the subject of the Packard Plant came up-as it often did back then. The construction company owner told my dad it would probably bankrupt any demo company brave enough to tackle the job. And when there was so much hassle and lost money tearing down the Hudson plant, no Detroit demo company wanted to touch the Packard plant back in those days. One more reason why and how it managed to hold on for so long.

I firmly believe the plant would still be solid today had there not been silliness and fighting between the owner and City of Detroit or whomever else was involved. Just nuts. After all of that fighting... what taxes were collected? And what funds were lost permanently? And what happened to all of the poor businesses that were still in the plant and happy being there, paying rent? What happened to all of the money these businesses (and dare I say-JOBS) these small enterprises provided in this impoverished area? So instead, somebody, somewhere decided to have a ridiculous fight that resolved nothing... and to let this gigantic historic property be completely unguarded, trashed, and left open to every imaginable crime! Brilliant. And a crying shame.

Anyway, I am well familiar with the goings-on at the Packard Plant on East Grand these days. I have friends in Michigan who occasionally spin past and take a look...even send newspaper clippings. Very sad.

And yes, I already knew about scrappers stealing the roof reinforcement sections. Amazed at how they manage to get some of that metal out without killing themselves. But apparently it continues.

And the question that nobody-but NOBODY-ever asks is... WHO are the companies buying all of this stolen material from the Packard Plant and other structures around Detroit and why are they not being held responsible? Like whatever scrap company that paid $75 to the retarded junkies who broke into one of my family's properties in Detroit and stole my two brand-new (NOS) Dodge Red-Ram hemi engines with GM 671 blowers stored since the 1950s (the engines went to my boat which was built in 1952). You think the company that bought these engines DIDN'T know they were hot? It's THAT crazy there.

When the PAC National Meet took place in 2013 I conducted a bus tour that went to the ruins of the Packard Plant. I warned people to stay away from the walls of the building at Grand Blvd and Concord because I pointed out that the wall up near the roof was beginning to buckle. I knew that structural elements of the roof had been removed. I predicted it would not make it through winter and apparently I was right. No brick structure this tall and heavy can stand unreinforced-especially when it already shows signs of buckling.

Below is a photo I took at that time that shows the bulge on the upper part of the wall above what was left of the Packard Bridge. No way that was going to last...

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Leeedy,
I was on your bus in Detroit. It was/is a sad site, but I enjoyed your 1st hand account of what it was, not what it is now.

I know we made the locals nervous when some of us got off the bus in front of the plant.

Yes. Glad you enjoyed the tour. It was not planned for us to exit the busses and I was certainly reluctant to do so, but hey, it just kinda happened. I think for many people, they knew this might be their last-or only opportunity to see the original home of Packard this up close and personal.

By the way, the horrific jumble of weeds and crabgrass you see in this photo was once a beautiful lawn ringed by a low black iron barrier. At one point I remember for years they had platforms sitting here and new Packards would be posed on these platforms... displayed right here at the very space you see in my photo.

Some people probably thought I had snapped my cap when I plunged into the weeds, but I was actually looking to see if any of the anchor points for the display stands were still in the ground.

It is heartbreaking to see what has become of this very beautiful building and grounds. In the end, we were all safe and most everyone conducted themselves in a responsible manner. I don't think people realize this is a very dangerous area these days between the condition of the ruins and the crime in the area. Of course, what no one knew was that this very street was once bustling with cars and when I was growing up it was a major thoroughfare. I think I counted 2 cars driving past during the entire time we were stopped here-and this was a week day!

Aside from seeing the devastation to the property the thing that had me choking to hold back tears was seeing NO traffic on this once-busy street. And seeing traffic lights either removed without even a stop sign... or the lights tied back and turned off. If my father were alive today, he would never believe such a sight. And the other thing I could never translate to you in words was the fact that I missed the wonderful smell that used to be here... metal, paint, rubber and oil... and the hum in the air. All gone now. I guess you just had to be there. I know it was a long time ago... but for me it still seems like yesterday...

I live within site of the Rouge plant between the old DTI and the Wabash. Every hour trains pass within site carrying parts into the Rouge and finished vehicles out of the Rouge. The Wabash yard is always running.

At other plants the trains are loaded directly from finishing onto trains. If you are on site the trains are backed into the parking lot so that vehicles are driven directly onto them. It's a remarkable sight to see thousands of vehicles disappear overnight onto trains.

Some of those lots are 100 acres.

The Packard plant was not built as a high volume facility. When the luxury market collapsed they used the empty floor space to build 110's and 120's. However, the plants today are not fabricating as high a percentage as they used to. They are slapping parts together. Heck, there are more parts in the typical radio than an entire Packard dashboard.
If they were fabricating a larger percentage of parts the picture would be a lot different. They would be running plastic pellets upstairs on a conveyor to be injection molded and dumping the parts into a hopper.

Below is a link to a Detroit Free Press article that gives answers to the most frequently asked questions (FAQ) they get about the Packard Plant.

http://www.freep.com/article/20121216/NEWS01/312160154/Banksy-piece-s-fate-answers-other-Packard-Plant-questions

One question is, "..What is the cost of demolition?"

And their response is:
"But $20 million for demolition and cleanup at the site sounds like a lot of money. Is that reasonable?

That's the city's estimate. A demolition expert told the Free Press that tearing down the plant could cost $10 million, with environmental clean-up adding as much as $10 million more. The 1998 implosion of the J.L. Hudson department store on Woodward cost $12.8 million.

Yes, the buildings are different, but that figure shows that relative cost of demolishing such a large structure. Hudson's had 25 stories and 2.2 million square feet, and was close to the People Mover, which was damaged when the store was imploded. The Packard is in a sparsely populated area, nearly half a mile long, and had, at one time, 3.5 million square feet. Its tallest building is seven stories."

Here is an article that describes how the new PMCC owner, Fernando Palazuelo, is working to keep out trespasses from the site.

http://motorcitymuckraker.com/blog/2014/05/09/new-packard-plant-owner-cracks-down-on-trespassers-by-stranding-them/

"The abandoned Packard Plant already has its inherent risks - robberies, assaults and vandalized cars.

Now there's a new danger: Park your ride on the sprawling auto plant and you may find it on the back of a tow truck, leaving you without wheels in a dicey neighborhood.

It's part of an aggressive approach by the new owner, Peru-based developer Fernando Palazuelo, to keep out trespassers who are drawn to the 35-acre ruins that have come to symbolize Detroit's industrial decline.

"We are working closely with the city and other neighboring property owners to clean up and improve the area, and this should serve as a clear warning that trespassers will no longer be tolerated," Palazuelo told us."