Re: Packard plant brewery
Posted by Leeedy On 2017/12/17 10:58:13
This site and area continues to morph-some up, but a lot of it very down. It is heartbreaking to see the roof damage and all the derelict buildings and vacant lots. Oddly, I can see that the new car drive-away transport building is still intact on Mt. Elliott. Amazing that this little building (the last erected in connection with Packard on this site) is still intact when everything around it is gone! At one time it had become a Baptist church with a crudely primitive hand-made sign in the window. And I see the old Farmer Jack/Food Fair market building that was built at the storage lot (this entire lot was where new Packards were parked and even stored-even after Conner Avenue opened) has now apparently tripled in size while everything around it has disappeared. The Packard Bar building is completely gone too.
I also notice that the intersection of Concord Avenue northbound is now blocked off with K-barriers and both old employee parking lots are now overgrown with weeds. This is amazing and sad to see. There was once a big traffic light here, busy even decades after Packard left. Day or night. Unbelievable to see it now totally barren of cars.
On the other side of Grand Blvd, I see that the old (actually new to me) A&P Supermarket building has amazingly survived! Hard to imagine. This was once the site of the massive Packard power plant and coal yard.
Farther north... do my old eyes deceive me or has part of the Stone Container Corp. building (converted from part of the Packard Plant) disappeared? Also the overpass for Harper Avenue that once led off of Mt. Elliott over I-94 appears now gone!!! AND... Mt. Elliott, Grand Blvd, Ford Expressway, and end of Harper Avenue ALL vacant of cars??? This would have been like a science-fiction nightmare movie in the 1950s and 1960s. An impossible photo. These were ALL very, very busy streets back in the day. Yet, here it is. I guess you had to be there back then to get a knot in your stomach and tear in your eye by looking at this photo today. This is all very surprising and sad to see!
Anyway, the building in question was one of those I never knew about as far as what went on there. The big vacant lot 2 addresses east on the same side next to the tracks was once part of the fuel depot for gasoline, oil, lubricants, etc. for Packard. Another lot adjacent to and west of the "brewery" building also once had something to do with fuel and had billboards there.
I'm left with only one word: wow.
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