Re: Packard Plant

Posted by Leeedy On 2024/3/7 18:24:11

I owned commercial property along Mt. Elliott adjacent to the Packard Plant on East Grand Boulevard in the 1960s to 1980s. My father before me did likewise going back to the 1940s.

WHY? WHY? Why do they put TV cameras in front of relative newbie local yocals who seem to know nothing about the neighborhood– despite claiming to "live" there? (HOW LONG is "all my life"...10 years?).These folks who want to make it seem like this horrid ghetto will become a paradise simply by tearing things down. The one woman ACTUALLY says it would be so nice to see "people moving instead of buildings." OMG! WHERE will the heroin needles, crack addicts, hookers, garbage piles, old mattresses in vacant lots, scrappers and just plain criminals disappear to? That disguised "jail" they have built off of Concord Avenue that nobody talks about?

Then the mayor gets up and makes ridiculous empty political cheese-covered-jibberish empty statements. "We're keeping a promise here!!!!" Please. Nobody wants to say how the area got the way it is in the first place. It certainly was not because of Packard!!!!!

Why do ill-informed young persons in TV studios make outrageous statements about the plant as if these things are FACTS? After all these years... newscasters and newspapers are still smearing feces on the real history of this place. It is a LIE that the "plant closed for good in 1958"... a pure, bold-faced lie. Why do these "news sources" keep repeating such FICTION? And nobody challenges what they say????? Then it gets repeated again?

The Packard Plant on East Grand Blvd. was no longer manufacturing cars there as of the end of 1954 model year production. But administration and other operations continued there. And yes, Packard ceased operations in the plant as of 1958. BUT... HUGE COMPANIES like Essex Wire and Stone Container Corporation began operations in the plant. Studebaker-Packard still had operations in and around the plant. Studebaker took over one of the former Packard buildings and made it a ZONE OFFICE. The plant itself was still storing huge amounts of machinery left over from clearing out the Utica engine/transmission facility and more. THIS stuff was still at East Grand Blvd. in the 1970s! I took photos myself! And there were numerous, numerous small businesses operating throughout the plant... generating salaries, jobs, taxes. Lots of trucks and cars and people coming and going. In the 1960s there were TWO big-name supermarkets OPERATING on the property along with a discount department store IN the plant. Making the plant sound abandoned and derelict as of 1958 is not merely a mistake... it is a stupid and vicious lie.

It wasn't Packard that abandoned that plant. It was the city government. Perhaps I am the only person left who remembers... but I can assure you people of TODAY... the "history" is nothing like you are being told. No wonder old people get so cranky and frustrated. They know it's all oleo...