Packard Forum Index » V-8 (1955-56)

I was just wondering if the Conner Ave plant in Detroit still exists-and does anyone have any pictures of it.Thats the plant that produced the Packards from 1955-1956.

Torn down a very long time ago, perhaps as far back as the early 1960s. A shopping mall built on it's footprint.

Leeedy and Mr. Pushbutton are the guys you want to talk to about Conner. Leeedy grew up in the area, and Mr. Pushbutton did an article for the Packard Club's "The Packard Cormorant" magazine on the topic. There isn't a lot of material out there on Conner; but what there is, they would know about it.

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It was gone by 1961 and to say a "mall" was built on it is being very generous.

Actually the site was at 4621 Conner Avenue on the west side of Conner about a 1/4 mile south of Warren Avenue in Detroit. I have attached a Google Earth aerial image taken in April 2016 and outlined the site in orange.

The "mall" now has a Family Dollar Store, a Save-A-Lot discount grocery and a tax preparation office. There is a Wendy's Burger on the outlet facing Conner.

This site is about 8 blocks from where I grew up as a kid.

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The strip mall was built on the property immediately adjacent to the plant to the north. It began with a Kroger grocery store then grew to have other shops.
The plant was held in a lease by S-P, renting from Chrysler until June of 1957, it was assumed that if Packard had survived they would have re-upped the lease or began to purchase the plant-we know that didn't happen.
I have a photocopy of the hand-written document from the retired head of Chrysler's land/real estate department from that era, he stated that "as the plant was in such poor condition it was decided to demolish it, Demolition began in July of 1959 and was completed by August of 1959"
In my article I ruminate that it was somewhat unlikely that Packard caused the plant's condition to deteriorate severely in just two year's use. My personal opinion is that the plant was a white elephant for Chrysler, too small to serve any useful purpose to Chrysler at the time. The building was only 19 years old at the time of its demolition.

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Hello Mr. PB.

Your first photo shows a 4-story building, yet everyone talks about the 1-story building at Conner. This same photo is listed on this site under Packard Photo Archive > Packard Plant Exterior as photo #83. When I saw it there I assumed (incorrectly) that is must have been the main Briggs plant on Mack Avenue and I sent a PM to BigKev to "correct" the mis-labeling.

However, I noticed on the far right side a multi-story building with very distinctive (light-colored) brickwork on the upper stories. That definitively identifies it as the Michigan Bell Telephone Building at the SE corner of Conner and E. Warren Road. So that is the face of the Conner Plant.

Attached is a photo from today at the same spot. Where once stood a manufacturing plant is now a Wendy's.

BTW, that Ma Bell building was reduced in height to only 1-story, so it does not appear in today's photo.

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Roger, the pic I posted at the top of my reply, with the legend "Briggs Manufacturing Company" over the door is the Briggs plant where Packard moved in 1954. The front half of the building had upper floors that Packard used for sub-assembly of seats and other smaller assemblies. So the whole "One floor plant" line is somewhat incorrect, but they weren't building body parts on upper floors and dropping them down, as with EGB and other teens-twenties era plants.

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That same site today, at almost the same angle as the 1954 aerial above.

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If the demolition only took a month or so for the entire plant, apparently that "massive block of concrete" some books reported as being too large an obstacle to overcome resulting in a break in the assembly line and the need for manual moving of cars around it wasn't so massive after all.

Hello Mr. PB:

If you don't mind to much I fine-tuned the alignment on the Briggs aerial photo you posted. Hope you don't mind.

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