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No neighborhood, in any city, could survive the level of financial and social disinvestment that the former Packard plant represents. The factory didn't fall apart because the neighborhood became dangerous. Indeed, the neighborhood suffered because of the deterioration allowed to beset the plant.

Certainly, historic preservation is an absolutely critical part of creating thriving communities and maintaining our shared cultural heritage. But when we allow our cities to become museums...little more than destinations for tourists seeking the ruins of America's industrial past...we fail in creating a livable future and succeed only in crafting an eloquent epitaph that locks future generations into a perpetual state of social and economic stagnation.

It's beyond time to tear down what remains and give the residents a chance (and a lot of real estate) to create something positive in their community.

Detroit’s government shenanigans ( not just talking Packard plant) go back a lot longer than Archer.

didnt hear anybody say union corruption? theres a reason the big 3 and foreign car companys moved to the south the right to work states ie bmw in south carolina and ford in kentucky and others.

I guess the fact that General Motors couldn't handle having 51% of the world's largest and richest auto market in the world, and handed their market segment to Asian competition on a silver platter while the Roger Smiths of the world worried about top possible profits while making absolute garbage doesn't count. But yeah, that 10 year period where the Big three still had the market and the union got lazy and had corrupt leadership must have been it.
The dudes bolt cars together, that's all they do. It's hard, repetitive work that uses human bodies as an expendable commodity. So we've had a generation where the company had the upper hand over labor, and we saw how that turned out. Union laborers bolt cars that engineers deign to the budgets the suits set. No one mentions the overpaid managers/executives that made a generation of bad decisions and gave their customer base ample reason to look elsewhere.
Behind every bad decision handed down from management was an engineer saying "I wouldn't do that, it's going to fail"

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Longer than I've been alive. I'm almost 65. I can't name a major American city without a history of corruption.

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Thank you for that bit of clarity. If you read various internet forums you see over and over again the ubiquitous, undefined "they" that "should save that building". I've been involved with saving a few buildings. I'm involved with two right now. I can tell you this. The world, the US business community and Mr. and Mrs. Joe Lunch Bucket American don't care about old. The above parties really, really like *NEW*. Everything is stacked in favor of *NEW*. Financing for a *NEW* project? no problem, come right in. Zoning change to convert a potato field into a cookie-cutter plastic-covered home development of *NEW* homes? No problem, come right in.
Want to preserve and restore a historic building? Whoa-There's asbestos in there. They don't make that material any more. We can get that wood, but it's $85 a board foot. You touched the building, so now it has to conform to modern ADA specifications.
The historic buildings that remain and are in good health are that way because they have friends. Friends in high places, that can round up the usual suspects and get some money coming for projects, run interference with the city, and in general make things happen. I was the person who connected the Packard Proving Grounds team with my former boss, Dick Kughn. I went to the annual banquet for Motor City Packards in 1999. John McArthur was the speaker, and his report was grave. Ford Motor Company had started to parcel out the PPG property and had obtained a demolition permit for the water tower. Once the water tower was gone there would be no fire protection for the historic buildings and they would come down soon afterwards. John and Neil Porter were trying to get though to someone high up in Ford Land Development. They were stalled at the secretary to the third man from the top.
These secretaries are the gatekeepers, and they weren't sympathetic. I sat there saying "I know how to fix this". I approached John after his speech and said "John, you need to talk to Dick about this, he and Wayne Dorian (head of Ford Land Development) go back to the mid 60's" John was astounded that I knew the name. i told him that I had met Wayne on a few occasions.
I gave John Dick's home phone # and told him to call at 10:00 AM on Monday. 9:00 AM I got to Dick's house, briefed him and Dick was onboard. John Called at 10:00, Dick had me sit in on the call.
Dick talked to John for a moment, then put him on hold, had his admin call Wayne's office. After a moment of pleasantries with Wayne's admin we had Wayne on the phone. Dick said "Wayne, I have John McArthur here from the Packard Foundation, we have to talk about the proving grounds" A couple of button strokes and we had Wayne, John McArthur and Dick together. In five minutes of talking we had the demolition permit cancelled, an understanding forged about the donation of the 5 acres the historic buildings were on, and the sale of 8 additional acres, all of which came to pass.

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Alvan Macauley lived at 1801 Irquois Avenue in Indian Village, from 1914 to 1929, when his mansion on Lake Shore Road was built. One of his neighbors was Edsel Ford, whose mansion on Lake Shore Road was built around 1928.

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  1801 Irquois Ave Indian Village Detroit in 2012.jpg (1,257.95 KB)


  Alvan Macauley in 1920 with Packard Twin Six 3-35.jpg (714.43 KB)

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...

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Ooooo! Sorry Mr. Pushbutton... wow. While I agree with most of what you are saying... the statement that "Indian Village hasn't gone downhill one bit. It's every bit as nice as it has ever been at any point in my six decades..." etc. Ohhhhhhhhhhhhhh. Ohhh. Ohhh. Sorry but I'm just plain gonna have to disagree with that one. Hope you don't really believe that wildly optimistic assessment. EEEeeeek! I'm older than you and I've been in and watching that area longer. I have had friends and relatives in IV for many decades. What I see today is kinda-sorta okay... by Detroit's present standards, I guess. But to an old Detroiter very familiar with IV... sorry. Heartbreaking. Indian Village has slid a long, long way down from where it once was– even in the 1960s-70s. I know. I can still remember when Detroit's TV stars and people from Hollywood lived there.

In the 1970s, I was having holiday dinner at a friend's home there ... and we were stunned to have armed thugs BREAKING IN to the rear of the house WHILE WE WERE HAVING DINNER!!! My friend gave up and moved to California shortly thereafter. Many of the businesses along Jefferson Avenue where I used to shop are boarded up and/or gone... or too scary to go to. The boat dealers where I used to go with my grandpa are LONG gone. The beautiful ornate building on Mack Avenue that stands boarded up and abandoned for decades was once the Catholic Youth Organization (CYO). It was like a palace in there. Now? OMG. There ARE several residences presently abandoned... and at least two with their front doors standing open when I last drove though a few months ago. Sad. Just a few years ago, more dear friends who are former classmates had to give up the ghost and move out of their beautiful mansion. I won't say why. They have been there at least since the 1960s.

And let's not mention Indian Village adjacent. Growing up, I attended private parochial grade school and high school less than ten blocks north of Indian Village. I was invited back to attend an anniversary memorial Mass a couple of years ago. How comforting (shocking) it was to find a uniformed private guard parked across the street from the church entrance. He was armed with what looked like an AR-15 and a Glock pistol. Ahhh. I guess that's the way to worship in the new "normal" of today's Detroit. But... same as always? Not so much.

An old Detroiter who loves Packards and who once lived both in Indian Village and in Boston-Edison areas.