Highland Park Community and Economic Development Director Louis Starks agrees: Especially because of the location on Woodward Avenue in the heart of Highland Park, he says the restoration would be a "catalytic project that would revitalize the city." "We get some retail in, and we're going to do really well." "It's one of our most vibrant areas," Hackshaw says. He says although the plant restoration has high visibility in its location on Woodward, it would still be important to renovate "if it were sitting in the back of the woods in the corner in the dark." Plus, that area of Highland Park has built up in the last few years, with a Tim Horton's coffee and donut shop, Checkers fast food restaurant, and other retail nearby. "The world is really excited about seeing this thing revitalized here," he says. Those interests are looking to restore it without accruing any debt so it can sustain itself once it's open, which will also have a positive effect on the community. The authority has a 20 percent ownership interest in the plant alongside WA3 and represents the city's interest in the project. The Highland Park Ford Plant has done plenty of decaying in the 40-odd years it's been shuttered, but the excitement is building in the neighborhood as activity starts to pick up, says Mark Hackshaw, chair of the Highland Park Tax Increment Finance Authority - which he called a DDA on steroids.
"Where do you send people to learn about automotive history?"
"Everyone has a tie to the auto industry, yet we have very few things that have been packaged and put together to allow ourselves and our visitors to experience our stories," she says. For example, auto engineers from General Motors developed the first mechanical heart pump in 1952, and Ford Motor Company using its team of "Whiz Kids" - former WWII veterans who became executives - to coordinate its logistics and operational information. She doesn't want to tell the automakers' stories so much as talk about the innovation and creativity that is a part of the auto industry in the first place, and also how it affected other industries. "Opening up that site to the public is establishing a huge heritage tourism destination for Detroit." "We at the Woodward Avenue Action Association recognize the significance of what we have," she says. She wants to change that within the next five years. It's a historically significant site, she says, considering the region's role in the auto industry, but it's been walled off from public access. And the benefits of restoring such a building should trickle down and improve the neighborhood by association.ĭeborah Schutt, executive director of the Woodward Avenue Action Association, wants to transform the Highland Park Ford Plant into an automotive heritage welcome center that would focus on innovation, both past and present, in the automotive world and beyond.
If the Woodward Avenue Action Association and the city of Highland Park have it their way, 2015 will be the year renovation kicks into gear at the abandoned plant. The historic - and that's putting it lightly, considering its impact on the auto industry - building is currently a vacant hulk in Highland Park's busiest commercial area, a prime example of the "ruin porn" with which urban explorers fill their Instagram feeds. And it was the first automobile facility in the world to use Henry Ford's assembly line, which revolutionized manufacturing to what we know it today. Designed by Albert Kahn, it was the largest manufacturing plant in the world when it opened its doors. The Highland Park Ford Plant would be 105 years old this year.
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