Ford: Repairs on track for historic train station

Ford Motor Co. spent much of the first year after it bought the historic Michigan Central Station in Detroit weatherizing the long-abandoned building.

The automaker remains on track to renovate the structure by the end of 2022. It will be the anchor of an urban campus for the automaker's autonomous and electrified vehicle development teams.

Since Ford's high-profile acquisition of the building — celebrated on June 19 last year with a press conference featuring local dignitaries and rapper Big Sean — crews have drained water from its basement, installed temporary roofing and cleared some internal debris.

"A lot of this is behind-the-scenes work, but we're making progress," Mary Culler, development director for the project, told Automotive News. "When you look at what needs to be preserved and the nature of the space, it's a big undertaking."

Ford has major plans for the 18-story site, which opened in 1913. It hopes to use the grand concourse as a community gathering space, full of local businesses and restaurants. The building's tower will be used as office space, and it's considering adding condos or a hotel to the top floor.

The automaker eventually plans to put about 2,500 Ford employees in the station and surrounding properties — with space for another 2,500 workers from other companies — and envisions using autonomous shuttles to ferry workers between the campus in Detroit's Corktown neighborhood and nearby cities such as Dearborn, home of Ford's headquarters.

Beyond the train station, Ford has begun tearing down a former brass factory a few blocks away, and plans to replace it with an office building.

The automaker last week opened a ground-floor community center at a building known as The Factory, which houses about 200 workers on its autonomous and electrified vehicle teams. The company, in conjunction with Detroit and PlanetM, a mobility-minded division of the Michigan Economic Development Corp., also launched a grant program to fund ideas from residents on how to improve mobility in the neighborhood.