Founded in Detroit, Michigan, Packard was a luxury American arm of the Packard Motor Car Company. The very first Packard vehicle was produced in 1899, but manufacturing rumbled to a stop just 57 years later. Since then, Detroit's Packard Plant has become a ruined marvel which no redevelopment plans have managed to save. Read on to discover the sad story of how the world's largest abandoned factory went from boom to bust.
The name Packard may be synonymous with Detroit today, but the company was actually founded in Warren, Ohio by brothers James (pictured left) and William Packard (pictured right). They produced the first Packard car at a factory on 408 Dana Street Northeast on 6 November 1899.
James was dissatisfied with the 'horseless carriages' on the market at the time and believed he could build a better alternative. The brand soon earned a reputation for excellence and sold 400 Packard models from their Warren factory between 1899 and 1903.
While most cars at the time retailed for between $375 and $1,500 – the equivalent of roughly $10,000 to $40,000 today – Packard sold their automobiles for at least $2,600, appealing to a wealthy clientele.
The automaker's history was changed forever when Detroit-based businessman Henry Bourne Joy (pictured) bought a Packard car. Joy was so impressed by his purchase that he organized a group of wealthy associates to invest in the company. As part of their investment, the group renamed the company the Packard Motor Car Company and gave James the position of president.
With Joy as the general manager, the brand moved its operations to Detroit in 1903.
The Packard Plant officially opened in 1903 on Detroit's East Grand Boulevard and was considered the most advanced car factory in the world at the time. The brand-new factory sat on a 35-acre plot, with its first nine buildings constructed between 1903 and 1905. These spaces were typical of factories in the industrial period: cramped rooms supported by wooden columns, with a lack of natural light.
The new plant was designed by architect Albert Kahn, who decided to break away from the typical mill-style factory when constructing the 10th factory building (pictured) in 1906. It was the first automotive industrial site in the United States to incorporate reinforced concrete and featured open spaces with large windows, creating an environment in which workers could be comfortable and productive. The other nine buildings were soon remodeled to follow this innovative design.
The company quickly garnered a reputation for its high-quality vehicles and revolutionary ideas, including the modern-day steering wheel and the 12-cylinder engine. By 1910, the Packard Car Company had factories throughout America and its Detroit Packard Plant was the biggest auto plant in the country. More than 40,000 workers were employed at the factory at its peak, which grew to around 3.5 million square feet.
President Roosevelt even selected the brand as the supplier of his presidential limousine and allegedly gifted several of the cars to close friends. (Today the presidential state car is a Cadillac).
Throughout the 20s and 30s, Packard maintained its reputation for luxury and excellence. It wasn't just President Roosevelt who wanted a Packard: Tsar Nicholas II, the Emperor of Russia, owned a 1916 Packard Twin-Six Model 1-35, while the Imperial family of Japan owned 10 Packard cars by 1931.
James Packard, who died in 1928, was succeeded as president and General Manager by James Alvan Macauley. Credited with coming up with Packard's famous slogan, "Ask the man who owns one," Macauley steered the company to become one of the world's best-selling luxury car brands, making a revenue of $21,889,000 the same year that Packard died. That's the equivalent of over $380 million today.
During both World Wars, Packard pivoted its production lines to make engines for aircraft, including for P-51 Mustang fighter planes. In 1942 Packard joined forces with other car manufacturers and started producing Rolls-Royce aircraft engines and naval engines for the Allied forces, employing up to 36,000 workers throughout World War II.
This picture shows assembly line workers making the engines at its Detroit plant in 1943.
Once the war drew to a close and demand for aircraft engines subsided, Packard started to introduce cars targeted at middle-class drivers. But the move backfired: the company not only struggled to break into the market, which was already saturated by General Motors, Fiat, Chrysler, and Ford, but also saw its upper-class market turn their backs on the brand, which was rapidly falling out of fashion.
The nail in Packard's coffin came in 1954 when the manufacturer merged with its rival Studebaker, a company that was larger but in a dire financial position. Unfortunately, Packard didn't realize quite how dire it was until the merger was complete. The partnership never managed to make a profit and the Packard Motor Car Company suspended work in the Detroit factory in 1956, making the plant’s last remaining caretaker redundant two years later.
While the company kept operations going in its South Bend, Indiana factory until 1958, the last Packard car, simply named Packard, is considered to be the model released in 1956. The company ditched 'Packard' from its name altogether in 1962, reverting back to Studebaker Corporation. Operations stopped entirely in 1966.
Packard sold off parts of the Detroit plant and took on several retail and industrial tenants before the plot was purchased by Bioresource in 1987. In the 1990s the site had a brief revival as the Motor City Industrial Park, a complex that was supposedly an incubator for small industrial businesses. But Bioresource filed for bankruptcy just a decade later. The city of Detroit took over the building and planned to start demolishing the buildings in 1999.
In the meantime, the Packard Plant became a popular location for parties and was an integral part of the Midwest’s rave underworld in the 1990s. DJ battles and underground performers descended on the site, and lights and turntables turned the decaying infrastructure into an electric dancefloor packed with around 500 partygoers.
Increasing levels of police scrutiny had made the raves impossible by the turn of the century, but the site enjoyed one last decade of activity before entering its next period of dormancy.
Most of the tenants had left the remains of the Packard Plant by 2006, but with no plans for redevelopment or continuing the demolition, the site grew more dilapidated by the day...
Metal finishing company Chemical Process was the last tenant at the Packard Plant. The business moved into the plant back in 1958, the same year the company’s current owner, Bruce Kafarski, was born.
In 2010 Kafarski opted to merge the family business with another firm and move to Madison Heights, leaving the old factory without a single rent-paying resident. Kafarski acknowledged the history of the place, but said its degeneration was a sign of Michigan’s decaying auto industry.
Graffiti had been popping up across the Packard Plant for decades, but in 2010 British street artist Banksy left an eight-foot painting on a portion of cinderblock on the site. The artwork depicted a young boy standing next to the words "I remember when all this was trees."
As is typical of the mysterious graffiti artist’s work, the painting caused controversy when local art non-profit 555 Gallery removed the piece to preserve it. As a result, Bioresource, who still owned portions of the building at the time, sued 555 Gallery for taking the painting. Eventually Bioresource agreed to donate the artwork to the Gallery, which in return paid a symbolic amount for it. The removed artwork then went on to sell for $137,500, including buyer’s premium, through Julien’s Auctions in 2015. Valuers had estimated it would fetch between $200,000 and $400,000. Proceeds went to 555 Gallery, which it planned to use to turn an empty warehouse into a multi-use arts space.
The desolate site’s natural eeriness has also been popular with those looking to create an atmosphere on-screen. In 2013 it was announced that parts of the AMC detective series Low Winter Sun would be filmed at the Packard Plant. Amazon's motoring TV series The Grand Tour also featured the plant in the opening episode of its third season, which aired in 2019.
In 2013 the derelict plant went up for auction, and the expansive site was bought by Peru-based developer Fernando Palazuelo the following year. The businessman pledged to redevelop the area and advertised for industrial buyers or tenants who'd be interested in setting up shop on the plot. Palazuelo paid $405,000 for the entire site at a Wayne County auction.
Palazuelo had grand plans for the space, including installing art galleries, restaurants, retailers, condos, a brewery, a manufacturing space, and a go-kart racing course.
It looked as though the Packard site had finally found its savior in Palazuelo, who had dangerous debris removed from the area and hired guards to keep out urban explorers and scrappers who'd enjoyed scrambling through the ruins, taking photos, and gathering unused materials.
But even though development planning was in full swing, the Packard Plant was still crumbling by the day...
In 2019, the iconic pedestrian bridge over East Grand Boulevard became the latest piece of infrastructure to collapse. Nobody was injured and extreme weather was blamed for the bridge’s sudden disintegration.
Palazuelo announced in October 2020 that a "demolish-and-build" strategy had been adopted. While the property developer hoped to keep parts of the original building intact and bring it back to life, it looked as though his vision had shifted to allow other developers to buy up portions and build their own sites, such as fulfilment centers and suppliers.
Just two months later, the ambitious plans for a cultural hub at the heart of the community were left in the balance when it was revealed that Palazuelo was in mountains of debt.
In February 2021 Palazuelo's debts sat at $820,000, according to Crain’s Detroit Business, which is almost twice as much as he initially paid for the site. Some of its properties faced foreclosure thanks to three years’ worth of unpaid taxes.
Sadly the abandoned Packard location has been the site of a number of grisly crimes and misadventures over the years. A number of dead bodies have been found in the area since its abandonment, while a 21-year-old man fatally fell down an elevator shaft while playing hide-and-seek in one of the plant’s extension buildings in 2019.
In March 2021 the city of Detroit filed a lawsuit against Palazuelo, describing the plant as a public nuisance and demanding that it be demolished. Demolition of the infamous site began in September last year (pictured) and as of March 2023, the process is still underway.
In a statement before the demolition began, city major Mike Duggan said: "The abandoned Packard Plant has been the source of national embarrassment for the city of Detroit for many years. It's been a source of personal pain for people in this community. We had an owner that gave us nothing but basically a decade of false and broken promises and we did everything legally possible... ultimately, the Circuit Court ordered him to demolish this building."
For now, parts of the Packard Plant are still standing. Mike Duggan has said that portions of the plant will be preserved for redevelopment – but with no concrete plans announced as yet, it seems the site will continue to be a place of fascination for urban explorers and history buffs alike: a haunting reminder of Detroit's past life as a thriving automotive hub.