See inside the fresh Ford Technology Campus, a century-old Detroit train station restored for $950 million

DETROIT – Ford the latest project from Motor City is the renovation and reopening of an abandoned train station that was a symbol of Detroit’s decline for decades and is now the automaker’s fresh technology campus.

The $950 million project includes an 18-story former railway station, the so-called Michigan Central Station – formerly state-owned transit building – adjacent 270,000-square-foot building and other support facilities.

The 30-acre “Michigan Central” campus and station was initially announced in 2018 and scheduled to open in 2022. However, the coronavirus pandemic and extensive work needed to renovate the station delayed its reopening. It is a Ford we celebrate renovation on Thursday at the century-old railway station.

After Thursday’s event, the ground floor of the station building will be open to visitors until June 16, before the first commercial tenants begin to move in this fall.

The fresh campus comes at an uncertain time Ford investors as the company continues to restructure its operations. This is also because many companies are trying to reduce office space and fill their current buildings with employees who have become accustomed to working from home during the pandemic.

Detroit in particular saw a stark juxtaposition: Ford’s downtown rival in April General Motors announced that it would downsize from its cavernous Renaissance Center headquarters along the riverbank to two stories in a nearby building that is under construction.

Already Ford Chair Bill Ford Jr. said he believes the investment made in the historic train station is a key part of the automaker’s future, including talent acquisition and retention.

“We are in a war for talent, our industry and our company,” Ford, who spearheaded the project, told CNBC. “You have to give talent two things: first you have to give them really captivating problems to solve, and then you have to give them a great place to work. With Michigan Central, we checked both of those boxes.”

Bill Ford decided to buy for his dilapidated building after years of traveling to Silicon Valley Fontinalisa venture capital and during his tenure as a member eBay management. He has long been outspoken about the need for the time-honored auto industry to compete with newer technology companies in both product and talent acquisition.

Ford said attracting top talent to Detroit is “getting better,” but noted “it’s a lofty order” to convince workers from California or the East Coast to move to Detroit and work for Ford.

“If you show them a place like Michigan Central, not only in terms of the beauty, which is amazing in itself, but then talk about what will happen there, it becomes, in my opinion, a really valuable resource for growing the company.” – he said.

The Michigan Central campus is located southwest of Detroit’s main business district in a fashionable neighborhood known as Corktown. It is located approximately 10 miles from Ford’s world headquarters in Dearborn, Michigan.

The Michigan Central campus includes a total of 1.2 million square feet of commercial space, including retail, restaurants and hospitality. He was awarded $300 million in state, local and historic tax credits for rehabilitation, officials said.

Ford officials have gone to great lengths to restore the station to its original glory after decades of vandalism and decay. The project included 3D scanning of rooms, matching materials and referencing historical photos to recreate parts of the building.

This was especially true of the first floor of the train station, where the great room features massive windows, an arcade, and a gigantic hall filled with marble and terrazzo floors, Mankato stone, and other unique materials.

Architects and designers decided to leave graffiti on the walls to symbolize the years of dormancy of the station after its closure in 1988.

One measure of Ford’s determination was when officials found the original limestone from the Indiana quarry plant and learned that it had already been closed. Michigan Central worked with the owners to reopen the quarry.

“As much care and attention as possible has been restored to its original condition,” said Josh Sirefman, Michigan Central CEO, during a tour of the project. “By the time we start activating it with a lot of things, it will probably be in pristine condition.”

Officials said that amid national commercial real estate challenges, about two-thirds of the tower has tenants or planned uses planned. This includes an unnamed restaurant and hotel, pending rezoning approval.

The adjacent building, known as the Detroit Public Schools Book Depository, already houses more than 600 employees from nearly 100 startups.

“This is really the beginning of the ecosystem that I want to create,” Bill Ford said. “There will be a lot of experiments going on there.”

Ford plans a house at least 2,500 employees mostly members of the company’s electric vehicle and connected services teams in the building. About 1,000 of those workers are expected to move into the station tower by the end of this year, Ford said.

Other tenants of the building may include local universities, other businesses and a restaurant. However, officials refused to reveal the full list of expected tenants. Googlefounding partner of the project, leads it “Code on” program.which teaches students coding, from the Book Depository building.

Ford expressed hope that future employees of automakers will be able to work with other residents of the station tower, as well as with startups occupying the Book Depository building.

Reviving the train station and surrounding campus is the latest project that Bill Ford, the great-grandson of company founder Henry Ford, has undertaken in the Motor City.

He played a key role in the transfer Detroit Lions owned by the Ford family from suburban Pontiac to the fresh stadium, appropriately named Ford Field, in downtown Detroit in 2002. He was also part of the team that brought the Super Bowl to the city in 2006.

After calls for its closure, he rebuilt the company’s River Rouge Assembly plant into a “green” manufacturing facility. It is now a tourist destination where the Ford F-150 full-size pickup truck is manufactured.

Ford, who served as the automaker’s CEO from 2001 to 2006, described Michigan Central as a continuation of such projects. He called the effort a “legacy project” for both himself and those who might have worked on it.

“I’m very proud of both of those things [prior projects]but I think it will be an exclamation point in some ways because it will be a great place to work, but it will also be a great place for the future audience,” Ford said.