Bob Lutz pitches in to help save Willow Run assembly plant

Willow Run factory photo courtesy Jack Mueller Automotive Archives. Bob Lutz headshot courtesy GM Media.

With the Willow Run auto and aircraft manufacturing plant facing the wrecking ball, those attempting to save at least a portion of the plant have brought in a couple of big names with auto and aviation backgrounds to help, among them former GM vice chairman Bob Lutz.

On the market for years, the 332-acre Willow Run plant near Ypsilanti, Michigan – which Henry Ford had built to produce B-24 Liberator bombers during World War II and which after the war became the home for Kaiser-Frazer – has of late been targeted by its owner, the RACER development trust, for destruction if it doesn’t sell by August 1. While it appears that the majority of the property, with an estimated value of $32 million and a total square footage of near 5 million, will indeed be demolished, the nearby Yankee Air Museum has shown interest in a 175,000-square-foot section and has turned to the public to raise enough money to buy it.

“We’re trying to buy the portion that includes the hangar and specifically the doors where all the B-24s rolled out,” said Dennis Norton, director of the Michigan Aerospace Foundation and original founder of the Yankee Air Museum, which currently occupies 90,000 square feet in four facilities. “That’s the most historic piece of the plant.”

Norton said that the foundation needs to raise $8 million before demolition contracts kick in at the beginning of August. The foundation already had some money set aside and was able to raise some more on its own, but needed some heavy hitters to open some doors to potential donors for it, so it brought in Lutz and retired astronaut Jack Lousma. Lutz, a former U.S. Marine Corps fighter pilot, went on to serve in executive positions with Ford, BMW and General Motors over a nearly 50-year career in the auto industry. “Not only is he working with us on attracting donors, but he is a major donor himself,” Norton said.

Built in 1941, the Willow Run plant was at the time the largest industrial building under a single roof and became renowned for churning out a B-24 every day hour using assembly-line methods perfected at Ford. After the war, Ford declined its option to buy the massive plant from the federal government, so the government – through the Reconstruction Finance Corporation and the War Assets Administration – ended up leasing, and eventually selling, Willow Run to the newly formed Kaiser-Frazer. Kaiser-Frazer converted Willow Run to automotive production and built cars there from June 1946 to July 1953 before selling the plant to General Motors for $26 million. GM used the plant to build Hydra-Matic transmissions and other powertrain components until December 2010, when it shed the property as part of its bankruptcy. RACER Trust, tasked with finding suitable new owners for a number of former GM properties, has stated that the 72-year-old plant has become an impediment to selling the property.

The Michigan Aerospace Foundation has, to date, raised $3.2 million toward its goal. For more information about the foundation’s fund-raising efforts, visit SavetheBomberPlant.org.

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Highland Park plant, birthplace of Ford’s moving assembly line, eyed for preservation

Ford’s Highland Park plant. Photo by jacdupree.

Today, the former Ford complex in Highland Park, Michigan – considered by many to be the birthplace of modern manufacturing – is largely vacant, while some buildings have been razed to make way for shopping plazas and parking lots. Though the remaining buildings possess National Historic Landmark status, they’re in a state of disrepair and thus off-limits to the scores of visitors that flock to Highland Park each year. Now, the Woodward Avenue Action Association (WA3) is one step closer to righting this wrong with a purchase agreement to buy the former administration building and an adjacent executive garage.

Preliminary plans call for the creation of an “automobile heritage welcome center” in the two buildings, which would include displays, a theater and a combination gift and snack shop. The center would also serve as a hub for automotive history tours of Detroit, such as WA3's current “In The Steps of Henry,” which features stops at area landmarks significant to the life of Henry Ford. The organization also plans to rent the administration building’s upper floors to automotive-themed businesses, though it isn’t yet clear if a viable business model can be built around historical, automotive-themed exhibits and attractions. Assuming that WA3 can raise the additional $125,000 necessary to complete the purchase from the buildings’ current owner, National Equity Corporation, rehabilitation of the two buildings could take as long as five years.

Ford’s Highland Park plant in 1914. Historic photos courtesy Ford Motor Company.

Longer-term, the ultimate goal of WA3 is to acquire the rest of the Highland Park facility from National Equity, eventually opening the factory itself to public tours. On a grander scale, WA3 imagines a future Highland Park complex complete with a test track, wind tunnel exhibit, automotive museum, and permanent home for the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America. Before that can happen, however, the group must successfully complete the purchase of the administration building and garage; once this is finalized, WA3 plans to file the paperwork necessary to declare the structures a “world heritage designation,” giving it the same status as Australia’s Great Barrier Reef, Peru’s Machu Picchu, Egypt’s Pyramid Fields and our own Statue of Liberty.

Model T chassis await bodies at Highland Park, 1914.

The WA3 is currently accepting donations to help fund the purchase of the Highland park plant. For more information, visit WoodwardAvenue.org.

Michigan Theater. Photo by grabadonut.

The Highland park plant isn’t the only historic piece of Ford real estate on the market now, either. Years before Highland Park, Ford’s first experiments with the automobile began in a coal shed behind a duplex house located at 56 and 58 Bagley Avenue in Detroit, Michigan. Today, both shed and duplex are gone (though a faithful representation of the shed was constructed at Greenfield Village in Dearborn, Michigan, using bricks salvaged from Ford’s duplex), replaced by the Michigan Building in 1925. While the addresses don’t quite match (the office building is located at 220 Bagley Avenue, likely shuffled in a Detroit street renumbering), the Michigan Building does bear a plaque commemorating the site as the “Birthplace of the Ford Automobile.” In recent months the 13-story office structure has hit the commercial real estate market, priced at $3 million. For the money, the buyer gets more than office space and a piece of automotive history; the sale also includes the once-glorious Michigan Theater, in recent years gutted to serve as a parking structure for the Michigan Building and considered to be one of Detroit’s must-see ruins.

The building’s seller advises that “Detroit is enjoying the most dynamic growth in decades and the Michigan Building may be one of the last opportunities to use generous tax incentives in purchasing and renovation.” Optimism aside, Detroit has seen little commercial growth in recent years, and the Michigan Building’s central location, ties to automotive history and famous parking structure can’t alter those economic realities.

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