Old GM Liquidator-in-chief Al Koch tells Detroit News that there exists some unknown level of interest in The General’s cast-off assets. But he’s only saying that the level is greater than zero. “It’s not possible, until the process unfolds for a little bit, to tell the shoppers from the buyers,” Koch enthuses. “These are very, very large facilities. So the likelihood of finding a single user at any of these industrial sites — it’s not impossible — but it’s a relatively small buyer universe.” Universe? Wouldn’t it the list of buyers for outdated factories in perma-union states in an oversupplied market be more . . . sandbox-sized? A list of analyst-approved GM plants “for interest/sale” and an opportunity for wild speculation after the jump.
Pontiac Assembly, Pontiac, Michigan. Opened 1972, last built Silverado/Sierra (712,000 square feet).
Wilmington Assembly, Wilmington, Delaware. Opened 1947, last built Sky/Solstice and employed 655 (3,200,000 square feet).
Shreveport Operations, Shreveport, Louisiana. Opened 1981, last built Colorado/Canyon (3,100,000 square feet).
Moraine Assembly, Moraine, Ohio. Opened 1951 (as a Frigidaire plant), last built TrailBlazer/Envoy, 9-7X and employed 1100 (2,900,000 square feet).
But if you’re like us and you sometimes need a little reminder to stay positive, here it is: Detroit News says there’s been interest in GM properties that were “previously thought to be too large, too old and, in some cases, too polluted to sell.” Anything’s possible!
Isn’t there a developer that would like to build 2,000 sq. ft. poorly constructed homes on top of each other on that spot? In So Cal they even suck up the airports for that.
This is an easy play…
Step 1) Offer to buy a plant for $1 only if you get a few hundred million in cash in the form of local and state grants to create “green jobs”
Step 2) Get the cash
Step 3) Run like hell!
Can I get a three-year lease with no down payment?
Twotone
Other than together a few warehouse type stores reusing the space (Costco, Super Target, etc.) no automaker would touch them because of the UAW issues and 3 million sq. ft. is really big. The Honda and Toyota North American plants are around 1.5 million sq. ft. They’ll probably be torn down like the Flint Buick plant, then redone by developers, and you won’t be able to tell what was once there.
Just as soon as all the other empty 500k sq ft facilities in business-hostile Michigan have sold, I’m sure the buyers will line up for these gems also.
We’ll see a John Deere dealership in Detroit catering to urban farming on these sites (after government-funded remediation) before we see them manufacturing anything.
They’re all going to sit, for a very long time.
No buyers are on the hook. Koch is full of crap.
Didn’t it take a couple years for the city of Pontiac to sell the Silverdome? I think they sold it for $20M, or about a third of the cost to build it in the mid 70’s. So what are the odds that a buyer will come for an old assembly plant?
This is the fate of Ford’s Edison, NJ assembly plant that was closed in 2004.
http://www.nj.com/news/local/index.ssf/2009/05/hartz_mountain_pays_edison_15m.html
I’m guessing that GM would be lucky to get this kind of deal for any of their old plants.
The Packard plant in Detroit has been vacant for about 50 years.
The Wilmington Solstice plant is huge. Delaware isn’t as horrible for business as Michigan but it ain’t Mexico either. On top of that the Newark Chrysler plant is being deep sixed.
Car manufacturing will not be a part of Delaware’s economy any longer. Add that to the collapse of the insurance, banking and financial sugar daddies and thinks are looking bleak in The First State.
In my neighborhood, we have the Great Mall, a former Ford plant. I would note that at 1,300,000 square feet-about a third of the size of the Delaware plant- it is the largest mall in Northern California. I can’t imagine what you could do with 3 million square feet-Super Mega Ultra Wal-mart, anyone?
I already have a few ideas…
Distribution Hub
Large Auto Auction (this has worked especially well in the Northeast)
Industrial Liquidator Storage Facility
Federal/State/County Government Center
and my favorite…
Dual Zone Use… Commercial/Residential Real Estate
When Caddy dies, rebuild Dodge Main! We can wish, cant we?
“The Wilmington Solstice plant is huge. Delaware isn’t as horrible for business as Michigan but it ain’t Mexico either. On top of that the Newark Chrysler plant is being deep sixed.
Car manufacturing will not be a part of Delaware’s economy any longer. Add that to the collapse of the insurance, banking and financial sugar daddies and thinks are looking bleak in The First State.”
Well at least we can still incorporate there.
Steven
you mentioned some options for converting old plants, and one was an auction site.
From pictures on the web about overproduction, much of the old junk is still parked all around them. It would possibly save on transportation costs, if nothing else.
I’m more interested in the intellectual property that’s stayed with ‘old GM’, like the rights to the Pontiac and Oldsmobile brands.
I think it’d make a good nuclear waste dump. Way closer than Yucca, you know.
Wait until the appropriate firms and governmental agencies have inspected for soil and sub-surface water contamination.
The value of a site needing clean-up could be in the negative valuation.
Rix :
September 2nd, 2009 at 9:28 pm
In my neighborhood, we have the Great Mall, a former Ford plant. I would note that at 1,300,000 square feet-about a third of the size of the Delaware plant- it is the largest mall in Northern California.
This has to be said…there’s a big difference between the Bay Area (i.e., growing) and Pontiac, Michigan (i.e., dying). If there would be an industrial buyer, they’d be great sites – all have easy access to road and rail.
My prediction: they’ll all be converted into nature preserves or redeveloped as residential. They converted old Stapleton Airport and Lowry AFB here in Denver in that fashion, but then again, Denver’s growing.
Most likely, these sites will be demolished, any contamination cleaned up and redeveloped into something else. The big problem with the design of a lot of assembly plants is that the design of the building envelope isn’t compatible with certain uses, especially retail.
The most common issues are the columns being spaced too close, low roof clearances and removal of all the under-floor equipment and associated sumps and corridors. Once you take all of this into account, then you hae some serious costs.
Since it’s the newest plant, I’d say the Shreveport facility would be the most likely candidate for conversion but then again it’s a huge building. With your average super Walmart maxing out at about 300,000, you’ll need a lot of other businesses to fill the space in.
Janesville Assembly (GM; Janesville, WI) isn’t going ANYWHERE fast. 100 year old building, 4.8 million square feet, and on the crappy side of town.
It’s going to be a hard sell to anybody, and for anything. As a resident of Janesville (not for much longer), I’m making like GM and getting out.
They could sell it to the Chinese, who could possibly eat up some of the auto market share.
One HUGE problem with a lot of the old plants (and neither GM nor Chrysler have many of any other kind) is that they are generally poster children for the abysmal environmental practices of three or more generations ago. Whoever tries to reuse or redevelop these sites will almost certainly have to deal with EPA superfund issues, forgotten underground pipes and tanks, contaminated groundwater and subsoil, asbestos, you name it.
During the 90’s, GM and Chrysler established a joint venture by combining transmission-related plants in Muncie IN and Syracuse NY. I still believe that much of the General’s interest in the venture was as a means to dilute its liability for the environmental conditions there in Muncie, resulting from decades of bad practices.
There are way more plants than just these, as well.
Grand Rapids, Michigan (ex-Fisher body plant – not near any assembly plants – hence, it’s “done for”. Plus, it’s old and decrepid).
Ford has a few ex-plants, like the one near Utica, Michigan (prior owner was Packard; it was the Ultramatic automatic transmission plant site, then hugely expanded an brought into the Ford universe, last used as a Visteon plant). From google earth, you can still see the north part of the Packard test track just to the east of the plant. Much of the test track is now homes.
There are MANY plants all over Michigan, particularly, which will never see payrolls and useful work again. Some are massive, some just plain huge, others just semi-huge. All probably well and truly polluted underneath, from years of solvents, or paints, or oils, etc.
Manufacturing has hidden costs, as China is finding out (apparently the air is nearly thick enough to cut with a dull knife in much of China).
When the old Pontiac Motor Division foundry and
engine plant were torn down, it was said that the
ground was so polluted that nothing could ever be
built there. Now a new U.S. Post Office stands on
the site. Don’t pollution rules apply to the U.S.
government?
How about conversion to zeppelin production?
pmd1966:
Don’t pollution rules apply to the U.S.
government?
Yes, the rules apply to the govt, but those rules include brownfield development, which allows reuse of land with reduced remediation when the new use isn’t residential. It’s the only way to drive reuse in many parts of the rust belt.
“Car manufacturing will not be a part of Delaware’s economy any longer. Add that to the collapse of the insurance, banking and financial sugar daddies and thinks are looking bleak in The First State.”
It’s a shame too. I lived there for most of the ’90’s. Great place to live and work. The politicians were not anti-business then (don’t know about now).
“Wait until the appropriate firms and governmental agencies have inspected for soil and sub-surface water contamination.
The value of a site needing clean-up could be in the negative valuation.”
Years ago I remember Newt Gingrinch speaking before a congressional committee that the way the current environmental laws were written (don’t know if they have been changed since) it was better for a manufacturer to build a new “green field” plant than to use an old “brown field” site because the regulation required the new owner to clean up the old site to standards that would be great if you were going to build homes or a school there but didn’t make sense if you were only going to do more manufacturing, distribution, warehousing, etc. So instead firms foreign and domestic would go knock down a forrest or buy up farmland to build their new plant, which of course means rail and roadways need to be built and so more forests and farmland is bought up.
Edit:
I posted this before seeing ClutchCarGo’s post above. So it looks like the laws have ammended.
There was a factory
Now there are mountains and rivers
you got it, you got it
For the last decade or so the city of South Bend, Indiana has been in the process of redeveloping the old Studebaker main plant site. Here the emphasis seems to be on public safety facilities and new, green technology.
The South Bend Police Department has built its new headquarters building on the site of the old Studebaker power plant.
Next door a new Saint Joseph County Jail has built on the site of several old Studebaker manufacturing buildings which previously housed the Avanti Motor Company and Newman & Altman’s Studebaker parts business.
A company called Green Tech Recycling has built a recycling center on the site of Studebaker’s old final assembly building.
Here is a satellite photo of the Studebaker plant site.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8490341@N04/2152183837/
Here is a satellite photo of the Packard main plate site in Detroit mentioned by urS4red.
http://www.flickr.com/photos/8490341@N04/2172587813/
Megachurch.
Maybe a compound for the Michigan Militia / separationist types?
The moraine assembly plant is nice. I used to deliver there and i wish another auto maker would take it over. Between it and all the cross dock buildings around dayton sitting empty and for lease, it is a ghost town around here.
“Wait until the appropriate firms and governmental agencies have inspected for soil and sub-surface water contamination.
The value of a site needing clean-up could be in the negative valuation.”
“One HUGE problem with a lot of the old plants (and neither GM nor Chrysler have many of any other kind) is that they are generally poster children for the abysmal environmental practices of three or more generations ago. Whoever tries to reuse or redevelop these sites will almost certainly have to deal with EPA superfund issues, forgotten underground pipes and tanks, contaminated groundwater and subsoil, asbestos, you name it.”
These are super valid points with Moraine/ old Frigidaire plant. There’s bad stuff buried there from the long-time refrigeration operation (admittedly word of mouth from retirees, no smoking gun) that would make people care less about the Alien 5 floors beneath a warehouse at Wright-Patt Air Force Base 11 miles away.
I don’t care if these places were crystal clean, dirt cheap and easily adaptable; large manufacturing companies wouldn’t buy the places for $1 and tax incentives out the butt due to the high likelihood unionization would occur.
“I don’t care if these places were crystal clean, dirt cheap and easily adaptable; large manufacturing companies wouldn’t buy the places for $1 and tax incentives out the butt due to the high likelihood unionization would occur.”
Probably if an american company bought it that would be true, but i bet if Toyota, Honda, or Hyundai bought it they could keep the union out.
The zeppelin/airship idea is too creative for Michigan. It might work in other states, though.
Isn’t prisons a growing industry? If you want a sad, depressing, grimy place for a prison, it sounds perfect.