Ford to Help Transform Downtown Detroit

The Michigan Central Station greeted new migrants and visitors for most of the twentieth century, then fell into disrepair. Ford now plans to transform it into a new office campus.

DETROIT—The office market in the Detroit CBD has made remarkable progress in the last half-decade, and although that growth has continued this year, several recent investment decisions by the Ford Motor Co. might overshadow that expansion. Most important, the Dearborn, MI-based automaker just purchased the iconic, and long-abandoned, Michigan Central Station, and by 2022 plans to renovate and redevelop it into a 1.2 million-square-foot downtown campus that will eventually host about 2,500 employees.

That will be a big change for the hulking structure, which grew increasingly decrepit in the past 30 years, and was the subject of many photo essays meant to illustrate the decline of the Motor City.