Ford Details Plans to Refurbish Detroit Train Station

Ford Motor Co. says the centerpiece for its new advanced-mobility campus in Detroit’s historic Corktown district will be the former Michigan Central train station.

The Corktown campus Ford is creating will include 1.2 million sq ft of space for 2,500 company employees and as many more who work for partner companies by 2022. Another 300,000 sq ft will provide residential housing, retail and community space. Ford has not announced a cost for the giant project.

Ford Chairman Bill Ford describes the Corktown development as an information age equivalent to the industrial age’s sprawling Ford Rouge complex 10 miles away.

The train station, which closed 30 years ago, had become a looming symbol of Detroit’s decline. Ford plans to spend about four years completely refurbishing the depot, other structures and connected areas. Click HERE for a video of the carmaker’s vision for the project.

Ford predicts the Corktown campus will attract talent and startups and serve as a real-world incubator for all manner of innovations in transportation. CEO Jim Hackett says the project eventually will anchor one end of a 40-mile-long southeast Michigan “mobility corridor” that runs between Detroit and Ann Arbor and through Ford’s world headquarters campus in Dearborn.