The Packard Plant

This place is on private property. Listing for informational purposes only. Please do not visit without express permission from the land owner. The Packard Automotive Plant is an abandoned car manufacturing facility in Detroit, Michigan. Luxury Packard cars were once made here by the Packard Motor Company, and later by Studebaker. The factory is now completely abandoned. It is said to be the largest abandoned factory complex - at 35 million square feet. The factory is unprotected and unguarded, but is an extremely dangerous place. As Detroit's second most notorious abandonment after Michigan Central Station, it attractions a lot of attention from urban explorers, especially becuase it is unguarded  unlike the station. Due to this it is a hotspot for crime and exploration is not recommended. It is also falling down and structurally unsafe in many parts. The 3,500,000-square-foot (325,000 m2), plant was designed by Albert Kahn and is located on over 40 acres (0.142 km2) of land on East Grand Boulevard on the city's east side. It included the first use of reinforced concrete for industrial construction in Detroit. The Packard plant was opened in 1903 and at the time was considered the most modern automobile manufacturing facility in the world with skilled craftsmen who practiced over eighty trades. The factory complex closed in 1958, though other businesses operated on the premises or used it for storage until the late 1990s. Since its abandonment, the plant has served as a haven for graffiti artists, urban explorers, paintballers and auto scrappers. Scavengers have extensively stripped the buildings of wiring and other building materials. In one notorious case which was captured by the Wall Street Journal, a bunch of vandals pushed a dump truck off of the fourth floor. Karen Nagher, the executive director of the nonprofit organization Preservation Wayne, stated that she was irked to see people come from "all over the world" to poke around Detroit. "Piece by piece, they're disassembling those buildings, making it harder and harder to restore them". Despite no longer being up-kept due to disuse, the structures remain mostly intact as of 2013. Portions of the upper floors of several small sections in various buildings have collapsed or been partly demolished and lay in ruins in the wake of several aborted attempts at demolition over the years. Owing to the reinforced concrete construction, almost all but those small sections remain structurally sound.