January 28: Abandoned Real Estate

Our school/daycare routine leads me past a lot of different things in and around the cities that are so tightly connected in this area. There's one particular landmark that I occasionally pass, depending on the selected route, which always inspires my curiosity. It's a now abandoned factory that's nestled into a pocket of land closed in by Mound Road, 23 Mile Road and, to some degree, Van Dyke. It's a fairly large facility, and its desolate appearance is almost ghostly in it's own right. Let's just say, for any of you who remember the old MTV show "Fear", this place seems like to it would have been the perfect location to shoot one of those episodes. The morning of January 28, my curiosity got the best of me, as once again my mind wandered through all of the possibilities of what was manufactured there, as we drove past. So, upon returning home, I decided to do a little research as to the history of this particular location. Let me tell you, it wasn't easy! But, after a few dead ends, and some Google misdirection, I finally got a break in my investigation. From the data I could find, this particular "plant" had many different inhabitants through the years, possibly even was shared by several companies at one time. The earliest information I could dig up dates back to 2004, when it seems both US Equipment Leasing and Western Oilfields Supply Co. both had leased this piece of real estate; or some part of it. Then, in January 2005, McDonald Modular Solutions entered the picture, followed by Connel Finance, in some way, shape or form, in September 2008. The records are a little fuzzy on all of this. But, the biggest proprietor through these years appears to have been Ford-Visteon; who used the plant for the manufacturing of interior/exterior parts. In October 2005, those operations were taken over by Automotive Components Holdings, LLC - a temporary business managed by Ford Motor Company that protected the flow of critical parts and components. However, in early 2009, the plant was shut down and, a year later, remains a ghost town. So, now I know...and you do, too. It's certainly not something we would find in a history book on the shelf of a local library, but it's still interesting enough; to me, at least. Although, after losing 5 minutes of your life to this blog entry, you might have a different opinion on that.