South Bend: Renaissance District Presidential aspirant and South Bend Mayor Pete Buttigieg is credited with helping push through the ongoing development of this former Studebaker automotive plant-spanning 80 blocks and closed since 1963-that is turning into what the Indiana city says will be the largest mixed-use technology campus in the Midwest. “If you like the Indy 500, the history of the city, and the history of automotive technology, it’s pretty cool.” “It’s a small city,” says owner Larry Jones who collects artifacts from the original Schwitzer days. Now the complex plays host to a brewery and taproom, distillery and tasting room, metal and woodshops, artist studios, an ice cream maker, a chocolatier, a farmers market, a monthly First Friday open house, plus seasonal events. Its founder, Louis Schwitzer, was a race car driver who, in 1909, became the first Indianapolis Motor Speedway champion. Indianapolis: Circle City Industrial Complex Between 1918 and the early 1990s, this 540,000-square-foot facility in Indiana was where the turbocharger was developed and built. Stop by any day of the week and you’ll find visitors roaming the site’s 5 million square feet, capturing snapshots of industrial history. A restaurant and brewery are in the works. Now, a developer is breathing new life into the East Side plant, starting with the restoration of its administrative tower. The last Packard rolled off the lines in 1956. The site is already a magnet for architectural tourists and history buffs interested in capturing its Beaux-Arts style.ĭetroit: Packard Plant For years this expansive 40-acre, 43-building plant for the Packard Motor Company, in Michigan, has been a popular site for music video and fashion shoots, as well as curiosity seekers interested in a peek into the city’s automotive glory days. The project, scheduled to open in 2022, is set to revive Corktown, the surrounding neighborhood that is already perking up with boutique restaurants, distilleries, and record shops. Abandoned for more than 30 years, the downtown property was purchased last year by Ford Motor Company, which will invest $750 million to create a headquarters for its autonomous vehicle division. Spanning 1.2 million square feet, it has been part of the city’s skyline for more than a century. Photograph by Stephen McGee, The New York Times/Reduxĭetroit: Michigan Central Station This majestic 18-story building was formerly one of the grandest railway stations in the U.S. The interior of Michigan Central Station in February 2010 displays both graffitied walls and towering columns and archways dating to 1913. Other industrial sites across the Midwest that are undergoing similar makeovers include: “They’re what we call really good bones.” The fact that these have brick facades with high bays and large columns and spacings between columns-while that’s not suitable for today’s manufacturing-is ideal for creative office and loft residential,” Shoag says. “There’s a character to these buildings that cannot be replicated. The 1883 GE plant, for example, spans 1.2 million square feet and formerly accommodated a 20,000-person workforce. He said millennials want to live, work, and play in dense urban spaces, which means sites such as the GE plant have suddenly become desirable because their sheer size can encompass everything new residents need in what will be an 18-hour district. In Fort Wayne, Indiana, developer Jeff Kingsbury is in the process of transforming a 39-acre former General Electric plant into Electric Works, a multi-use building that will encompass entertainment, office space, a public school, and a tech hub. That’s pretty attractive when you need support both financially and politically.” “But in these cases they’re stepping into situations where the local city council is cooperative. “Typically it can be really hard for a developer to repurpose a site,” he says. Pick a Rust Belt city and you’ll likely find a relic from its glory days-an abandoned car factory, steel plant, or manufacturing facility-that serves as a reminder of its industrial past more than a half century ago.Īfter decades of disuse, many of these sites-some sprawling up to 5 million square feet-are transforming cities including South Bend, Indiana, and Milwaukee, Wisconsin, thanks to redevelopment efforts that are offering tourists and residents alike new spaces for galleries, restaurants, breweries, and offices, all imbued with a sense of regional history.ĭaniel Shoag, an economist at Case Western Reserve University, in Ohio, says developers are actively scouting these Midwest sites because they tend to be located in desirable locations, such as downtown business districts, and are championed by local officials “who are open to trying new things.”
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