Ford has purchased the Michigan Central Station in Detroit to upgrade the long-empty train station and turn it into a center for developing businesses that use self-driving cars, like ride-hailing services and delivery companies.
The abandoned and graffiti-covered 18-story office tower and train station, with its smashed and darkened windows, as served as the backdrop for dystopian scenes in music videos and Hollywood movies. A train hasn’t left the station since 1988.
Ford is taking on the train station project when it still has plenty of work to do on itself, The New York Times reports.
Just a few years ago, Ford was the healthiest of the three Detroit automakers, but it struggled to map out a clear strategy on electric vehicles, self-driving cars and other new technologies. It was also slow to add trucks and sport-utility vehicles to its model line as Americans were flocking to bigger, roomier vehicles. Last year, with profits slumping and its stock price lagging, the company replaced its chief executive, Mark Fields, with Jim Hackett, a former head of the office-furniture maker Steelcase.
Hackett sketched out a turnaround plan that calls for billions of dollars in cost cuts and a parade of new types of trucks, SUVs and electric vehicles due to begin arriving in 2019.
Hackett says the renovation of the train station would not slow Ford’s efforts to increase profitability. The money for the station will come from a sum that Ford set aside in 2016 to overhaul its Dearborn headquarters and dozens of nearby buildings. Read the full story.
