Published
Tue, Dec 15, 2020, 21:35
- Owner Fernando Palazuelo has put the former auto plant up for sale amidst a mountain of unpaid bills.
The former Packard Automotive Plant, a 40-acre site once envisioned for an ambitious mixed-use redevelopment, including a Tresor nightclub, has gone on the market.
The sprawling East Grand Boulevard complex was put up for sale or lease by its current owner, Fernando Palazuelo, in late October, reported Crain's Detroit Business. Palazuelo purchased the 47-building plant seven years ago for $405,000, but has since weathered repeated property tax delinquencies, a lawsuit over unpaid rent and the collapse of the iconic Packard Plant bridge, which stretched over East Grand Boulevard.
He is now working with the brokerage house Newmark to transfer ownership.
"(Palazuelo) wishes that the administrative building on the north side of East Grand Boulevard be maintained, but it's going to turn on the customer's needs," said Larry Emmons, a senior managing director at NewMark. "There is definitely going to be demolition and new construction."
Beyond the Packard Plant's manufacturing history, it was also a storied spot for illicit raves in the '90s, and as of late, a beacon of cultural redevelopment. Palazuelo brought Tresor cofounder Dimitri Hegemann on as a consultant for a planned $350 million mixed-used space that would include a Tresor nightclub, a pop-up restaurant, a hostel for international visitors, a spa, artists' studios and a recreational complex.
An advocacy group, Detroit-Berlin Connection—whose members included Hegemenn, key members of Underground Resistance and local government officials—had coalesced around the project, and more broadly, the idea of utilizing Detroit's status as a crucible of techno as a pathway to the city's continued cultural and economic growth. (Read Max Pearl's 2017 deep dive into Hegemann's plans for the Packard Plant, Dimitri Hegemann Dreams Of Detroit.)
The Packard Plant was just the latest in a string of attempts to bring a Tresor outpost to Detroit. "There was a nightclub downtown in the mid-'90s that never got off the ground, and then in 2014, a brief—but highly publicized—courtship with another ex-factory space called the Fisher Building," Pearl wrote.
RA reached out to Dimitri Hegemann for comment, but had not heard back at time of publishing.
5 Magazine recently published a feature on how the ambitious plans for the Packard Plant came to a standstill.