When Bill Ford announced the purchase of Michigan Central Station in 2018, he publicly promised Corktown residents that Ford Motor Co. would not launch a corporate takeover of Detroit’s oldest neighborhood.
About a dozen meetings were planned to get community feedback and hear concerns that could help shape the direction of the project. As a result, Bill Ford told the Free Press, the design team leading the multimillion-dollar restoration effort at the 1988-abandoned train station actually made significant changes to the construction plans and language used to discuss the site.
Firstly, the idea of placing a gigantic parking garage behind the train station was scrapped. Instead, a building that doesn’t look like a parking garage was built just down the street from Michigan Central Station, called the Bagley Mobility Hub. This was done so that the thousands of people in southwest Detroit could maintain their original view of the station from the south.
Second, instead of calling the Michigan Avenue side of the station the “front” and the south side of the station the “back,” Michigan Central’s vernacular now refers to the front and “south of the station.” For many residents of southwest Detroit, the so-called “back” has been seen as the front for generations. (For example, this is the view from the popular Honey Bee Market at Bagley in Mexicantown.)
As a result, the final design of the renovated station will have two main entrances, on both sides, instead of just one.
‘You are also our gateway, but you have turned your back on us’
So many people approach Michigan Central Station from the Bagley side that it only makes sense, says Mary Culler, who oversees the train station’s strategic direction as president of Ford Philanthropy, formerly known as the Ford Fund.
Perhaps most importantly for residents, Ford no longer refers exclusively to the Michigan Central Station campus as Corktown, but instead includes southwest Detroit.
“I think this time we’ve taken a lot more care of the community around us by listening to them and asking them, ‘What do you want us to do and what do you want us not to do?’ Bill Ford told the Detroit Free Press. “We want to improve the longevity of this area, but we don’t want to diminish it in any way. So tell us what that looks like.”
People in southwest Detroit almost immediately shouted for Ford, he said.
“When we announced this, everything was Corktown, Corktown, Corktown,” Ford said. “The Southwestern leaders told us, ‘Wait a minute. In many ways you are also our gateway, but you have turned your back on us.” So they didn’t mean it literally. Well, literally, yes, the station physically turned its back on that. So they came to us in time for us to say, ‘Wait, we can help change that.’ “
So designers went back to the drawing board, he said.
“We really wanted to bring the two communities together in a way that we never thought of when we first bought the station,” Ford said. “It was across from Michigan Avenue. It was always referred to as part of Corktown. We didn’t see it as part of southwest Detroit at all. That changed when we started this. That was an early listen that we took advantage of. “
Corktown’s history comes into play
Corktown, named after County Cork, Ireland, is where Irish immigrants lived after arriving in Detroit. Henry Ford’s father, car company founder, left Ireland during the potato famine.
“We still have an operation there,” Bill Ford said in 2018. “Of course it’s called Henry Ford & Son there. It’s not called Ford Ireland. The reason for that is that when Henry first wanted to open something in Ireland, his shareholders said no, that’s not a priority for us. So he opened our branch in Cork with his own money. But he couldn’t call it Ford Motor Company, so he called it Henry Ford & Son. It was eventually bought out by Ford Motor Company, but the name there is still Henry Ford & Son.
The restoration of Michigan’s Central Station has made international headlines. Many people from County Cork see the project as a tribute to their relatives who came to Detroit on the potato famine ships, Ford said.
And now the project will serve as a connection between the neighborhoods that were initially divided by the station, the railway line and the Vernor Viaduct. What was pedestrian-unfriendly will be transformed over the next two years, Culler said.
“When I attended the community benefits, I learned so much from the community,” she said. “From the very beginning, the Southwest community said, ‘You keep talking about the front and back of the building, and you’re going to put a parking deck at the back of the train station. … That’s not the back. that’s our front we’re looking at. That completely changed our whole perspective on the building.”
People spoke out, Ford responded
Detroit City Council Member Gabriela Santiago-Romero, who represents southwest Detroit, told the Free Press that she attended the community meetings and listened to the concerns as they unfolded.
“The community was very vocal about making sure they were included and that they weren’t seen as a community on the back end,” Santiago-Romero said. “Really, Michigan Central Station, where it’s located, is the gateway to southwest Detroit. I think the community wanted to make sure we created something that connected us, rather than further divide us.”
She continued, “The redesign or design, I appreciate the intent. I’m excited about what they’re going to build. They’re very intentional. … The community said, ‘Think bigger.’ “
Unfinished business: 12 hectares of green space
While many elements of the restoration project were delayed by the COVID-19 pandemic, 30 acres of proposed green space on the south side of Michigan Central Station’s campus suffered the biggest delays, Culler said. “We will retain a track for possible future use, but that will all be green space open to the public.”
The Greenway will connect hiking and biking trails to the Detroit River.
Early research for the project indicated that young people who lived in the city and worked on or around the Michigan Central Station campus would want to walk or bike to work instead of driving. So when the long-abandoned Book Depository school next door in Detroit was restored and designed as Newlab at Michigan Central with workspaces for startups, it also included bike storage and showers. Hundreds of people already work at Newlab, which opened last year. Workplace shower facilities are a common amenity in Silicon Valley and San Francisco, where people bike miles to work to avoid traffic and high parking costs.
“Now you can walk to the riverbank in less than 10 minutes,” Culler said. “You can board at Belle Isle, ride your bike all the way up the greenway, come into our public space, park your bike, stop for coffee and ride back onto the Joe Louis Greenway.”
During the night of the NFL draft in April, Culler said she parked at the back of the Bagley Mobility Hub and walked a mile to Campus Martius and then back sometime around 10:30 p.m. Michigan Central Station was lit blue “like a jewelry box,” Culler said.
“I remember thinking, ‘What if I did this walk six years ago?’ It would have been 30 hectares of darkness.”
More: Michigan Central Station: How a secret basement and a flooding nightmare led to renovation delays
Editor’s note: The reporter’s husband worked at the train station as an electrician employed by Conti. And her great-great-grandfather founded the paint company TJ Wall & Sons in Corktown in the 19th century.
Contact Phoebe Wall Howard: 313-618-1034 or phoward@freepress.com. Follow her on X, formerly known as Twitter @phoebesaid. Read more about Ford and sign up for our automotive newsletter.
This article originally appeared on Detroit Free Press: How Ford, Michigan Central Station listened to Southwest Detroiters
