During World War II the plant buzzed with legendary projects including an epic redesign of a Rolls Royce engine which resulted in the mighty Packard Merlin. The Merlin was a two-stage supercharged V-12 fire-breathing monster, the heart of the beloved P-51 Mustang fighter plane. Packard also produced a 1,500 HP engine here that powered our entire fleet of PT Boats.
All of this is a huge part of the history of Pac10, for sure.
Absolutely.
But it's not the only history of this place.
Often overlooked is the long and colorful history the plant has had AFTER Packard. Hard to believe, but this plant complex has now been out of Packard's grip longer than it was in it.
"If these walls could talk" takes on new meaning here. These buildings have seen many things, both incredible and terrible, since they were orphaned by Packard in 1956.
The plant was purchased in the late 50's for $750,000 by a company that rented out various buildings to manufacturing companies supporting the auto industry. The plant was subdivided and partitioned, repurposed and modified over many years, to perform many tasks. The Packard name was removed from the water towers and the great bridge over East Grand Blvd. Various industrial companies put up their own signs on the buildings, many of which are still in evidence long after the companies have departed.
After most of the manufacturing companies packed up and left, the plant started the next phase of its life. Things started happening quickly once the plant was unguarded and the destruction accelerated exponentially. Nowadays it is literally changing by the week.
Here is a partial list of some of the activities the Packard plant has, and continues to be subjected to:
Scrappers. Originally it was thought that the extensive amount of copper, mahogany, marble, and steel in the plant could be recycled and used to offset the cost of razing it. But when the plant became unsecured, scrappers descended on it with their cutting torches and heavy-duty trucks and removed just about everything of value. The mahogany paneling and most of the marble went first. Then they came for the copper plumbing. Miles and miles of it was carried away by scavengers working sometimes around the clock. Now they are taking the steel structure of the place itself. This is most evident in the outbuildings. Enormous sections of these structures that were present in the last Google Earth image (Sept 2007) are now completely gone. Many hundreds of tons of steel has been removed in the last few years. The scrappers have punched huge holes in the walls of various buildings in order to provide access for their trucks.
Boats! Yes, Packard is full of boats. Lots and lots of boats. I can't say how many exactly, they are spread out pretty well, but quite a bit more than a few. At one time in the 70's and 80's, part of Packard was used for boat storage, like you might use a self-storage to store boxes of your old college textbooks. I imagine the boats at Packard are the ones that were left behind when that business closed. They are all tagged with paint now, and look rather forlorn sitting in various dark and moldy rooms, or outdoors in the rain and snow.
There is at least one camper in the south section too, abandoned in the same room as a cabin cruiser. This area is often called the "Camping Room" by explorers because years ago you could have had a pretty good weekend on the lake with all that stuff.
And just to take things up a notch, there was a vehicle-related incident last summer that got press in the WSJ. Some people pushed a dump truck from the fourth floor of the plant. Seems a journalist "just happened to be driving by" and got it on video. Here are a couple pics of the event:
Fire & Water. Amazing as it sounds, there is a fire in the Packard plant almost every day during the summer when the scrappers are at work. Most are started accidentally by the acetylene cutting torches used to dismantle the place, but some are arson-related. One huge fire last summer blackened three entire floors of the manufacturing building just to the North of the offices.
There have also been epic floods at the plant. A large water pipe in the lower basements was cracked and flowing for some four years before finally being fixed last fall. It did severe damage to the foundation. I suppose the only way such a large leak in the system could go unnoticed for that long is because there are very few water consumers in the area. One explorer described the underground levels during the time of the leak as having wet mud knee-deep, under water, and very dark. A flooded dungeon.
Techno. One of the more bizarre stages in the life of Packard is the role it played in the wild early years of Techno music. Detroit is the birthplace of Techno, a hugely popular minimalist electronic musical genre that has since spread around the world like wildfire. Well, Techno came of age in the Packard plant. Back in the early 90's Packard played host to huge, ecstasy and acid-fueled techno raves, all night parties that filled entire floors of the place with music, lights, and dancing.
The annual parties here were legendary: "Syst3m", "Phantom", and Richie Hawtin's "Spastik" among many others. These events are now etched deeply into local legend, the high-water mark of the underground rave culture in Detroit. Many of the DJs who performed at Packard have gone on to work the "Deep Techno" clubs of East Berlin and throughout Eastern Europe where Techno has taken hold and become institutionalized. Listen to Plastikman's "Packard" off his "Artifakts" album, a haunting 12-minute ballad to the shrine of Techno.
Paintball. In the early 90's there was a large paintball organization on the top floor of the northern-most building at Pac10. The course up there was called Splatball City, and it's supposedly mostly still there although we haven't been to see it ourselves. One explorer found the course and dozens of still unpopped paintballs. The North end of Packard has a ramp that goes up to the roof, like you find in a parking garage but much more industrial and beefy. Players would park their cars up on the roof and play all night long. As far as I know, Splatball City closed sometime in the mid 1990's. I remember hearing about people playing paintball in "abandoned buildings" in Detroit at the time and didn't think much about it. Now I know what they were referring to.
Dog Fights. Yes, horrible but true. Several people have reported running into makeshift "arenas" complete with fur and bloody paw prints on the floor. We found some kind of wooden box covered with chicken wire that could have been a cage for cockfighting, although I am not sure. This is a very unsettling and dark side to the place.
Chopping. Packard is home to a constantly shuffling roster of chopped cars. People who steal cars use Packard as a place to dump the parts they don't want, mostly the stripped unibodies. Yesterday we came across two such cars, a red coupe in the interior and some kind of cut-up blue sedan upside down near one entrance.
Tagging. Ahh yes. Graffiti is everywhere nowadays, with "Taggers" placing their marks in all manner of conspicuous places. But Packard is home to more than its fair share of graffiti art, ranging from crude spray painted names to beautiful and intricate artwork that obviously required talent and planning. Graffiti has become a part of Packard, almost like some old man who has gone out on a bender and gotten himself tattooed.
Dumping. It's a sad fact that many otherwise reputable companies would rather dump their building material scrap and dangerous chemicals here than pay for proper disposal. As a result, the plant, especially in its more accessible areas, is littered with trash. In one section we found hundreds of brand-new phone books, obviously dumped here by someone who was paid to deliver them and didn't want to. Every now and then a fire will come along and burn it all up and then the process will be repeated.
We also found, tucked away in small rooms, old buisiness stuff leftover from "the good old days": manuals, flyers, accounting papers, and even an uncashed check from 1983 for $580. No, I'm not going to try to cash it.
Gangsters? I don't think this is a very big part of Packard, but I have heard that the motorcycle gang whose headquarters is right next to the plant has used certain parts of it for "seedy activities". I guess that's not too far fetched...there are some makeshift rooms in the section of the building next to the gang's headquarters. Hmm.
Movies. Packard is sometimes used in movies when the script calls for a post-industrial deserted factory, because after all, there isn't another place in America that quite compares to this ruin in scale and extent of destruction. Parts of the movie Robocop were filmed here in the 80's, and an article in Time Magazine just yesterday said the "owner" of the plant is in talks with Paramount Pictures to film Transformers 3 at the Packard. If that is the case, I think perhaps we can hire ourselves out as tour guide/location spotters! Other, more seedy projects have been filmed there, including, supposedly a superhero gay porn film. Interestingly, at least one movie was filmed here when the plant was still making Packard's, a 1941 comedy called "Reaching For The Sun". Don't look for it on Netflix.
Urban Explorers & Photographers. Of course, no discussion of Packard could be complete without mentioning the hundreds of urban explorers and photographers, ourselves included, who collectively have walked and climbed every square inch of this place many times over. We don't want to vandalize or steal from the place, we just want to look around in awe and document what we see in photographs for other people who don't really feel comfortable investing in this type of exploration.
Portraiture is alive and well here too, even beyond the urban senior pictures scene. Sometimes groups of people dressed in period costumes come to Packard to be photographed bathed in the 100-year-old surroundings. And members of various Packard clubs come here frequently to look around. It's also a destination for fledgling Techno DJs to have their pictures taken in their "holy land" and perhaps gain some street cred.
All this history, the informal, undocumented kind of history, happened and continues to happen with no notice from normal society. The Packard plant went off the grid for most people in 1956. The place really is like Detroit in many ways. It was glorious at its height, unrivaled in scope and power. A long period of decline followed glory until at last, it fell. And it fell hard.
But, also like Detroit, this plant is built like the proverbial "brick shithouse". The standards for structural strength used in designing this place are many times higher what is used today. I have a feeling, after many hours of exploring it, that this place won't collapse completely until it is dynamited and razed. But although there are proposals to rebuild the Packard plant, I'm afraid they are futile. Too much damage has been done, and for too long. This place just isn't coming back.
But as for the city of Detroit, I am eternally optimistic. The pendulum swings broadly here in the D. This city was soaring among the clouds in the 1920's and is as low now as it was high then. But Detroit is strong as steel and tough as nails.
Maybe, just perhaps, one day, we can swing back up.
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