 
Thegryphon
Member
Username: Thegryphon
Post Number: 54
Registered: 11-2007
| | Posted on Friday, May 02, 2008 - 11:50 am: |    |
This may be a little ignorant of me, but I always wondered as to why Chrysler chose Auburn Hills for its hq. I always marveled at the thought of Chrysler in D-town Detroit. Imagine the econ. benefit. Do u think there are any chances they may move? |
Iheartthed
Member
Username: Iheartthed
Post Number: 3063
Registered: 04-2006
| | Posted on Friday, May 02, 2008 - 11:51 am: | |
Nope. |
Kid_dynamite
Member
Username: Kid_dynamite
Post Number: 535
Registered: 06-2007
| | Posted on Friday, May 02, 2008 - 11:51 am: | |
None whatsoever. |
Jt1
Member
Username: Jt1
Post Number: 11605
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Friday, May 02, 2008 - 11:53 am: | |
Not moving and I am guessing that Auburn Hills supplied a lot of cheap land.
I am more curious if anyone knows what State and County incentives were given to assist CHrysler's move. That is if any were given. |
Rax
Member
Username: Rax
Post Number: 252
Registered: 11-2007
| | Posted on Friday, May 02, 2008 - 11:53 am: | |
And before you ask, no, the Pistons aren't moving downtown either. |
Jt1
Member
Username: Jt1
Post Number: 11607
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Friday, May 02, 2008 - 11:55 am: | |
So you're saying that the Pistons and Chrysler are moving downtown with Rock financial. That's awesome news.  |
Mwilbert
Member
Username: Mwilbert
Post Number: 209
Registered: 11-2007
| | Posted on Friday, May 02, 2008 - 12:04 pm: | |
It is hard to believe Chrysler is likely to exist in anything like its present form much longer, so where they might move their headquarters is kind of irrelevant.
It will be interesting to see who takes over their building with that giant pentastar on top of it. |
Viziondetroit
Member
Username: Viziondetroit
Post Number: 1669
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Friday, May 02, 2008 - 12:04 pm: | |
The bigger question is WHY would they move? There is no reason for them to move downtown. They would have to build a new facility. There is no building downtown to handle being retrofitted for what they do in AH.
Bottom line, its not gonna happen just because it's not going to. |
Professorscott
Member
Username: Professorscott
Post Number: 1244
Registered: 12-2006
| | Posted on Friday, May 02, 2008 - 12:07 pm: | |
I think Mwilbert has the most relevant post on this issue. Chrysler as we've known it is not long for this world. They certainly will not need, a year or two hence, the immense amount of space they assembled in AH.
Some of you are speculating "Detroit", but I say New York. No reason for a marketing-focused company, which no longer makes its own vehicles, to be in this area, and I think that's where Chrysler is headed. |
Novine
Member
Username: Novine
Post Number: 499
Registered: 07-2007
| | Posted on Friday, May 02, 2008 - 12:13 pm: | |
AH provided them with a huge greenfield site that allowed them to build all of the facilities that they would want for a HQ location and had direct access to 75 (or at least after the state built an interchange expressly for their project). It was first pitched as just a tech center:
"Chrysler Corp. Chairman Lee Iacocca said Thursday that about half of the 10,000 employes at the company's Highland Park headquarters will be transferred to a technical center in Auburn Hills by 1990.
But Iacocca said the company's headquarters will remain in Highland Park, adding that the automaker intends to be "a good citizen" and will try to help the city find new sources of revenue. "
but that was done to keep Highland Park from opposing tax abatements in Auburn Hills (cities used to have the power to block tax abatement offers from other cities if the tax abatement was requested by a company moving from one city to another). |
Otter
Member
Username: Otter
Post Number: 144
Registered: 12-2007
| | Posted on Friday, May 02, 2008 - 1:07 pm: | |
I don't share other posters' pessimism about the future of Chrysler, even if I was one of the many recently laid off by them.
Auburn Hills was probably chosen because of available land and the usual financial incentives, but I don't really know anything specific. Novine seems to have it right.
Chrysler is not leaving Detroit (New York?••• and they're not leaving Auburn Hills, either. I mean, I don't have a crystal ball, but there's no credible reason to suggest otherwise.
PROC (the PLymouth Road engineering facility for Jeep/truck) is being sold, and all staff there will be moved to Auburn Hills by about the end of 2009. This will put all engineering under one roof. Design too, since the Pacifica advanced studio is being closed. Recreating all of the facilities that exist at the CTC would be a massive capital investment, and what's the point? |
Digitalvision
Member
Username: Digitalvision
Post Number: 791
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Friday, May 02, 2008 - 1:25 pm: | |
A Chrysler move to downtown is never going to happen - and downtowns are not their culture.
Under German ownership, then maybe, I had heard many times the Germans wondered openly about why such emphasis on suburbia - and talked to some who were here and they disliked Auburn Hills and felt they couldn't attract the top global talent they wanted to because there was no energy, so little to offer and so they would have to pay a nice premium to get them to work in the Auburn Hills area. But the Americans loved it, and continue to.
You won't see the Pistons move back, either - Davidson has a veritable empire out there with Guardian and the Palace.
That, and the Palace is the only major sports venue in the region that's non-union saving him tons of money and giving him lots of flexibility.
(Message edited by digitalvision on May 02, 2008) |
Jgavrile
Member
Username: Jgavrile
Post Number: 78
Registered: 09-2005
| | Posted on Friday, May 02, 2008 - 1:32 pm: | |
There use to be historic marker there on Oakland avenue, describing the start of Chrysler and how the Maxwell car began on that location, but I think its gone now. Too bad. as it was a historic spot at one time. When I was going to college at Highland Park, I got a summer job helping the Urban renewal of taking away all the property on the South end, that belonged to Highland Park residents, and making individual drawing plots of each land parcel and their homes ,in order to have the City/Chrysler buy these homes out to make the new design center they built back in the 60's. Streets like Cardoni, etc., East of Oakland Ave. All that for nothing, now that you think about it. They ended up screwing Highland park out of its tax base and going to Auburn Hills anyway. |
Iheartthed
Member
Username: Iheartthed
Post Number: 3064
Registered: 04-2006
| | Posted on Friday, May 02, 2008 - 1:32 pm: | |
I can see part of Chrysler going downtown... When they sell Jeep to General Motors. |
Gistok
Member
Username: Gistok
Post Number: 6756
Registered: 08-2004
| | Posted on Friday, May 02, 2008 - 2:05 pm: | |
IIRC, it was Comerica, which built a corporate campus in Auburn Hills that first attracted Chrysler to the site it now has its' HQ on. |
Detroithabitater
Member
Username: Detroithabitater
Post Number: 140
Registered: 10-2006
| | Posted on Friday, May 02, 2008 - 3:07 pm: | |
i heard that the Chrysler tech center was designed to be a shopping mall as a 'backup plan' 'just incase'
Anymore info on that?
They could always return it to a green prarie and move downtown. I would be cool with that. |
East_detroit
Member
Username: East_detroit
Post Number: 1721
Registered: 11-2003
| | Posted on Friday, May 02, 2008 - 3:50 pm: | |
If only Chrysler, Sears and Detroit Osteopathic Hospital would move to Highland Park. |
Patrick
Member
Username: Patrick
Post Number: 5365
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Friday, May 02, 2008 - 3:58 pm: | |
I started a thread about their proposed HQ location near White Chapel in Troy. That location didn't pan out though. Keep in mind that their HP HQ was a fucking mess. Cars were stolen from the lot on a weekly basis as well as armed robberies. My dad tells me all sorts of stories of the shit that went down there. |
56packman
Member
Username: 56packman
Post Number: 2232
Registered: 12-2005
| | Posted on Friday, May 02, 2008 - 4:11 pm: | |
Oh god, here we go again. We just had this discussion within the last six months.
Chrysler wanted out of Highland park--the city's police force could not adequately secure the properties there, employees were robbed and beaten on the way to their cars. One engineer was killed in a parking lot. The facilities were very old, many predated Chrysler as that complex began as Maxwell. The company's functions were spread between several discrete buildings.
The move to Auburn Hills was driven by the fact that they were flush with cash, the horse farm in AH was available and they could move so they did. They now have everything under one roof in an area most of their employees live near.
They were a responsible corporate citizen and completely demolished all traces of the Highland Park complex, did not leave it to rot, they didn't even sell it to a secondary speculator, which would then sell it to a lesser enterprise, who would then sell it to an even lesser enterprise who would fail and abandon it, like some other industrial complexes. The problem there is that the complex still is identified with the company that occupied it for the longest time--look at Fisher Body #21.
The main office portions of Chrysler CTC are built like a mall, the technical areas and office tower are not. And as I pointed out in a previous post, Chrysler never was headquartered in Detroit. Walter Chrysler never lived in Detroit. |
Craig
Member
Username: Craig
Post Number: 766
Registered: 02-2007
| | Posted on Friday, May 02, 2008 - 4:37 pm: | |
HP was before my time, but I've yet to meet someone at CTC who is nostalgic for the old HQ. |
Craig
Member
Username: Craig
Post Number: 767
Registered: 02-2007
| | Posted on Friday, May 02, 2008 - 4:42 pm: | |
re: White Chapel & Chrysler...
In a small way it did happen. BBDO (the agency that would come to win all of the Chrysler biz)located there in '00 and soon thereafter some of Chrysler's IT staff & others sublet some of the office space. Of course Agency guys had the (dis)pleasure of watching clients arrive late and leave work early while maintaining the fiction that client-side is a tough gig. |
Joebrazier
Member
Username: Joebrazier
Post Number: 11
Registered: 02-2004
| | Posted on Friday, May 02, 2008 - 5:03 pm: | |
Maybe the Chrysler HQ property was a piece of the old Dodge Estate, the remainder of which had earlier been developed into Oakland University? |
Alan55
Member
Username: Alan55
Post Number: 1632
Registered: 09-2005
| | Posted on Friday, May 02, 2008 - 5:16 pm: | |
You are all missing the real reason that Chrysler moved to Auburn Hills. The real reason is that most of the white-collar employees (and more importantly, the executive staff) lives in that Bloomfield Hills - Clarkston northwest - southeast corridor. Auburn Hills is right in the middle of that,and shaves. what, 25 miles off of their daily commute in each direction.
I suspect this is the same reason that WTVS - channel 56 made the "business" decision to move their facility from downtown to bumfuck Wixom - closer to where the execs live.
When in doubt, follow the personal interests. |
3rdworldcity
Member
Username: 3rdworldcity
Post Number: 1120
Registered: 01-2005
| | Posted on Friday, May 02, 2008 - 5:29 pm: | |
Chrysler will move its HQ, I say in the next 5 years. To China. |
Detroitrise
Member
Username: Detroitrise
Post Number: 2035
Registered: 09-2007
| | Posted on Friday, May 02, 2008 - 5:35 pm: | |
"You are all missing the real reason that Chrysler moved to Auburn Hills. The real reason is that most of the white-collar employees (and more importantly, the executive staff) lives in that Bloomfield Hills - Clarkston northwest - southeast corridor. Auburn Hills is right in the middle of that,and shaves. what, 25 miles off of their daily commute in each direction.
I suspect this is the same reason that WTVS - channel 56 made the "business" decision to move their facility from downtown to bumfuck Wixom - closer to where the execs live.
When in doubt, follow the personal interests."
Gotta love Metro Detroit.
That explains why Comerica left and the Post Office is going to Pontiac...
I'd say give it another 10 years. downtown will be a ghost town.
Of course, it you continue to shower your donut in nothing but glaze, it will simply be undesirable. Then eventually when the glaze dries out, the donut becomes useless.
(Message edited by DetroitRise on May 02, 2008) |
Mwilbert
Member
Username: Mwilbert
Post Number: 211
Registered: 11-2007
| | Posted on Friday, May 02, 2008 - 5:37 pm: | |
William Whyte found that it is an almost inviolable rule that when headquarters move, they move closer to where the CEO lives. |
56packman
Member
Username: 56packman
Post Number: 2233
Registered: 12-2005
| | Posted on Friday, May 02, 2008 - 5:43 pm: | |
remarkably uninformed quote:"Maybe the Chrysler HQ property was a piece of the old Dodge Estate, the remainder of which had earlier been developed into Oakland University?"
Ah, no, close, but cigar, at all. It was a horse farm. The land that Oakland University was built on (as a campus of Michigan State University) was originally owned by John Dodge, he died in 1920, his Widow, Matilda got it in his estate and she remarried in 1926, to Alfred Wilson.
They built Meadowbrook Hall and later Sunset Terrace after the mega-mansion became too large for every day living.
No real connection there bucko.
NEXT |
Patrick
Member
Username: Patrick
Post Number: 5366
Registered: 10-2003
| | Posted on Friday, May 02, 2008 - 5:47 pm: | |
The Chrysler HQ might have been part of Seyburn estate...Wesson Seyburn was married to a Winifred Dodge. |
Novine
Member
Username: Novine
Post Number: 500
Registered: 07-2007
| | Posted on Friday, May 02, 2008 - 6:21 pm: | |
One of the articles about the move to AH mentioned that OU sold some land to Chrysler but it wasn't the main part of the complex. Sounds like some others know more about the history of that.
As far as WTVS, I think the move to Wixom was as much about being able to get the Clover Communications facility at a cheap price as much as anything else. But the rule about location and the CEO is generally true. |
Gistok
Member
Username: Gistok
Post Number: 6758
Registered: 08-2004
| | Posted on Friday, May 02, 2008 - 6:28 pm: | |
Detroitrise... I think you got your info wrong on the Post Office. The main Post Office is and will remain in Detroit. |