EGLE awards grant to help turn Detroit's historic Fisher Body auto plant into new housing

Detroit’s rich automotive history came with a steep price. Countless assembly and supplier plants that once drove the city’s economy are now better known for the number of comments their pictures get on ruins blogs than for the number of families who launched themselves into the middle class from the factory floor. But in recent years developers have tackled some of the biggest and worst brownfields in the city. And now, with EGLE’s help, they’re targeting one of the largest blights still standing.

Rendering of new housing at the Fisher Body Plant 21 site.

 

The Fisher Body Company formed in 1908. It built car bodies back before the automakers did it themselves. And with so many automakers competing in those days, business was good. Fisher quickly expanded. Plant number 21 opened on Piquette Avenue in Detroit in 1919, in what would later become the Piquette Avenue Industrial Historic District. The district is marked by Woodward Avenue to the west, Hastings Street to the east, Harper Avenue to the south and the Grand Trunk Western Railroad Line to the north. Multiple automakers like Ford, Studebaker, and Cadillac had assembly plants in the area, along with suppliers like Fisher Body. The first Model Ts were built at the Ford Piquette Avenue Plant in 1908. Thousands of people worked in the auto industry in this part of Detroit.

General Motors completed its takeover of Fisher Body as a new division of GM in 1926. Plant 21 made parts for five different aircraft during World War II, helping make the Motor City into the “Arsenal of Democracy.” By the 1950s Plant 21 was building bodies for Cadillac limousines. But things were changing in the industry, the Piquette Avenue district, and the city as a whole in the 1980s. GM dissolved the Fisher Body division in 1984. Plant 21 was closed and sold to a paint company that went bankrupt and abandoned the building in 1993. The once-thriving part of Detroit was a basically a ghost town with few jobs, few people, and a lot of contamination.

The high cost of redeveloping many of these old auto plants is enough to scare many developers off. By 2022 the city was planning to demolish the six-story 600,000 square foot Plant 21. It had become one of Detroit’s most notorious eyesores; a massive blight sitting at a highly visible location where I-94 meets I-75. Between the graffiti, hundreds of broken windows, and generally post-apocalyptic appearance, Fisher Body 21 was the world’s worst “Welcome to Detroit” sign.

That’s when developers Gregory Jackson of Jackson Asset Management and Richard Hosey of Hosey Development stepped in. They sold the city on a $134 million vision for Fisher Lofts 21: 433 apartments, with 20% guaranteed to have below-market rents. The first floor would have 44,000 feet of commercial space and parking garage. It would be walking distance to the Q-Line, Amtrak station, Wayne State University, and the College for Creative Studies. The developers plan to cut three atriums into the building and add a rooftop gathering place. EGLE is awarding a $1 million Brownfield Redevelopment Grant to the project to dispose of contaminated soil and install a system to keep vapors out of the building.

EGLE has been heavily involved with the resurgence of the Piquette Avenue Industrial Historic District. Fisher Lofts 21 will be the fourth redevelopment EGLE has assisted with in the area, along with the Piquette Square veterans housing, 411 Piquette residential housing, and the 601 Piquette light manufacturing project. When the lofts are done in 2026, the addition of new housing and jobs will be a major step towards returning the district to life and will turn a representation of Detroit’s post-industrial decay into a symbol of its return.