DETROIT, Nov. 15 (UPI) -- The last tenant of a historic factory in Detroit said he was moving his business, leaving the fate of a landmark Packard assembly plant to city bulldozers.
Luxury automaker Packard once employed 40,000 workers at the 1903 plant.
In World War II, Packard helped the government build boats and airplanes. The business never recovered after the war ended, when Packard tried to shift gears to develop automobiles priced for the middle class, The Detroit News reported Monday.
There have been many tenants since, smaller concerns that have watched the plant deteriorate around them. Bruce Kafarski, whose parents moved their metal-coating business Chemical Processing into the plant in 1958, said he is merging his eight-man company with another firm and moving to Madison Heights, Mich.
"There's a lot of history here. I think about how many thousands of workers worked here at one time," he said.
In the 1990s the plant had as many as 100 tenants but the past decade has seen an inexorable exodus.
When the bulldozers show up, history will be buried.
"That company helped bring this country through World War I and World War II," said Packard fan Elijah Burns, a retiree who once owned an auto repair business in Detroit.
