What Ford plans to do with the Glass House site and its other property holdings
Posted By: Detroit Free Press on September 16, 2025. For more information, please click here to read the source article.
As Ford Motor Co. prepares to vacate its employees from the existing world headquarters on Michigan Avenue to move to a new world headquarters building about a mile away, the automaker continues to hold many properties in Dearborn and metro Detroit and it has plans for the site that holds the current world headquarters.
Ford announced on Sept. 15 it was moving its world headquarters, which holds about 2,000 employees, from Michigan Avenue to an area near the Henry Ford Museum. Ford has been building a new innovation center at the area of Oakwood Boulevard and Village Road, which once held its Product Development Center. The new building will be the automaker’s new Ford World Headquarters when it dedicates it in November.
Ford Land CEO Jim Dobleske told the Detroit Free Press that despite the automaker’s moves to either take down or vacate various buildings and properties around Dearborn in recent years, the automaker has retained the same amount of square footage due to building new sites, such as the new innovation center, or renovating existing properties. Ford Land is Ford’s real estate division.
Ford sold the 670,000-square-foot Regent Court office building along Executive Plaza Drive in Dearborn in November 2022. The new owner started demolishing it last year, as the Free Press reported.
Dobleske said the automaker will retain ownership of the 212-acre campus, which the current world headquarters building, dubbed the Glass House, sits on.
“Yes, no question, we’ll continue to own it. We do have a couple of other facilities that we’ll continue to operate on that campus,” Dobleske said. “By taking (down) world headquarters and the old Ford Credit Building that is already emptied, that’ll open up another 100 acres or so that we’ll be able to leverage for alternative purposes.”
Ford operates a data center building as well as its Service Research Center building, a garage to service vehicles, on the campus where the Glass House is located. Those will continue to operate there even once the Glass House comes down, which is expected to happen by the end of 2027 or mid-2028.
What will happen to the Glass House
Dobleske said Ford has been working with the city of Dearborn to optimize the best use of that site once the Glass House comes down. But he did not rule out building another building there in the future.
“We don’t necessarily need to have another building on there,” Dobleske said. “We knew we were going to take this one down … and leverage that for green space. We wanted to protect it in case we were going to do anything in the future for whatever reason.”
Ford felt that partnering with the city was a good opportunity “to be a great neighbor,” he said, emphasizing that “a community space, whatever type of park that might be, would really be good and working with the mayor we will continue to develop those future plans.”
Ford announced in 2019 it was revamping its campus. It has worked to ensure that the sites it has today are sites that the company will utilize and they are designed to facilitate the type of work the company does.
Including the new building, here’s a list of Ford’s largest and most recognizable properties in Dearborn and the surrounding area, all of which have been either renovated or are new construction:
Ford properties in Dearborn
- Driving Dynamics Lab (trackside): Located trackside at Ford’s Dearborn Development Center on Oakwood Boulevard, it houses engineering functions.
- Innovation HUB and World Headquarters: Located on Oakwood Boulevard, this new campus will include the new Ford World Headquarters Building, which can hold up to 4,000 people and will be dedicated as the new headquarters in November.
- Ford Engineering Laboratory: Located on Oakwood Boulevard, the 100-year-old building was designed by architect Albert Kahn and has undergone several redesigns and additions in its history. Its more recent iteration focuses on employee wellness and inspiration.
- Rotunda Center: Destroyed by fire in 1962, Ford Rotunda is an important part of metro Detroit and Ford history. The site remained empty until 2000, when the Michigan Technical Education Center opened. Part of Henry Ford College, the center provides proctored professional certifications and tests and houses the Workforce and Professional Development programs.
- Wagner Place: A 150,000-square-foot mixed-use development, on Michigan Avenue between Mason and Monroe. The upper floors are office space and the first floor’s retail, restaurant and wellness tenants make this urban space a true destination spot in west downtown Dearborn.
- Ford Experience Center: Located on Village Road in Dearborn, the Ford Experience Center is a meeting place for employees, dealers and others to collaborate.
- New Model Programs Development Center: Located on Oakwood Boulevard, these office spaces reopened in July 2024 following a major renovation to infrastructure and systems. The renovation encompassed 98,000 square feet of open design with more natural light, collaboration spaces, individual workstations with sit-stand desks, and manufacturing team spaces.
Ford properties in Detroit
- The Factory in Corktown, Detroit: Ford moved its business and strategy teams, including Team Edison, to a 45,000-square-foot building known as The Factory at 1907 Michigan Ave., across the street from the old Tiger Stadium site. The location was once home to Chicago Hosiery and Detroit-Alaska Knitting Mills factories.
- Michigan Central Station in Corktown, Detroit: Ford invested close to $1 billion to buy and renovate the old train station. It is now a new mobility innovation district located in Corktown, Detroit’s oldest neighborhood.
Supporting the city of Dearborn
In a statement to the Detroit Free Press, Dearborn spokesman Hassan Abbas said the city expects to work with Ford going forward.
“Ford Motor Company’s importance to our community cannot be overstated. More than just the industrial heartbeat of the modern American economy, Ford’s legacy is deeply intertwined with this city’s history,” the statement read. “We’ve been proud neighbors with the world headquarters across Michigan Avenue, and we are excited for Ford to contribute to the city’s vitality as the company finds a new home in its expansive new, state-of-the-art facility just down the road in Dearborn. The city of Dearborn will always be the home of Ford, whether it’s down the block or right across the street.”
Dobleske said Ford continues to want to contribute to Dearborn’s economy as its employees come to the city to work.
“We’ve been partnering very closely with the city, with Henry Ford Village, the Fairlane Estate, the Marriott, which we just reopened earlier this year, Michigan Central Station, all of those entities,” Dobleske said. “We have the opportunity to connect them in many ways to not only tell the story of Ford Motor Co.’s history and talk about our present, but also talk about the future Ford Motor Co.
Dobleske said Ford’s work on building a new innovation campus with a new world headquarters, along with renovating 29 buildings and the 14 million square feet of space in the new center will create a walkable environment not only on campus but also to Michigan Avenue “to make sure our team members are participating in restaurants and stores and shopping and everything else.”
Ford has focused on optimizing as well as modernizing its property portfolio globally, but specifically in Dearborn, Dobleske said.
“Despite pulling out a number of those — what I’d consider obsolete type facilities for how we work today — we still have roughly the same square footage in the Dearborn community,” Dobleske said. “So while a number of buildings, we’ve either gotten out of leases or we’ve sold those properties, because of the work that we’ve done in some of other facilities in addition to the new HUB and world headquarters facility, our square footage is roughly the same.”
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