Detroit poised to land 500-job parts plant at AMC site, Duggan says
Posted By: The Detroit News on October 12, 2022. For more information, please click here to read the source article.
Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan said Wednesday the city is “about to land” a 500-job auto parts plant on the site of the former American Motors Corp. headquarters site on Plymouth Road on Detroit’s west side.
“We are about to land another 500-employee parts plant, and what the federal government has done has given us a whole range of tools to bring jobs — good paying jobs — back to the city,” Duggan said of the former AMC site. “We’re knocking down the 40-year-old, abandoned building over there. We’ll have another parts plant there, and we’re in conversation with several other manufacturers.”
Duggan spoke to The Detroit News after meeting with Biden administration officials at the White House about how the city has been spending pandemic relief funds from the American Rescue Plan and about the benefits of recent legislation to fund clean energy, infrastructure and domestic semiconductor chip manufacturing.
The mayor wouldn’t share other details about the pending deal for the 500 jobs at the former AMC site, but Crain’s Detroit last month reported that General Motors Co. was in talks to become the tenant of a new 761,000 square-foot building (or two smaller buildings) once the AMC building is razed by developer NorthPoint.
General Motors didn’t immediately respond Wednesday to a request for comment.
Duggan spokesman John Roach said he expects there will be an announcement “in the near future” about the project.
New laws recently signed by President Joe Biden creating federal incentives for clean energy and semiconductor production paired with the availability of federal funding for demolition has helped make Detroit more competitive for attracting jobs and businesses, Duggan said.
“We’ve become very expert at packaging, and I just pitched to a California manufacturing company that was looking at 1,000 jobs last week, and I showed him the ways all of the bills benefit (them) if you come to the city of Detroit,” Duggan said. “You know, seven or eight years ago, no manufacturing company looked to Detroit. We hadn’t a new plant in 20 years. And now we’re landing them every six months.”
He gave the other example of Lear’s supplier facility slated to bring 450 jobs to the site of the former Cadillac Stamping Plant on Detroit’s east side and make parts for GM’s Factory Zero Assembly Facility.
What’s making the difference in part, the mayor said, is having the resources now to clear industrial sites, using ARP and other funds.
“When you get a manufacturer looking to make a decision, and they have two corn fields and a site in Detroit with a 30-year-old abandoned factory has got to be cleared out first — we’ve been at a competitive disadvantage,” Duggan said. “Now, we’ve got the resources to go in and clean those sites out. All I need is a level playing field, and we’ll win.”
The city of Detroit has budgeted $95 million of ARP State and Local Fiscal Recovery Funds for blight remediation and commercial and industrial demolition, which the White House says is an eligible use of the funding.
Detroit received $826.7 million and the state of Michigan received $6.54 billion through the ARP. Funding could be used for direct COVID-19 response, bolstering public services or investing in “long-term growth and opportunity.”
The city approved a spending plan last year that included $250 million to maintain city services and offset revenue shortfalls; $105 million for employment training and mentoring; $50 million for public safety; $45 million for internet access for low-income residents and more.
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