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Chrysler´s Mack Avenue Engine Plant History The Story of Old Mack: Rebirth of an Abandoned Industrial Site Auburn Hills, Mich. April 30, 1999 -- Just a decade ago, if people were looking for proof that Detroit's proud industrial heritage was waning, they needed to look no farther than the vacant, rotting hulks that once housed the Mack Stamping Plant.
Contaminated oil, tracked through the site by rogue salvagers, permeated the grounds. Massive pits filled with water, debris and impacted oil lay exposed, thanks to vandals and the elements. Enough scrap metal to build 20,000 cars clogged the site. Stray dogs and cats roamed through weeds and brush more than five feet high. The 34-acre former industrial complex, located in the city's Empowerment Zone, seemed destined to be a bleak footnote in Detroit's glorious automotive past. Thanks, however, to an unprecedented partnership between DaimlerChrysler Corp., the city of Detroit, the U.S. Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) and the state of Michigan, the property is home to one - and soon, two - gleaming, state-of-the-art engine manufacturing plants that will usher in a new century of automobile manufacturing designed to protect both workers and the environment. The rebirth of the Mack site dovetails with the excitement surrounding the newly created DaimlerChrysler and the continuing renaissance of the city of Detroit.
Six years and $1.65 billion later (including $29 million for cleanup alone), the project demonstrates how once-untouchable urban brownfields can be restored and reused to benefit not only a corporation and its workers, but a community's economic and environmental well-being. "DaimlerChrysler is taking a leadership position as a corporation that has done the most to support the inner-city environments where it conducts business and its urban workforce," says Ronald Boltz, DaimlerChrysler Senior Vice President - Product Strategy and Regulatory Affairs. "This development project has resulted in a workforce of more than 800 quality manufacturing jobs, which could double when the second engine plant comes on line next year. More importantly, this was accomplished through the creation of an industrial complex that assures the surrounding community is well protected." "Because federal environmental law can extend liability to past, current and future owners and operators of a brownfield site, most corporations have shied away from them, choosing instead to build new facilities on pristine land, or 'greenfields,' " said James Carlson, Director, Pollution Prevention and Remediation, DaimlerChrysler. "We determined the company could be creative enough to overcome some of the challenges of locating in an urban area," said Carlson. "If corporate America doesn't reinvest in urban areas where we sell products, over time we will be changing society in a way that won't be healthy." Today the site is a far cry from the Old Mack Stamping Plant, constructed by the Michigan Stamping Co. in 1916 when the automobile industry was still in its infancy and sold shortly afterward to the Briggs Manufacturing Co. In 1953, the former Chrysler Corp. purchased the Briggs plant and continued to stamp car bodies and frames there through the 1950s and 1960s. By the late 1970s, the oil embargo, recession and changing consumer tastes plunged the domestic auto industry into its most challenging times. Dwindling market share and high overhead, partly caused by inefficient and outdated factories, forced automakers to close and sell many plants. Chrysler closed Mack Stamping in 1979 and sold it to the city of Detroit in 1982 for redevelopment. The city, with financial problems of its own, was unable to return the plant to productive use. Scavengers had already discovered the site, however, and broke into the facility's transformers, spilling polychlorinated biphenyl (PCB)-containing oil onto the plant floors and into the stamping pits, creating a potential environmental hazard. In 1990, Chrysler and the city of Detroit responded to the EPA's request to clean up asbestos and PCB materials found on the exterior of the plant. This first phase of the clean-up was completed in 1992. Then, Phase Two, clean up of the interior of the facility, got under way. Again, Chrysler, the EPA and the city combined forces to get the job done, and what a job it would turn out to be. During this phase of the project, 11 million gallons of water were removed from massive stamping pits inside the plant. To illustrate how daunting this task was, consider that one pit was 75 feet deep; another was one-half acre and 20 feet deep. Contractors, using a temporary on-site treatment plant, pumped water from the pits to holding pools to clarifiers and then through carbon filters, until the water was tested a final time before being safely discharged into the city's wastewater treatment system. This extensive process ran day and night for nine months. Every facet of the old plant was analyzed for contamination, from the sewer system to the concrete to scrap metals. Crews power-washed 18 acres of walls and floors to remove residues of oil, asbestos and PCBs. In the cleaning and demolition process, more than 10 million pounds of PCB-contaminated debris, concrete, equipment and other materials were removed and properly disposed of, in addition to 1.5 million pounds of asbestos and asbestos-containing materials. More than 16 million tons of non-hazardous soil and debris were hauled from the site. As much debris and waste as possible was recycled, including most of the steel from the demolition process and the brick and concrete from the structures, which was crushed and used as fill in the drained pits. The EPA maintained monitoring facilities on-site at all times to ensure the health and safety of those performing the cleanup and that of residents living nearby. Its representatives, along with those from Chrysler and the city, worked as a team in a unique spirit of cooperation, sidestepping many of the bureaucratic entanglements that can occur when business works with government. "Once this project got started, we all began to realize that what had begun as a clean-up project was evolving into a full-scale, exciting redevelopment," said Jim Duffy, Plant Manager, Mack Avenue Engine Plant, DaimlerChrysler. By 1995 the automaker determined that the New Mack and Old Mack sites would be an ideal location for a new engine complex and entered into an agreement with the city to buy back the property. Because cleanup of the Old Mack site was not complete, Chrysler asked the state Department of Environmental Quality and the state attorney general's office to resolve all outstanding environmental issues in one final proceeding, and entered into a consent decree with the state as cleanup and demolition continued. The city widened two key streets near the site to handle traffic flow and assisted in acquiring the additional property needed to make the project a reality. With an initial investment of $900 million, Chrysler in 1996 began turning the New Mack site into a state-of-the-art V-8 engine plant, including 1 million square feet of machine and office space and additional buildings for support services. "Not only is today's Mack Plant worker-friendly, with state-of-the-art air conditioning, natural lighting and ergonomically correct design, the plant has built-in safeguards against future environmental problems," Duffy said. Those safeguards -- DaimlerChrysler's "Design for the Environment" initiatives -- include: installation of underground spill-containment systems, including secondary containment in chemical handling areas; more efficient use of water, including the reuse of treated wastewater where appropriate; minimal use of hazardous and regulated materials; use of water-based instead of solvent-based coatings; and energy-efficient lighting using little or no mercury. By the time Mack Engine I opened in 1998, DaimlerChrysler was getting ready to break ground on a second, $750 million V-6 engine plant next door on the site of the Old Mack plant. Together, the two plants will bring as many as 2,000 DaimlerChrysler jobs to Detroit's Empowerment Zone, making it the city's largest automotive employer and the zone's biggest investor. DaimlerChrysler's investment is expected to spur further development in the zone, where nearly half the residents live at the poverty level and the median family income of $9,900 is roughly half that of the rest of the city. Most importantly, the plant shows what can happen when a corporation takes a leadership position in supporting urban environments and is a prime example of how corporations can work effectively with federal, state and local governments to bring about projects that are assets to the community. "It is an active lesson in how brownfield sites can be of great benefit to both a company and a community," said Boltz, "and an opportunity to get some of Detroit's properties working again."
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