MONDAY, NOVEMBER 23, 2009
by Dan RafterMichigan |
| Wixom energy park |
As the U.S. auto industry continues its struggles, manufacturing plants across the Midwest are shutting down.
This leaves behind a small army of unemployed workers, something that has surely contributed to the nation's soaring unemployment rate. But it also leaves behind acres of real estate that are no longer being used. The shuttered manufacturing plants of the domestic automakers are eyesores. The land underneath them is going to waste.
Ford Motor Company recognizes this. That's why it in 1970 opened Ford Land, the company's full-service real estate division. Ford Land plans, builds, develops and manages properties across the globe. Ford Land's first project was to develop a 2,360-acre piece of land surrounding the Ford Motor Company's world headquarters in Dearborn, Mich.
Today, Ford Land is making news in Michigan with its plans to redevelop the idle Wixom Assembly Plant, in Wixom, Mich., into one of the country's largest renewable energy manufacturing parks.
It's all part of the company's mission, said Phil Horlock, chairman and chief executive officer of Ford Land.
"We don't want to vacate an area and tell the people of the community that we're mothballing it, that it's up to them to handle it now," Horlock said. "Our goal is to figure out ways to create value again for that city we just exited from. We want to develop properties that create new jobs and tax revenues. That's what we're doing at Wixom."
Ford has reached an agreement in principle to sell the Wixom Assembly Plant to Xtreme Power of Austin, Texas, and Clairvoyant Energy of Santa Barbara, Calif. The two companies will manufacture energy storage systems and high-efficiency solar panels at the site.
Clairvoyant Energy and Xtreme Power plan to make an initial investment of $725 million to redevelop the 320-acre Wixom site and its 4.7 million square feet of plant space. The renewable energy manufacturing park is expected to create more than 4,000 jobs on site and in the surrounding area, as well as support thousands of indirect jobs.
Clairvoyant Energy will manufacture solar power systems at the new energy park, while Xtreme Power will focus on building energy storage systems at the site. The two companies will use about half of the square footage to manufacture their products. The hope is that other green-energy manufacturing and support companies will lease the remaining space at the park.
Redevelopment work at the Wixom site is expected to begin early next year with manufacturing at the site slated to begin in late 2011.
A long historyThe Wixom project is far from the first tackled by Ford Land. In the 1970s, the company developed Fairlane, the 2,360-acre tract surrounding the world headquarters of Ford, into a business, retail and residential community. Since then, the company has developed several other projects both in the Michigan area and around the globe. The company boasts a commercial real estate portfolio of more than 5 million square feet of office space and research and development parks in Southeast Michigan alone.
The Wixom plant redevelopment, though, ranks as one of its most innovative. Horlock said that the assembly plant closed in 2007 after 50 years of continuous operation. Ford produced Lincoln cars here, and the plant was the site of the last Thunderbird model that the carmaker produced.
"For the last two years, we've been considering what to do with that plant," Horlock said.
Horlock was meeting with the officials with Clairvoyant Energy regarding a project in Europe, when the talk moved to the Obama administration's plans for renewable energy usage.
"We have some great plants here, some great sites," Horlock said. "We decided that it would be tremendous to turn some of them into renewable energy parks."
The Wixom site made sense because of its location: It sits near freeway access, and already boasts a solid infrastructure.
"Clairvoyant and Extreme Power considered the site and decided that this would be a fantastic opportunity to take this site and start building their renewable energy products here," Horlock said. "The time to market when you use a facility that is already standing is so much faster. These companies need a rail system to shop products in andout efficiently. They need quick access to highways. They need a strong infrastructure. We were able to offer them all of that."
Horlock also points to Michigan's labor force. More than 3,500 employees worked at the Wixom plant during its last 10 years, Horlock said. Many of these workers should be able to work at the new renewable energy park, too, he said.
The Wixom project looked as if it would become a reality back in September. That's when the state of Michigan confirmed its support by providing tax breaks and incentives to make the redevelopment feasible.
Shortly after receiving this commitment, Clairvoyant and Extreme Power submitted their applications for federal stimulus loans from the U.S. Department of Energy. The applications have passed successfully through the first phase of the department's scrutiny. The companies expect to hear in December if they've successfully passed through the second phase of the loan program.
"This is recognized in Michigan as an imperative by our governor," Horlock said. "The estimates say that there will be in excess of 4,000 jobs being created by these two companies. You can imagine the importance of this for the state of Michigan. This is a priority for the state."
Horlock also has high hopes that the renewable energy park at Wixom will attract the attention of other renewable energy companies.
"We are getting inundated with requests," he said. "People are interested. They want to be a part of this venture. We had several opportunities to sell the Wixom plant before this. Someone wanted to build a new amusement park here. But for these other projects, the pay scale and economic impact was not as great. We thought there might be a better opportunity out there. We thought this new deal was the right fit for Michigan, Wixom and Ford. We thought it was important to get the right deal, not just any deal to get this plant off the books."
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