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General Motors Corp.'s real estate holdings in the Detroit area have been reconfigured and consolidated during the past 15 years, but the automotive giant still owns billions of dollars worth of property in the area.
In the case of GM's world headquarters, the company sold a monolithic building in Detroit's New Center and bought a massive complex - the Renaissance Center - downtown. In Pontiac, it closed and demolished one of its largest plants but still owns the land and several other properties in the city. And it continues to embellish its General Motors Technical Center in Warren.
To understand GM's vast Detroit area real estate holdings today, it is important to look at the origins of its properties.
GM world headquarters
GM built its world headquarters in the New Center because GM founder Billy Durant felt Detroit had more cachet than Flint, according to Wayne State University history professor Charles Hyde.
"He fought the board (of directors) to have it in Detroit because he felt it was the place to be," he said. "Flint was a backwater city with little in the way of cultural attractions. And Durant thought GM needed a world-class office building."
World-class building is putting it mildly. What resulted was a 15-story, 1.3 million-square-foot structure designed by a star architect of the day, Albert Kahn. Durant deliberately bought the land on what was then the outskirts of the city to avoid the congestion of downtown carriages, trolleys, cars and trucks, Hyde said.
Durant asked Kahn to design...