While Ford works to rejuvenate the iconic Michigan Central Station and turn it into a mobility hub, many of the automaker’s other properties are being sold or repurposed for other uses, too. That includes the Ford Walton Hills plant in Ohio, which was recently sold and is being transformed into a business park, as well as Rotunda Fields, which the automaker also parted ways with recently. Now, yet another historic Ford building – Regent Court in Dearborn, Michigan – has been sold, this time to Dearborn Heights businessman Mike Shehadi, according to the Detroit Free Press.
Regent Court was built back in 1990 and has been used to house various Blue Oval teams over the years, including the automaker’s media communications operation. However, the facility was temporarily closed when FoMoCo began offering its employees a new hybrid work model during the pandemic, and since then, the workers that were previously assigned to Regent Court have been reassigned to different locations or utilize collaboration sites instead.
“Ford regularly reviews its global portfolio to ensure our campuses and facilities enable our business objectives and provide a great environment and experience for our teams,” said Ford Land spokeswoman Gabrielle Poshadlo. “As part of that review, we continue to consolidate our teams to optimize collaboration with modern facilities while divesting non-core sites. This includes our Dearborn footprint where we are building a more cohesive campus (off Oakwood Boulevard) while exiting properties that are no longer needed, such as Regent Court.”
“As a reminder, this is all part of our overall Dearborn campus plans that we’ve been working on for more than five years,” Poshadlo added. “Multiple collaboration centers were recently renovated to prioritize employee experience and optimize collaboration as part of our Dearborn campus transformation, including the Ford Experience Center, Advanced Engineering Center, and Rotunda Center.”
Now, Shehadi plans on transforming the site – along with 34 acres of surrounding land that he also purchased – into mixed office, residential, and commercial space, though he also hopes to keep the historic building itself intact. “The last thing I want to do is demolish this iconic building,” Shehadi said. “That corner is the jewel of Dearborn.”
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Comments
A building built in 1990 may be a local landmark but it is hardly historic.
I was in this building many times and although attractive on the outside, inside it wasn’t anything special.
How can you write a story about a building and not show it? Instead there is a photo of the world headquarters, which is misleading because that’s not the building being sold. A reasonable person would see the headline and the photo and come to the wrong conclusion.
Have to admit, based on the headline and pic, I thought this too.
A really good looking building on the outside but, having been in it about 30 years ago, it is just plain old ‘Basic Ford’ on the inside.