After six years of work and a billion dollars invested, the freshly rejuvenated Ford Michigan Central Station site officially opened to the public this summer, greeting its fair share of interested onlookers – as well as a variety of tenants. Before that historic occasion, Ford Executive Chairman Bill Ford created the Michigan Central Station Children’s Endowment in partnership with the Children’s Foundation, setting a goal of raising at least $10 million to support youth-serving organizations in the Detroit area. Now, a new book dubbed The Station: The Fall and Rise of Michigan Central contains a foreword written by Bill Ford, too.
The book – which can be purchased here for $50 – contains not only a foreword from Bill Ford, but also, an essay written by Pulitzer Prize-winning journalist Stephen Henderson. The Station: The Fall and Rise of Michigan Central is a visual chronicle that tells the story of the historic site’s transformation from an iconic Detroit landmark that was left to rot, though later, thanks to Ford Motor Company, revived into a restored site that aims to serve as a driving force behind the future of mobility. The book contains hundreds of photos, artifacts, and drawings from the transformation of Michigan Central Station, along with untold stories pertaining to the legendary site.
Back in August, Michigan Central Station added its first tenant – Google and what it calls the “Code Next” program, or computer science education programming focused on helping Black, Latinx, and Indigenous high school students pursue careers in technology. This program aims to develop a pipeline of diverse talent for Michigan tech startups and established companies, and will serve as a larger skills training initiative at Michigan Central Station, to boot. Thus far, Google has enrolled 100 students in the program, and Code Next will take up permanent residence on The Station’s 23,000-square-foot youth floor.
As for The Blue Oval itself, the automaker recently moved its all-electric division’s headquarters – Model e – into Michigan Central, and it’ll also be joined by the company’s Integrated Services software team. For now, Ford occupies the ninth and tenths floors of the building, while the eighth floor will serve as a meeting space. Altogether, those three floors have room for 500 total workspaces, and by the end of the year, Ford estimates that it will have around 1,000 workers based in the revamped building.
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