Packard Plant issues Run Deep

The purchase of the old Packard plant on East Grand Boulevard in Detroit is down to the second bidder, and it seems that the opportunity to buy the old building will in fact fall to bidder number three. But why should we even care?

It hasn't been seriously used in half a decade; we do not count self styled artists, quite frankly. They're simply interlopers. So for something that has sat around deteriorating they seems little reason why it should be such a huge public worry these days.

Yes, it's a blight as it is, and a potential danger. We get that. But we're aren't saying that nothing should be done about the former auto assembly plant. We are saying that the solution is as simple as it is obvious: tear it down.

That that hasn't happened is a reflection of many things, and we admit we don't know all the factors involved. Absentee ownership may enter into it, and incompetence on the part of Detroit officials almost surely does as well. There may be a decent way to salvage it which we do not know, for that matter, but given its location we doubt that. Any way you slice it, all the hand wringing over the issue just strikes us as absurd. We suspect that the most likely culprit is a general dereliction of duty all the way around, and that someone ought to have taken the bull by the horns decades ago yet have not. The only real public interest question is why nothing has happened in so very long. And that will never be properly addressed yet alone answered satisfactorily.