FLINT, MI -- One of the largest privately-held real estate investment companies in the United States has contracted to purchase all of what remains of the old Buick City site -- more than 350 acres of land in the heart of the city.
An official for the trust established to remediate environmental issues and sell properties abandoned by General Motors during its 2009 bankruptcy confirmed that the Buick property is under contract for sale to Ashley Capital, which has a 40-year history of financing and developing industrial properties.
The contract allows Ashley to “prove out its planned investment there, including securing the necessary approvals, accessing the state of Michigan’s tools for attracting new employers, and removing any impediments, for intensive development of the property,” Bill Callen, a spokesman for Revitalizing Auto Communities Environmental Response Trust, said in a statement to MLive-The Flint Journal.
The Journal could not immediately reach a representative of Ashley or Flint Mayor Sheldon Neeley for comment on the Buick City property on Friday, April 29.
Callen did not immediately indicate the purchase price for the property and declined to say when a closing on the purchase might occur.
In a letter posted on the RACER website, Neeley has called Buick City “the greatest opportunity for industrial redevelopment” in Flint.
Tyler Rossmaessler, executive director of the Flint & Genesee Economic Alliance, said Friday that economic development officials who have been involved in marketing the Buick City property are “incredibly excited Ashley Capital is interested in the site.”
“I am confident that whatever they do will be transformational,” Rossmaessler said. “They have a record of working with brownfields and working with RACER Trust.”
RACER said Ashley has been involved in the development and management of industrial and office properties, including a former GM property in Livonia that is now home to distribution centers for Amazon and Republic National Distributing Co. and that employs more than 1,500 people.
“We are very encouraged by their interest in Buick City and the potential that represents,” the RACER statement says. “We will do everything we can to support Ashley Capital as it works with the state of Michigan to capture this significant opportunity for the people of Flint, Genesee County, and Michigan.”
Although RACER has found and worked to remediate PFAS and other contamination at Buick City, the trust said environmental conditions at the property “are not an impediment to its redevelopment and safe reuse.”
“We are accustomed to working in close coordination with buyers, end-users, community leaders and environmental regulators to ensure the safe reuse of our former GM properties, including Buick City,” the RACER statement says.
Buick City was created in the early 1980s when the United Auto Workers and Buick managers devised a plan to save assembly operations by grouping supplier plants around the central Buick assembly plant, which was located on the southern-most end of the site and was demolished in 2002.
Before that, the property was simply known as “The Buick.”
According to the book, “A Place Called Buick,” a history of the site written by Don Bent, employment at the property peaked at 29,400 employees in 1956.
Read more:
Buildings continue to come down at former Buick City site as cleanup options tested
Attention turns to lagoon at Buick City after additional PFAS contamination found
Deal pending for sale of remaining 350 acres at Flint Buick City - MLive.com
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