RIP: Abandoned since 1958, Detroit's Packard Plant

An old friend in Detroit fondly remembered going to Red Wings games in Olympia Stadium. A couple of months after the Wings moved to Joe Louis Arena, he and a buddy got the idea to visit Olympia. The side door was unlocked. The power was off, but flashlights lit the way. Nothing had been taken out.

The buddy got the idea that one of the lower scoreboards that were in the corners of the box seats would look great in his basement. He got a truck, came back a few days later with friends, unbolted it from the wall, disconnected it from the dead power, and gingerly moved got it out the door and onto the truck. With one of the penalty boxes, if memory serves, just in case Ted Lindsay came to visit. How he got it into his basement, I don't know, but I've seen pictures.

 

No one could afford to do a demolition nobody wanted to do anyway, even if it needed to be done. To their credit, the Detroit Police Athletic League has turned the site into a youth baseball and other sports facility but the purists had a conniption because it has turf.

 

Is that that hulk of a building you see off to the left on I-190 as you go through Buffalo from the border?

 

I don't think so. Are you talking about this?

10-story building with 'incredible views' pitched for Niagara Street

 

Meanwhile, for several weeks this summer a long-abandoned building forced the shutdown of a major rail route in New York state because it was deemed unstable.

 

No, that's not it, this one is east of the interstate, massive, old building. I can't tell from the Pierce-Arrow story you posted if that's it or not, sure looks it

 

Could be. The complex is east of 190, just north of the Scajaquada Expressway (198), north and east of the Peace Bridge.

 

When the Sabres left the Buffalo Memorial Aud in the mid-90s, it sat for more than 10 years. A couple of guys snuck in during the mid-2000s, and took some pics.

Forgotten Buffalo featuring the Aud - Sabres

 

This monstrosity has been abandoned on prime real estate in Old Town Alexandria, VA, for at least a decade:



Anyone who wants to redevelop it will have to deal with the National Park Service, because the Mount Vernon Trail runs right through it (trail is at the bottom of the picture).

 

So many great memories in the building; Sabres, AHL Bisons, Buffalo Braves, Canisius doubleheaders, high school sectional hoops, and concerts. I had season tickets in those orange seats in 1971-72 and took that escalator every game., armed with a cup full of Stroh's we bought from a vendor at the bottom.

 

Ten years is a legal blink of an eye if toxins are involved. That's why so many sites at first get fenced off instead of remediated. You touch it, you bought it.

 

When the 49ers left Candlestick Park for Levi's Stadium, they couldn't implode it because all the dust would cover the adjacent neighborhood. So they did it the old-fashioned way, with a wrecking ball. A shopping mall was supposed to be built on the site, but I believe developers lost their financing and it sits there still, an empty field surrounded by the chain link fence around the former parking lot and signs at each lot entrance. The exit signs on US 101 still call it "Candlestick Park."