Sean A Sullivan

While visiting Lansing, Michigan this past weekend, my friend and I decided to take an impromptu tour of the now defunct General Motors factories that once covered the city. Now, if you know anything about automotive history, you’ll know that Lansing is where over 14 million Oldsmobile’s were made, as well as many other makes of GM vehicles. With the automotive giant scaling back operations in Michigan, there have been a number of plants shut down and now in the stage of being demolished.

While cruising around the city, we headed to the location of several of the manufacturing sites for GM. Our “field trip” was depressing in some sense. As we came down MLK, what used to be Logan street, we couldn’t believe our eyes. Descending upon the location of the former Lansing Assembly Plant, the plant was no longer there! It was as if it never existed.

Since I had heard they were tearing down some of the plants on West Saginaw Ave, we decided to head over there. This was a pretty wild sight— as for purpose of “sound pollution” and “debris,” the demolition was taking the form of leaving the street-facing facade of the Lansing Metal Center standing, while gutting the interior of the site.

It felt a little wrong and deceptive in my mind that they would hide the view of tearing down this piece of Michigan history, so we decided to find an alternate view. We found a great park adjacent to the site and took a number of photos.

Also in proximity to this location was the vacant Lansing Craft Centre, which served as a low-production manufacturing plant for a number of projects since the 80’s, most recently the Chevy SSR.

All in all it was a successful adventure as we were able to capture, on film, this last phase in the lifespan of these buildings that have produced so many vehicles that are driving on the roads of our country today.