Beyond the Train Station: Ford Invites Startups to Dream Big

Abandoned since 1988, Michigan Central Train Station reopened last year thanks to Ford, who bought it in 2018. Once synonymous with “ruin porn,” the restored 18-story station is open to the public, who crane their necks at the soaring, vaulted ceilings set with rosettes and shimmering cream-colored tile. It isn’t Ford’s only restoration project, either. The building next door—an Albert Kahn design that was once a post office, then a public-school book depository—has also been restored and repurposed. Two years after it reopened as Newlab at Michigan Central, we paid a visit to see how things are going beyond the train station, on Ford’s $950M tech campus.

Confusingly, the campus is called Michigan Central, like the train station. The campus is anchored by a 30-acre district that houses six buildings, including the station, the old book depository, The Factory (where 250 Ford employees work on autonomous vehicles), the six-story Bagley Mobility Hub (the main place to park, and an area to test self-driving vehicles), a multi-use industrial building on 20th street, and a 152-year-old church.

The sidewalks around the book depository and the station—and 3 miles of airspace around them—comprise a testing site for the latest and greatest ideas in the mobility space: Everything from roads that charge EVs to autonomous modular robots designed to carry parts between factory stations to delivery drones. 

Michigan Central is following the recipe for an “innovation district.” In contrast to “iconic, isolated science parks,” an innovation district is an “urban hub integrating research, startups, and public spaces,” according to the Global Institute on Innovation Districts. Living in an innovation district, for an entrepreneur, is like going back to college—you’re exploring a wide range of new ideas in close proximity to lots of other people who can mentor and/or collaborate with you to discuss, refine, build, and test your ideas.

The nexus of that entrepreneurial spirit at Michigan Central is Newlab, whose name is on the old book depository. “A global venture platform,” this small company helps startups get their products to market faster than they could on their own, whether that’s by raising money or by finding places to build and test prototypes. Together with Ford and the Detroit mayor’s office, they’ve built the Michigan Central campus into a place to “make things and test things,” according to Katie Soven, the managing director of Newlab’s Detroit location. 

“Here in Detroit,” Soven says, “We’re focused on revolutionizing how things move and how things are made.” The companies in the Newlab building are focused on “solutions for a cleaner supply chain,” and “the foundational pieces of manufacturing and mobility … new clean energy sources, new ways to integrate with the grid, new cybersecurity solutions.” Detroit is especially attractive because of its proximity to railroads, water (Newlab has partnered with the Port of Monroe), and the U.S.-Canada border.

What sorts of things are they making? Electreon has built a quarter-mile section of road, plus several parking spots, that will charge an electric vehicle—no cables needed—if that vehicle is outfitted with Electroen’s receivers. We’ve covered the project before, and now we have experienced it, from the second row of an eTransit. It was undramatic—which is a good thing. (“People were worried,” says Michigan Central’s COO, Caroline Pluszczynski, “‘is my dog going to get fried when I’m crossing the street?’”) 

Voltpost is building a modular vehicle charging unit that attaches to existing street lights. “20 years ago,” explains serial entrepreneur Jason Pankin, “they were all sodium lights—used a lot of juice. Now they’re LEDs—80 percent less. So the subsystems have less demand.” His charging system uses the existing electrical conduit, meaning that no one has to dig up roads or sidewalks. 

Wheel_me is working on an autonomous wheel unit that can be attached to all sorts of things—like pallets of parts in a factory, or wheelchairs, one of which was on display when we visited Newlab. Its head of industry partnerships, Jack Gray, told us that turnover is very high among airport staff who push wheelchairs for elderly or disabled travellers. If the chairs didn’t have to be pushed, one person could manage five or more chairs while having more meaningful interactions with each traveller. 

The involvement of local government was essential in creating the Michigan Central Campus. Though she worked with Detroit Public Works, and the aeronautics division of MDOT, the main partnership, says Pluszczynski, was between the mayor of Detroit, the governor of Michigan, and Bill Ford. Their collaboration slashed the time needed for startups to get permits to test their robots or drones on the sidewalks or in the air above Michigan Central. Think 24 or 48 hours instead of six months. Getting a waiver for the Advanced Aerial Innovation Region required a lot of upfront time for Pluszczynski and her team, though: “We’ve been at it for six years.”

Even with the well-equipped workshops inside Newlab and real-world testing sites, Michigan Central had to work to convince startups to come to Detroit. “It was harder than I thought to get the startups to Detroit,” says Pluszczynski. Forward-thinking startups weren’t excited about moving to a city they saw as “old” and “industrial.”

So far, she’s succeeded. Michigan Central opened in April of 2023 with 25 startups and now boasts an “ecosystem” of nearly 240 companies, over 150 of which are early-stage companies. Many of them relocated to Detroit from outside Michigan. Major partners include Google Code Next, the Boys & Girls Club of Southeastern Michigan, which is opening a new hub inside the train station, and Henry Ford Health.

The atmosphere inside Newlab was calm on the day we visited: scattered people at laptops, some in quiet conversations on fashionable couches, only a few working in the labs. These appear to be a prototyping dream: 3D printers that can work in aluminum and carbon fiber-reinforced plastic, a 25-ton CNC press brake, a shrink-fit machine, sewing machines, rolling wood-topped tool chests filled with slitting saws, drills, roughers, taps, ball mills, and reamers. The shop is staffed by a dedicated group of four fabricators, builders, and artists, and most of the tools are available 24/7.

It’s encouraging to see Ford investing in Detroit—even if the most obviously and immediately lucrative activities on the campus are the conferences and weddings hosted at the train station and at Newlab. But you gotta start somewhere, and Ford and Newlab understand that. And what better way to honor Detroit’s past than by giving its buildings a place in the future?