Rouge Center Is Reborn
Members of the media also received a sneak peak at the renovations underway at the Rouge Center, where the new Dearborn Truck Plant is nearing completion and getting ready to produce the Ford F-150 pickup in spring 2004. The new assembly plant has been constructed on land that was formerly occupied by the Rouge's railroad siding. It features the world's largest grass roof, as recognized by the Guinness Book of World Records, and will be Ford's most flexible manufacturing plant. When fully operational, the plant will be capable of building seven different models off of three different platforms (chassis).
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| The new truck plant, where the 2004 F-150 will be made, is nearing completion at Ford's renovated Rouge Center. (Photo: Ford Motor Company) |
The new Dearborn Truck Plant will feature public tours, a former staple at the old Dearborn Assembly Plant until they were discontinued in 1980 mostly due to liability concerns, but also because the Rouge didn't portray the modern, high-tech image Ford wanted. The new tours will start from The Henry Ford--the new overall name for the Henry Ford Museum and Greenfield Village, which are also located in Dearborn.
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| Journalists and Ford public relations employees mingle in the visitor center at the new Dearborn Truck Plant. Ford is working with Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village, to restart a public tour program that was discontinued in 1980. (Photo: Joseph Cabadas, Canadian Auto Press) |
Tourists will travel from Greenfield Village, by bus, to a special visitor's center that has been constructed at the plant, complete with a recreation of the famed employee bridge over Miller Road where, in 1937, Ford security men beat union organizers, including the future president of the United Auto Workers, Walter Reuther.
Inside the visitor center, tourists will be immersed into a nostalgic look at the Rouge's past inside one theater and then to another theater where they will see the sites and sounds of the steel making process at neighboring Rouge Steel (including the feel of the heat and the steel making scents) and a look at how vehicles are made as music by the Detroit Symphony Orchestra sets the stage. Then, it's off to the 80 foot tall (24 m) observation tower to see the plant's living roof of sedum grasses--meant to control rain water runoff--before walking down a corridor to the mezzanine level of the truck plant, where tourists can peer down and see F-150s being built. (Again, the plant will not be operational until 2004 and the assembly line is not in operation yet.)