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The Dearborn Truck roof features sedum, a perennial ground cover that reduces energy costs, limits stormwater runoff and provides a habitat for birds and insects. Plants, trees and shrubs were added around the buildings.Ford's Rouge Reborn
Green Rouge attracts bees, birds, praise
Enhancements will clean soil, boost worker productivity
Several acres of landscaped ditches, or swales, along with wetlands and native plants help clean the soil.
A 12,500-gallon cistern on the site collects rainwater for outside irrigation and nonpotable use (flushing toilets) in the new visitor center.
n About 85,000 perennials, 20,000 shrubs and hundreds of trees were planted around the Rouge and along Miller Road on the east side of the complex. The Wildlife Habitat Council has designated the Ford Rouge Center a wildlife habitat.
Source: Ford Motor Co.
The Ford Rouge manufacturing complex reopens for public tours of the Dearborn Truck Plant on Monday after a nearly 25-year hiatus.
What: Visitors take a bus from The Henry Ford museum and view historic sites along the route before entering the Ford Rouge Factory Tour visitor center, view two films, visit an observation deck overlooking the complex, followed by the self-guided plant tour.
Where: All timed-ticket tours begin and end at The Henry Ford in Dearborn.
When: 9:30 a.m. to 5 p.m. seven days a week
Tickets: $14 for adults; $13 for seniors, $10 for youths age 3-12. Children younger than 3 are admitted free. Museum member ticket prices: $10 for adults, $8.50 for children.
Ticket info: Call (313) 982-6001 or log on to www.thehenryford.org.
General info: (313) 982-6100 or www.thehenryford.org
Click here to take a virtual walk-thru of the Ford Rouge Factory Tour.Before you go, click here for hours, tickets, and other information.
Have you ever worked at the Rouge? Are you among the legions of schoolchildren who toured it? Post your memories here and read what others have to say.
Ford's trade school
Henry Ford schooled boys in skilled trades.
Rouge naval academy trained sailors during WWII
Some of the great works of art inspired by the Rouge Plant.
Ford's state-of-art truck plant sits well with workers and the environment.
Some of the workers that have toiled on the Rouge's assembly lines over the years.
A look at the rich history of auto assembly at the Rouge complex.
Aerial shots from the '20s, students on tour in the '50s, royals among celebrity guests.
Period postcards circa 1917 show operations at Ford's Highland Park plant, which the Rouge complex would soon replace.
Kahn built more than 1,000 buildings for Ford Motor Co.
A large-size photo of its heyday
Today, the Rouge is only one of many Ford Motor Co. manufacturing and assembling facilities. But it is still unique in American industry.
Here is a brief summary of some of the major auto makers who used to build cars in Detroit and helped make it the Motor City.
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DEARBORN — An unwelcome byproduct of the famed Rouge complex is that the neighboring Rouge River would catch fire from chemicals Ford Motor Co. dumped into it from the 1920s into the 1950s.
Even five years ago, the waterway that winds around the south and west end of the massive, 1,100-acre manufacturing facility was “dead as a doornail,” said environmental architect William McDonough.
More than 80 years of industrial pollution from steel operations, glass production and vehicle assembly at the site had left its mark on the surrounding landscape, McDonough said. There were few fish, birds, mammals, reptiles or amphibians. Trees, flowers and shrubs were virtually nonexistent.
But during a recent visit to the complex, which is going through an environmental restoration, McDonough noticed something different at what is now called the Ford Rouge Center.
“I was standing along the boat slip where the big ore tankers come in and saw these seagulls fly down and swoop into the water for fish,” McDonough said. “I never saw that before. It was one of the biggest thrills of my life.”
Ford is in the fifth year of a $2 billion, 20-year effort to convert its aging, belching Rouge complex into a flexible vehicle manufacturing facility that utilizes the latest advances in environmental science to provide a habitat for bass, frogs, insects and plants.
By restoring the site — Ford owns 600 acres after selling its steel operations in 1989 — the company hopes to highlight that humans and wildlife can coexist in a manufacturing setting. It also wants to help other companies achieve similar results.
“What we’re looking to do at the Rouge is prove that environmental enhancements both inside and outside the complex can boost worker productivity and improve morale while reducing stress and health problems,” said William A. Kroczolowski, project architect for Arcadis, an architectural and engineering firm in Southfield.
Ford hired Arcadis in 1998 to find space for a new truck plant at the Rouge and develop a master plan to improve the surrounding landscape. McDonough, a principal of McDonough + Partners in Charlottesville, Va., and alumni research professor at the University of Virginia’s Darden Graduate School of Business, joined the team a year later.
Over the last 10 years, McDonough has worked with companies like Gap Inc., Nike Inc. and Herman Miller, a Zeeland, Mich.-based furniture supplier, to design and install living roofs where grass or sedum, a perennial ground cover, is placed atop buildings to reduce energy costs, limit stormwater runoff and provide a habitat for birds and insects.
He also utilizes wind patterns to pump outside air into buildings as well as install skylights to add natural light. Plants, trees and shrubs are added around buildings — hundreds of varieties were planted at the Rouge — to boost oxygen and wildlife counts.
Green architecture
When Ford was preparing in 1999 to invest millions of dollars to tear down a large portion of a former glass plant at the Rouge and add a paint shop, engine factory and assembly facility for the Ford F-150 pickup, the concept of green architecture was still new to the company.
In fact, Ford Chairman Bill Ford Jr., a self-described environmentalist, recalled at the time that he was reluctant to meet with McDonough.
“When it was suggested to me that I meet Bill McDonough, I thought: ‘Why in the world do I want to meet a (former architecture professor) from the University of Virginia?’ ” Ford told The Detroit News.
After friends told Ford he’d find McDonough fascinating, he finally agreed to the meeting. But once Ford heard McDonough describe the architect’s past projects, he looked out his 12-floor office window and pointed to the Rouge complex.
“I said to Bill, ‘What would you do there?’ ” Ford asked. “He said, after he got through gulping a few times, ‘Well, why can’t we apply the same principles that we did to The Gap?’ And I said, ‘Look, you’re talking about an office building built from scratch versus a retrofit of the world’s largest industrial footprint. That’s a very different kind of proposition.’
“... So we started talking and the half-hour meeting went to three hours. And I said, ‘I’ve got to have this guy back.’ So he came to see me about once a week. We would talk about the Rouge. And the more we talked about it, the more enthused I got.”
Cleaning up the site
Once McDonough got Bill Ford’s approval, he worked closely with Arcadis and Walbridge Aldinger Co., a large Detroit contractor that started working at the Rouge in 1952, to develop a plan to clean the site and add a 10.4-acre living roof and skylights atop the new truck plant.
During its environmental review, the group found large concentrations of contamination in the soil, the result of years of steel-making, along with various concentrations of leaking fuels, solvents and other manufacturing byproducts.
To clean up the pollution, the team considered digging out the soil and treating it. But working with Michigan State University, the group found that native plants that exist in wetlands such as white and yellow water lilies, sweet flag and bulrush would do a better job.
Other concepts were examined as well to clean up the landscape and reduce energy used at the plants.
“We looked at using grass on the roof, but that required too much soil,” said Kroczolowski of Arcadis. “So we went with sedum, which required less soil.
By adding several acres of landscaped ditches, or swales, along with wetlands and native plants to clean the soil, McDonough estimates the team saved Ford $5 million over a conventional stormwater system that uses chemicals to treat stormwater.
Other benefits emerged as well. Since the wetlands were installed last summer, area wildlife experts report rising levels of birds, fish, mammals and reptiles.
Preliminary data from Wayne County since 2002 shows that dissolved oxygen in the Rouge is on the rise, the result of Ford’s new wetlands and a host of other cleanup enhancements up and down the waterway. Rising oxygen levels help support fish and other aquatic life.
“We’re seeing a lot more fish in the Rouge, no question,” said Orin Gelderloos, professor of biology at the University of Michigan-Dearborn.
“The water is coming out of the Rouge a lot cleaner due to Ford, government efforts and volunteer cleanup programs. We expect that will continue,” he said.
You can reach R.J. King at (313) 222-2504 or rjking@detnews.com.
Rouge Plant exterior
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