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Michigan Central Station (Deadline Detroit photo)
Last year before the renovated Michigan Central Station in Detroit's Corktown was unveiled, Ford Motor Co. said there was a possibility of resuming Amtrak service at the 30-acre campus off of Michigan Avenue, but not actually in the station.
Apparently the possiblity of resuming Amtrak service somewhere on the campus is still percolating.
Crain's Detroit Business writes that the Michigan Department of Transportation is meeting with consultants this week on future developments for Amtrak's routes in Michigan — part of a broader effort to explore bringing passenger rail to Michigan Central Station campus and connect Detroit to Toronto by train.
Amtrak would not operate directly out of the station, as it did for decades before the station closed in 1988.
Ford bought the station in 2018 from the Moroun family for $90 million. It's expected to spend nearly $1 billion to develop the 30-acre campus, ultimately with thousands of workers, with the station as the centerpiece — along with other buildings the company owns, including Newlab, a former book depository next door that opened last year and currently houses dozens of startups and hundreds of workers.
Currently, Amtrak operates a small station in Detroit on Woodward and Baltimore Avenue, near West Grand Blvd., that looks more like a typical station found in rural America. It's oddly small for a city the size of Detroit.
