Packard Proving Grounds Gateway Complex

The Packard Proving Grounds Gateway Complex, in Shelby Township, Michigan, is significant as a largely unaltered automobile testing facility building complex from the first half of the twentieth century. While most of the original test track has been removed from the surrounding former original Packard property, the Packard building complex includes all the original buildings and structures from construction in the 1920s. The building complex also represents a unique period collection of residential and industrial buildings and structures designed by the renowned architect Albert Kahn and prominent Detroit architect William E. Kapp. The development of the Packard Proving Grounds, beginning in 1926, was part of a movement by automobile manufacturing companies in southeast Michigan to transfer their experimental road testing from the crowded streets around their urban assembly plants to more spacious rural facilities designed specifically for that purpose. In addition to meeting functional requirements, the Proving Grounds complex of the Packard Motor Car Company was specially designed to embody the Packard standards of quality, engineering excellence, luxury, and elegance.

Nestled in the center of the growing suburban community of Shelby Township in Macomb County, Michigan, the Packard Proving Grounds in 2006 is a 14.51 acre complex of buildings, testing structures, an automotive test track section, and related landscape features on the west side of Van Dyke Avenue, midway between 22 Mile Road and 23 Mile Roads. The Packard Proving Grounds Gateway Complex is the last remnant of the former Packard Proving Grounds, which comprised test tracks and related facilities on over 500 acres of property. The entire Packard Proving Grounds was determined eligible for the National Register in 2000. Most of this property has since been sold off and developed for residential subdivisions and commercial use. The remaining property included in this nomination is the largely unaltered and recently refurbished entry area to the proving grounds and the entire automotive testing facility building complex, along with an adjacent section of the test track itself. It consists of two land parcels, PIN 23-07-21-401-008 of 7.63 acres owned by Packard Motor Car Foundation, and the adjacent parcel PIN 23-07-21-401-015 of 6.88 acres owned by Ford Motor Land Development Corporation and leased to Packard Motor Car Foundation.