Shorenstein, the San Francisco-based owner and developer, isn’t recreating the wheel, just the building where the wheels were attached.
The building in question, located in Los Angeles, is a 260,000-square-foot structure built by Henry Ford in 1914 for the assembly of Model Ts—and later, Model As—to feed the local, growing automotive need. (This is LA, after all.)
Shorenstein bought the building last year for $35 million, and is now elbows-deep in its renovation. But the adaptive re-use of obsolete real estate isn’t unique to the City of Angels. Across the U.S., obsolete factories—from the Ford plant to the Philadelphia Navy Yard—are being resurrected for a new generation of users who appreciate yesteryear’s utilitarian caché and are willing to pony up modern rental rates to borrow a piece of it.