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Chicago Investor Buys Dilapidated Packard Plant In Detroit

Detroit Struggles To Re-Build A Bankrupt City Amidst Poverty And Blight
Ruins at the abandoned Packard Automotive Plant are seen on September 4, 2013 in Detroit, Michigan. The Packard Plant was a 3.5 million square foot car manufacturing plant built completed in 1911. Major operations ceased in 1958, though the plant was used in a limited capacity until the 1990s, with outer buildings used through the mid 2000s. Since then the buildings have fallen into disrepair - they are now used mostly for graffitti artists and scavengers. Detroit has an astonishing 78,000 abandoned buildings across its 142 square miles. Last month the city declared bankruptcy, the largest municipality to ever do so in the United States. (Photo by Andrew Burton/Getty Images)

(CBS) -- A Chicago investor is hoping to transform a Detroit eyesore. The story from WBBM's Regine Schlesinger.

Chicago Investor Buys Dilapidated Packard Plant In Detroit

Bill Hults of Evanston wants to buy and redevelop the 40 acre site that house a Packard Plant until the late 1950s. It since has become a junkyard for scrappers, graffiti artists and urban explorers.

Hults tells Detroit TV station WXYZ he has a different vision.

"You look at this and 3 million 500 square feet of ugly and we are going to take it and we are going to turn it into something very, very special," said Hults.

Hults hopes to build what he calls the "Villages of Packard," a grand vision for a dilapidated parcel that constitutes a symbol of the Motor City's decline over the past few decades.

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