Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan announces plans for Fiat Chrysler to build a new assembly plant include $12 million in tax abatements over a dozen years and 200 acres of land during a news conference in Detroit, Tuesday, Feb. 26, 2019. Duggan’s office said that the city will work with the state on other incentives for the automaker’s $1.6 billion investment to convert its Mack Avenue Engine Complex into a new facility. The city has 60 days to get the land, 170 acres of which is owned by the city, a power utility, a public water authority and a family of prominent wealthy businessmen. (AP Photo/Carlos Osorio)DETROIT (AP) – Fiat Chrysler on Tuesday announced a $4.5 billion plan that includes building the first new auto assembly plant in Detroit in almost three decades and increasing its workforce in the area by about 6,500 jobs, an investment officials touted as an uncommon opportunity to revive the region’s economy.
Under the plan, the company said it would reopen a shuttered engine plant in the city and convert another in the same complex into a future assembly plant for the Jeep Grand Cherokee and a new, three-row, full-size Jeep SUV and plug-in hybrid models for all.
The Motor City was once home to about a dozen massive auto production plants, but a rash of closures helped to push Detroit’s unemployment rate to a peak of almost 29 percent a decade ago. The new Chrysler plant would be the first since 1991 and is expected to add 3,850 jobs. The company said in a news release that it would add another 1,100 new jobs at its Jefferson North Assembly plant in Detroit, and roughly 1,500 new jobs at facilities in the neighboring suburb of Warren.
The investment would roughly double FCA’s hourly workforce in the city and the expected average wage for the new jobs is about $58,000 a year.
Speaking at a news conference after the announcement, Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan called the deal a “once in a generational chance to change the economic” fortunes of Detroit. Gov. Gretchen Whitmer said it has been a long time since Michigan has seen an automotive investment as “big and transformative” as Fiat Chrysler’s plan.