Jefferson North Assembly

Jefferson North Assembly Plant is a Chrysler automobile assembly factory in Detroit, Michigan. Located on East Jefferson Avenue 6 mi from downtown, near Grosse Pointe Park, the factory opened in 1991 as a major commitment to the downtown Detroit area by Chrysler, and was expanded in 1999, bringing its area to 2700000sqft and expanded again in 2011, bringing its total to 3000000sqft. Its first product was the Jeep Grand Cherokee from the start, which it continues to produce to this day. It uses the original site of the Hudson Motor Company location that was originally built during the 1940s as a storage lot for newly manufactured vehicles to the east of the facility.HistoryJefferson North is the only auto assembly plant that is entirely within the city limits. A second plant, Detroit/Hamtramck Assembly owned by General Motors, where Cadillacs are manufactured, is partly in Detroit and partly in the neighboring city of Hamtramck.Chrysler announced in August 2008 a 1.8-billion-dollar investment in the plant that would expand it by 285000sqft and upgrade the facility for the production of a new product in 2010. Improvements in the plant occurred during a period of intense corporate turmoil for the parent company. Daimler-Benz had sold its majority stake to Cerberus Capital Management in 2007. Cerberus and the United Auto Workers agreed in 2007 to a plan whereby entry workers are paid $16/hour compared to $28 for long-term UAW employees. The Cerberus-owned company went into bankruptcy in 2009 with the company getting a multibillion-dollar bailout by the United States government before ultimately being acquired by Fiat in 2011.