It’s likely that the former Janesville General Motors plant will no longer exist in a matter of months, the property’s new owner said in a press conference Thursday. Commercial Development Company, which announced Wednesday it had closed on the 4.8-million-square-foot defunct auto plant property, said it most likely will demolish the entire facility in 2018, and it likely will begin demolition in spring. That would truly close the book on the Goliath auto manufacturing plant that had a nearly 100-year history in Janesville before GM essentially shuttered it in 2009. There’s an outside chance that about 100,000 square feet of the plant could remain intact. That option exists because a heavy-duty industrial industry has said it’s interested in potentially locating in part of the property, Commercial Development CEO Randall Jostes said. At the joint press conference at City Hall, Commercial Development and General Motors officials discussed some details of the GM plant’s sale. Neither party would give the sale price.
(Read more of Neil Johnson’s story in the Gazette)
