Ford Motor Co. broke ground on one of the most significant campus overhauls in its 120-year history this summer, converting the former Product Development Center in Dearborn into a facility it’s calling World Headquarters South. When construction wraps in 2029, somewhere between 10,000 and 11,000 employees will work out of a single complex that didn’t exist in its current form two years ago.

That’s not a small thing. The PDC was built to design cars. Ford’s turning it into something closer to a corporate city block under one roof.

The interior work is extensive. Drop ceilings come out. Walls come down. New windows and skylights go in. What replaces all that institutional gray space: cafés, markets, wellness rooms, reflection rooms, and mothers’ rooms. Ford says the design studios inside the old PDC don’t disappear entirely. They’re getting converted into double-height, flexible workspace configured for labs, vehicle testing, and prototype work. Same bones. Different wiring.

The project was announced in 2022, which means by the time it’s done, Ford will have spent the better part of seven years rethinking how its Dearborn campus actually functions. That’s a long time, and the ambition matches it.

“At Ford, we have always understood that to build a future, you have to renew the places where you work, design, and build,” said Jim Farley, Ford’s president and CEO. “It’s a rhythm that runs throughout our history.”

Ford Racing Moves to the Center

The move that caught the most attention from people tracking Ford’s strategy wasn’t the cafés or the skylights. It’s that Ford Racing is leaving its location outside the main campus and relocating into World Headquarters South. Full stop.

That matters because Ford’s been saying publicly for years that it wants what happens on the track to feed directly into production vehicles. Putting Ford Racing inside the same complex as design, engineering, and corporate leadership isn’t just symbolic. It’s the physical structure that makes that kind of cross-pollination actually happen, not just in press releases but on a Tuesday afternoon when someone walks down a hallway.

Jim Farley spelled it out directly. “As we deliver the Ford+ plan, our teams must collaborate more closely than ever,” said Farley. “This includes connecting the Ford Racing teams who innovate on the track with their colleagues across the business and help bring those advances to our customers’ vehicles.”

That’s the bet. Whether it pays off shows up in the vehicles, not the square footage.

3.3 Million Square Feet, One Complex

When World Headquarters South is finished, the combined facility totals 3.3 million square feet. Ford’s own number: roughly 16,000 employees within a 15-minute walk of each other across the full campus.

Sit with that for a second. The whole point of a campus is proximity. Proximity is supposed to produce ideas that don’t happen over Slack. Ford’s designing for 16,000 people who previously had to drive or catch a shuttle between buildings to now be close enough to grab a coffee without scheduling it. That’s a real operational change, not a marketing slide.

The building also gets a dedicated wing for vendor and outside visitor meetings, which keeps guests out of secure Ford workspaces. It’s a detail that doesn’t make headlines, but it tells you how Ford’s thinking about the campus as a working facility, not just a flagship. According to DBusiness Magazine, this project is among the largest corporate campus redevelopments in Michigan in the past decade.

A 30,000-square-foot fitness center rounds out the amenities. Cardio equipment, strength training, a full fitness studio, locker rooms, showers. The whole setup.

The Parking Deck Is Already in Motion

Also starting this summer: a new 3,100-space parking deck going up just east of World Headquarters South. It’ll include EV charging stations and ADA parking. For a company that’s committed to electrification since at least 2021, not wiring a parking structure for EVs would’ve been the story. They wired it.

The parking deck is the kind of infrastructure detail that doesn’t get its own press release but without which none of the collaboration math works. You can’t get 16,000 people to a campus they can’t park at.

Completion is still 2029. Between now and then, Ford’s got a building to gut and a campus to reinvent.