JC Reindl

Detroit Free Press

Ford is preparing to relocate nearly 1,000 employees to Taylor for a decade as the automaker moves forward with an estimated $1.2-billion transformation of its Dearborn campus.

The employees will be based at the soon-to-be former headquarters for Masco Corp., which is moving to a new office in Livonia later this year. The automaker's real estate arm, Ford Land, has a 10-year lease on the four-story, 416,000-square-foot building that opened for Masco in 1966.

The Ford employees are to return to the Dearborn campus once the transformation project finishes around 2026. The Masco building is less than 5 miles from Ford's Dearborn campus, and Ford's employee shuttle service will expand to the new location.

Ford recently moved more than 1,800 employees into the former Lord & Taylor store inside Fairlane Town Center mall for the same reason.

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"As our campus transformation continues, we need transitional work space in close proximity to our campus," Dave Dubensky, chairman and chief executive officer of Ford Land, said in a news release.

Masco, a maker of faucets and other building products, currently has about 250 employees in the Taylor building at 21001 Van Born Road, said Sue Sabo, Masco's director of communications. The Ford employees will arrive after Masco vacates the building in late June.

"We are very, very happy that Ford is moving in so the building won't be vacant," Sabo said Wednesday.

For additional space, Ford is also leasing an vacant 140,000-square-foot Kmart store next to the Masco building. But the automaker says it has no plans at this time to place any workers in the old Kmart.

Contact JC Reindl: 313-222-6631 or jcreindl@freepress.com. Follow him on Twitter @JCReindl.