DETROIT – A new announcement amounts to a historic turnaround for General Motors and its only Detroit assembly plant.

The automaker plans on spending more than $2 billion to modernize and turn the Detroit Hamtramck Assembly Plant into an all electric vehicle facility.

It is impossible to overstate the difference that is at the Detroit Hamtramck Assembly Plant when you consider that 14 months ago they were going to shutter the plant and very serious about it. Now it is going to launch itself into being the most technologically advanced GM has in its system.

The gloom over the plant hung for more than a year. The five week long strike last fall gave local UAW members hope with word of a new electric pickup truck.

Read: GM to invest $2.2B in Detroit to build electric vehicles

Read more: ‘Major announcement’ expected today at GM’s Detroit-Hamtramck plant

The announcement includes GM building the cruise origin autonomous electric shuttle vehicle rolled out last week on the west coast along with an electric pickup truck and bringing 2,200 jobs to the region.

It makes perfect sense considering the UAW-GM line workers built the Chevy Volt here, but the cars they have been building including the Impala and Cadillac CT-6 are not selling.

So they announced the Detroit Hamtramck Assembly Plant closure causing massive controversy. The UAW strike last fall included a major effort to save the plant and Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan chalks part of this up to a phone call he had with GM CEO Mary Barra the day after the closure announcement.

“You have been headquartered in the City of Detroit for 100 years. We have a special relationship, if you’re going to build the vehicles of the future, why not in the city,” said Detroit Mayor Mike Duggan.