There’s something almost poetic about a suburban shopping center crumbling into irrelevance as more than 100 unsold Teslas sit there like a pitiful fleet of showroom rejects.
According to Crain’s Detroit Business, these lonely electric cars are gathering dust in a cracked parking lot outside a shuttered plaza that once housed the former Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum, a Bed Bath & Beyond, and a plus-size clothing store.
Turns out, the landlord of the Hunter’s Square shopping center is in hot water with the city of Farmington Hills for turning the parking lot into what you might call a Tesla graveyard. According to Crain’s, Charmaine Kettler-Schmult, the city’s planning and community development director, says the property owner was told that parking a bunch of unsold cars wasn’t exactly within the rules.
“The enforcement process is being followed and takes time,” Kettler-Schmult said.
Frank Jarbou, the shopping center’s landlord and head of Symmetry Management, didn’t respond to Crain’s calls for comment. And Metro Times couldn’t immediately reach him.
Meanwhile, Tesla’s year hasn’t exactly been a joyride. With company CEO Elon Musk’s meddling with far-right politics sparking a #TeslaTakedown boycott and fueling sagging sales and a sinking stock price, it’s no wonder these cars are in parking limbo.
To make things weirder, Tesla recently opened a glitzy showroom and service center in a repurposed Barnes & Noble up the road in West Bloomfield. Crain’s reports that the property owner there didn’t want to comment on the Tesla parking lot fiasco.
The shopping center itself is scheduled for a major makeover, with plans to raze large sections of it for a new Meijer grocery store and other retail spots. That’s good news for shoppers, and bad news for anyone enjoying the dystopian vibes of the abandoned Bed Bath & Beyond and the herd of Teslas marooned outside.
And as for the old Marvin’s Marvelous Mechanical Museum — the beloved arcade and nostalgia wonderland booted from this site last fall — it’s moving to West Bloomfield Township, with plans to reopen later this year in a bigger space. Which is more than we can say for those Teslas.
Metro Times visited the Tesla graveyard. This is what we found.
