Bill Ford said leaving Ford Motor Co.’s world headquarters on Michigan Avenue for a new Ford World Headquarters building about a mile away is emotional for him because there are so many memories he’s created during his years in the current building: the Glass House.
“It’s been our headquarters for 70 years,” Ford said. The company moved into the Glass House in 1956. “I’ve been there my whole career, which is coming up on 50 years now. But it’s time. Its better days are behind it.”
Ford, who is the company’s executive chair and who served as CEO from 2001 to 2006, said he doesn’t attach emotion to a building. Rather, he has feelings and memories of all the experiences he had with the people who worked with him over those five decades in that building.
“When I think about world headquarters, I don’t think about the building, I think about who I interacted with there and what my relationship with people were like there,” Ford said. “I had so many great ones, even the ladies who worked in the dining room, the cleaning people, they were all great people and I remember all of them.”…