Baltimore Transmission, also known as Baltimore Operations, was a

General Motors General Motors Company (GM) is an American Multinational corporation, multinational Automotive industry, automotive manufacturing company headquartered in Detroit, Michigan, United States. The company is most known for owning and manufacturing f ...

transmission Transmission or transmit may refer to: Science and technology * Power transmission ** Electric power transmission ** Transmission (mechanical device), technology that allows controlled application of power *** Automatic transmission *** Manual tra ...

factory in

White Marsh, Maryland White Marsh is an unincorporated community and census-designated place in Baltimore County, Maryland, United States. The population was 9,513 at the 2010 census. White Marsh is a northeast suburb of Baltimore. History In 1965, the largely und ...

, United States. It is located at 10301 Philadelphia Road and operated from December 2000 to May 2019, producing transmissions used in full-size pickup trucks as well as electric motors. The property has been purchased for office and industrial redevelopment.

History

In May 1999, the plant was announced to be located on a former sand and gravel quarry, operated from the 1930s to the 1990s, near the

White Marsh Mall White Marsh Mall is a regional shopping mall in the unincorporated and planned community of White Marsh, Maryland. It is one of the largest regional malls in the Baltimore metropolitan area, with 6 anchor stores and 134 specialty shops in . The ...

. GM's Allison Transmission division received millions of dollars in economic incentives from the state of Maryland and

Baltimore County Baltimore County ( , locally: or ) is the third-most populous county in the U.S. state of Maryland. The county is part of the Central Maryland region of the state. Baltimore County partly surrounds but does not include the independent city ...

as part of luring the facility to White Marsh. The first phase of the plant, a $202 million investment, opened in December 2000 and was officially dedicated on March 30, 2001; however, GM stalled on plans it had initially made to double the facility's size soon after opening. In 2007, after a $118 million upgrade, Baltimore Transmission began to produce two-mode hybrid transmissions for 2008 model year

Chevrolet Tahoe The Chevrolet Tahoe (), and its Rebadging, badge-engineered GMC Yukon counterpart, are full-size SUVs and other trucks from General Motors, offered since 1994 and 1991, respectively. Since 1982, Chevrolet and GMC (General Motors division), GMC ...

and

GMC Yukon GMC may refer to: Government India * Gandhinagar Municipal Corporation, in Gujarat * Gobichettipalayam Municipal Corporation, in Tamil Nadu * Guntur Municipal Corporation, in Andhra Pradesh * Guwahati Municipal Corporation, in Assam * Gwalior ...

hybrids using the first transmission of this type developed in the United States. By 2009, the plant had 200 hourly and 40 salaried employees. In 2013, a new section of the facility began to produce electric motors for the

Chevrolet Spark The Chevrolet Spark () is a city car manufactured by General Motors's subsidiary GM Korea from 1998 to 2022. The vehicle was developed by Daewoo and introduced in 1998 as the Daewoo Matiz (). In 2002, General Motors purchased Daewoo Motors, which ...

, after a $121 million investment by GM matched by $105 million from the

United States Department of Energy The United States Department of Energy (DOE) is an executive department of the U.S. federal government that oversees U.S. national energy policy and energy production, the research and development of nuclear power, the military's nuclear w ...

. GM announced in October 2019 that it would permanently close the factory, producing transmissions for full-size pickups, as part of an agreement with the

United Auto Workers The United Auto Workers (UAW), fully named International Union, United Automobile, Aerospace and Agricultural Implement Workers of America, is an American labor union that represents workers in the United States (including Puerto Rico) and sou ...

to end a strike by the union. It had already idled the facility, laying off nearly 300 employees, and four others under plans announced the previous year. It was GM's last plant in Maryland, after

Baltimore Assembly Baltimore Assembly (properly named Broening Highway General Motors Plant) was a General Motors factory in Baltimore, Maryland. The plant opened in 1935 to produce Chevrolets and closed on May 13, 2005. It was a two-level plant located in the Can ...

on Broening Highway closed in 2005. Half of the workers transferred to GM plants in other parts of the United States; the other half either retired or quit. In 2021, the plant site was purchased by Merritt Properties for redevelopment as nine new one-story buildings containing about of office and warehouse space, replacing the existing transmission factory.

References

External links

Information at GM website
(archived) {{coord, 39, 22, 18, N, 76, 26, 24, W, region:US-MD_type:landmark, display=title General Motors factories Motor vehicle assembly plants in Maryland White Marsh, Maryland 2000 establishments in Maryland 2019 disestablishments in Maryland