Baseball Crank: FOOTBALL: Silverdome Fire Sale

November 17, 2009

FOOTBALL: Silverdome Fire Sale

The death of Detroit continues, as the Potiac Silverdome, onetime home of the Detroit Lions, sells for a mere $583,000 to an unidentified Canadian company:

The sale of the Silverdome takes a large financial burden off the hard-hit city of Pontiac, which has fallen on hard times, with budget shortfalls and high unemployment. Earlier this year, GM announced it would close a truck plant, taking about 1,400 jobs from the city.
As a result...Pontiac could ill afford to continue paying $1.5 million in annual upkeep for the stadium. With a private owner, the property "will go back on the tax rolls," he explained.

The 80,000-seat Silverdome was the biggest stadium in the National Football League when it was built in 1975 for $55.7 million. The stadium, which sits on a 127-acre plot, is also the former home of the National Basketball Association's Detroit Pistons.

The stadium reached its football zenith in 1982 as the site of Super Bowl XVI, when San Francisco's 49ers beat the Cincinnati Bengals...

Despite its rich history, the stadium has seen little use since 2002, when the Lions concluded their last season there.

Sad.

Comments

You could say that the Lions have not played football in Detroit (let alone the Silverdome) in a very long time! ;-)

Posted by: Lee at November 17, 2009 12:44 PM

I still think they should have thrown in Detroit's Michigan Central Station as part of the deal. Get rid of 2 White Elephants for the price of one.

Posted by: Mark D at November 17, 2009 12:47 PM

Detroit's Michigan Central Station is currently owned by a Billionaire Manuel Moroun. He owns tons of properties all around downtown Detroit and pretty much neglects them all. He is waiting till the value rises then he will sell.

Posted by: javaman at November 17, 2009 1:11 PM

GM closing a truck plant and eliminating 1,400 jobs?
Is that net of the 105 GM jobs found to be not created with the help of stimulus money? Pretty good bang for the bucks with that 787 BB in stimi dough, right?
I humbly suggest not giving much more stimulus money to GM in order to save what jobs & plants are left.

Posted by: Richard Deegan at November 17, 2009 4:27 PM

What's happened in Michigan is terrible, but much like New Orleans when it re-elected Ray Nagin, the nation's good will index was dramatically hampered when the citizens decided to re-elect Granholm after the continued the economic policies that helped parlay the state's economic direction. Tax hikes during downturns and obtrusive government actions curb economic development? You don't say!

Hard to get all worked up when people end up getting the result they encouraged, after all. You wanted it, Michigan. Well, you got it.

Posted by: RW at November 18, 2009 9:25 AM

Shouldn't this strengthen the hands of those who say that government has no business building stadiums? Sure we hear about all of the benefits that a sports franchise will bring to a locality. But after the applause stops, there's a huge white elephant.

Posted by: soccer dad at November 18, 2009 9:59 AM

The Silverdome or when it was built it was dubbed the Pontiac Plastic Dome by a local sportscaster. Was always going to have a short shelf life for many reasons the main one being it was built out in the middle of nowhere. During the SUV explosion there was serious talks of blowing it and turning that area into a technology center for the automotive industry. Boy, have times changed.

Posted by: javaman at November 18, 2009 10:29 AM