...I need a little Detroit in my soul.
You know what? I love Detroit. Detroit is one of my favorite cities, I love several things about it. I love it's backbone, I love it's faded excellence, and I love the role it played in building this country. Detroit is a real city, a city with a soul and although all the naked eye can see of Detroit is the torn, battered skin of a wounded city, there's much more to it than that. It's easy to take a dig at the Motor City, and many people do, but it's not really fair.
Over the last two weeks all you've had to do is pick up a sport page or view a sports blog from any nouveau riche city in America and see various writers having a laugh at Detroit's expense due to the sale of the one-time home of the city's hapless NFL team, the Pontiac Silverdome. It's true, houses in many cities sell for much more than that, but does it really matter? The stadium was costing a financially pummeled city -- and many cities are in that position -- over $1m per year in up-keep, without any use the city had no choice but to get shot of the place, and they did. Now, if the new owner's plans come to fruition, the stadium will be a benefit to the city's tax coffers. Though they should've gotten much, much more for the land alone, the mere existence of the stadium as a property of Pontiac was going to break the city.
The owner, Greek-Canadian real estate magnate Andreas Apostolopoulos, wants to bring a soccer team to the Silverdome, possibly an MLS team, possibly not, but I think putting a team in Detroit, or even Pontiac, is a good idea. A lot of people will scoff at that, and say Detroit is dead and putting a team there would do damage to any league that dared try it, but they'd be wrong. Detroit has a great history of supporting sports teams, even in hard times. I mean, the Lions still draw fans. Yes, they get blacked out occasionally, but the fact that the fans still show up for what is at most, an impotent team, is a testament to their dedication. Would that translate over to soccer? Maybe, maybe not. But you're more likely to find concrete support in a city like Detroit than you are in a city with a transient population that could well up-sticks in two years and be on the road to the next hot spot.
I hope a team in the new NASL ends up in Detroit, possibly even a revival of the Express. It doesn't look like Detroit is even on the radar for MLS, and the professional structure of the USL appears to be falling apart at the seems, so NASL is a good option for what is becoming a mid-sized city. The Silverdome needs some work before a professional team can move in, let's face it, the stadium has been around the block and it looks like the best days of the Silverdome are in the past, but it still has potential following a touch-up.
I realize that people will disagree, and some will inevitably bash Detroit. That's a given, and is somewhat understandable, it's bleak up in Detroit and with the noteworthy exception of Ford -- who, to their credit, seem to be putting their ship right -- the future of Detroit's motor industry looks bad, but Detroit is always going to be there, and it will always have a place in American culture. It didn't just spring up over night, and it won't go away in a day. There's a chance Detroit could turn it around, and if it does, Detroit is a city any American sports league should be in.
Showing posts with label Detroit. Show all posts
Showing posts with label Detroit. Show all posts
Sunday, November 29, 2009
Monday, November 16, 2009
Stadium for a Fiver - The Pontiac Silverdome
Wow. $538,000 for the Pontiac Silverdome, that's daylight robbery. Surely the very land it sits on -- about 130 acres -- is worth more than $538,000. But that's what it sold for, less than 1% of what it was constructed for between 1973 and 1975.
Most Americans know the Silverdome as the former home of the NFL's hapless Detroit Lions, nearly everyone turned on their television every Thanksgiving and saw the stadium in all it's, err, glory? It isn't really much, just a basic dome in line with so many others scattered about North America: Indianapolis' Hoosier Dome, BC Place in Vancouver, and Minneapolis' Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome. All have been routinely criticized for lacking character, like so much architecture from the 70's and 80's, it was build for function and not always for form. With that said, the Silverdome has done it's job and has hosted some great events: A Super Bowl in 1982, World Cup matches in 1994 with the aid of a raised field and transplanted grass pitch, and of course WrestleMania III, which the WWE claims had an attendance of 93,173, although some dispute that number and say the actually attendance was closer to 73,000.
But getting back to my point, there are houses three streets away from me sitting on less than half-an-acre of land that sell for more than the Siverdome did, I know the City of Pontiac is severely despressed financially -- to the point where Michigan's Governor basically stripped civic officials of all power -- but to sell so much land for so little money is insane.
The Silverdome seats 80,300 people, which I believe is good for 22nd largest in the United States. It's a massive stadium, but it also carries a massive bill, upkeep of the aging behemoth is reported to be around $1.5 million per annum, which goes a good way as to explaining why Pontiac was so eager to get shot of it, but still, wow.
If possible, and recalling a piece I did for Pitch Invasion, run by the brilliant Tom Dunmore, I would look into making the Silverdome a "green" venue, along the lines of the World Games Stadium in Taiwan, or St-Jakob Park in Basel, Switzerland. The roof of the cavernous venue is vast and several solar panels could be installed on it, possibly saving a bundle in electricity, and if the upkeep for the stadium is as high as it's said to be, you need to be saving every penny possible.
The owners, who have yet to be revealed, have expressed a desire to have the stadium play host to a soccer team, possibly a new Major League Soccer franchise. I wrote about that here. If this is true, I certainly expect a reduction in capacity, because there isn't an ice cube's chance in Hell that they'll sell out the Silverdome for Major League Soccer, not right now.
Hopefully the new owner can find some use for the stadium, it's a shame to see it -- and more importantly the land it occupies -- go to waste. Seeing it sit idle like it has makes me think of Dixie Square Mall, in Harvey, Illinois...and that's not a good thing.
Most Americans know the Silverdome as the former home of the NFL's hapless Detroit Lions, nearly everyone turned on their television every Thanksgiving and saw the stadium in all it's, err, glory? It isn't really much, just a basic dome in line with so many others scattered about North America: Indianapolis' Hoosier Dome, BC Place in Vancouver, and Minneapolis' Hubert H. Humphrey Metrodome. All have been routinely criticized for lacking character, like so much architecture from the 70's and 80's, it was build for function and not always for form. With that said, the Silverdome has done it's job and has hosted some great events: A Super Bowl in 1982, World Cup matches in 1994 with the aid of a raised field and transplanted grass pitch, and of course WrestleMania III, which the WWE claims had an attendance of 93,173, although some dispute that number and say the actually attendance was closer to 73,000.
But getting back to my point, there are houses three streets away from me sitting on less than half-an-acre of land that sell for more than the Siverdome did, I know the City of Pontiac is severely despressed financially -- to the point where Michigan's Governor basically stripped civic officials of all power -- but to sell so much land for so little money is insane.
The Silverdome seats 80,300 people, which I believe is good for 22nd largest in the United States. It's a massive stadium, but it also carries a massive bill, upkeep of the aging behemoth is reported to be around $1.5 million per annum, which goes a good way as to explaining why Pontiac was so eager to get shot of it, but still, wow.
If possible, and recalling a piece I did for Pitch Invasion, run by the brilliant Tom Dunmore, I would look into making the Silverdome a "green" venue, along the lines of the World Games Stadium in Taiwan, or St-Jakob Park in Basel, Switzerland. The roof of the cavernous venue is vast and several solar panels could be installed on it, possibly saving a bundle in electricity, and if the upkeep for the stadium is as high as it's said to be, you need to be saving every penny possible.
The owners, who have yet to be revealed, have expressed a desire to have the stadium play host to a soccer team, possibly a new Major League Soccer franchise. I wrote about that here. If this is true, I certainly expect a reduction in capacity, because there isn't an ice cube's chance in Hell that they'll sell out the Silverdome for Major League Soccer, not right now.
Hopefully the new owner can find some use for the stadium, it's a shame to see it -- and more importantly the land it occupies -- go to waste. Seeing it sit idle like it has makes me think of Dixie Square Mall, in Harvey, Illinois...and that's not a good thing.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)
