If your trying to sell your house and lamenting the drop in local real estate values, take comfort in knowing you don’t live in Detroit—and are selling a football stadium. The Silverdome, former home of the Detroit Lions, just sold to a Canadian developer for $583,000. The 80,300-seat stadium came with 127 acres of land.
Pontiac’s taxpayers built the Silverdome for the Detroit Lions in 1975 — it was one of the NFL’s largest stadiums at the time, and it had its profitable years. When the Lions left in 2002 for Ford Field in downtown Detroit, the team paid Pontiac $26 million to break the lease. Over the years, the Silverdome was used for a variety of events, including the 1979 NBA All-Star Game, the 1982 Super Bowl and a stop on Michael Jackson’s 1984 Victory Tour. It drew its biggest crowd — 93,682 people — for a 1987 Mass by Pope John Paul II.
Attempts to sell it never got far, and the city was stuck spending $12 million — $1.5 million a year — in maintenance. Lately, a tractor-trailer driving school has rented the huge parking lots to train drivers.
For almost a month, the city accepted sealed bids on the Silverdome. It got three offers.
One offered a range of $13 million to $22.5 million to turn the site into a landfill, but it had many contingencies involving zoning and financing.
(Via: Gene Veith )
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