http://freep.com/article/20091116/N...-submits-winning-bid-of-583000-for-Silverdome "A family-owned Toronto real estate company has submitted a winning bid of $583,000 for the Pontiac Silverdome, former home of the Detroit Lions until they moved to Ford Field in 2002, and nearly 130 adjacent acres. The winning bidder, one of four and whose identity has not yet been released, plans to use the facility for a men's Major League Soccer team and women's professional soccer teams, Fred Leeb, Pontiac’s emergency financial manager, told the Free Press in an exclusive interview.
its gonna be hard to pull an MLS team there with a 80,000+ capacity, bad city and just bad place for any business to go. Nice idea though, hope they prove me wrong. I wouldn't mind a next door neighbor for the Fire.
cool, sounds interesting now what REALLY would have been cool is if Tiger Stadium were up for bid and the winning bid wanted to use it for MLS, but it's too late for that now
What was the 2nd bid? $8,952.50 Original Construction Cost: $55,700,000 Sale Price: $583,000 (1.05% of original cost) A staggering loss of value
Won't work unless they demolish the Silverdome and build a stadium that's a better size for soccer in the US. I mean the Silverdome as it stands now is almost a SSS bigger than Qwest Field. And it has none of the soccer friendly design traits as Qwest does.
$583K????? Really? For an 80K domed stadium and 127 acres? Damn, I missed a bargain. The Lions old locker room could've been my sunken hot tub.....
i should have told my dad it the building was forsale. my friends and I could have our own world cup final every year.
The facility is beyond its useful life. What must the maintenance (deferred and otherwise) be? But for the land, I suspect they wouldn't have done that well.
Build a neat little 20 K stadium next door and use the silverdome as the indoor training facility. Perfect!
So, is there a possability they detonate the silverdome , sell off as much of the scrap as they can and build a new stadium ? i mean if your gonna drop 500k on a stadium one would think you got more money then sense :d
I still would prefer Montreal and St. Louis for 19 and 20, but I'll take MLS Detroit over another Florida attempt, Atlanta team, or 2nd NY team.
Last winter, the median home sale price in Detroit was $7500, so you have to calibrate your expectations a little. I'm no Detroit expert, but the Silverdome is pretty far out there isn't it? And to the north of the city so pretty far from Ann Arbor, the Western Suburbs, Toledo and Windsor, but closer to Flint, which I don't know helps much. Detroit has so much vacant land, it would be a shame, there of all places, to have a soccer team way out in the sticks.
As someone who recently bought a 3/2 1,800 s/f house in Mid-City Los Angeles. . . I feel like I should have shopped around more. (wasn't Wrestlmania 3 there?)
As somebody who could afford to buy real estate in Los Angeles, you shouldn't expect sympathy from the rest of us. Ahem.
i would bet the upkeep for the silverdome is 100k a year at least not including a single utility bill.
One of the few places where a suburban stadium is a good thing. From what I understand, suburban folks hate going into Detroit.
In the story it said the upkeep is 1.5 million dollars per year. That is why the city got rid of it for a song.