A once great domed football stadium built as just one part of the Detroit MI area mid-70's reveal plan just sold for about 1 percent of what it cost to build.
China, India, Kuwait take note. You want a deal on real-estate? Do you want to buy at prices below the usual going-out-of-business 65% off everything? How about prices at 90% off?
The Pontiac Silverdome — once home to the NFL’s Detroit Lions — was just sold for $583,000, or about 1% of the $55.7 million it took to build in 1975.
The Silverdome, an 80,300-seat stadium located in Pontiac, Mich., is the latest example of how comprehensively the recession has socked southeastern Michigan.
Mass layoffs and automotive plant closures have wreaked havoc on the local economy. Budget deficits are deep, foreclosures are widespread, and the population shrinking – from about 2 million people in the 1960s to about 900,000 today.
As a former Michigander and Detroit resident I'm sadden by the death of the area. The once great Silverdome stadium may be a metaphor for the state of business and employment in Detroit MI.
Here are just a few other examples of the death of a city.
When I worked in the Detroit area the K-Mart headquarters was a shiny new showpiece (employing thousands)and business was booming. K-Mart filed bankruptcy in 2002.
Rockwell International(my Detroit employer) was number 27 on the Fortune 100 corporation list. Rockwell International had a workforce of over 100,000, organized into nine major divisions. By 2001 what was left of Rockwell was split into two smaller companies.
Just 10 years ago most believed GM was at the top of its game, a much leaner and more efficient company from the 70's and now their bankrupt.
Michigan unemployment now exceeds 15%, but real unemployment in the whole Detroit metro area is at depression levels (25%). It's just one more example in a long string of examples of the shifting sands of world economic fortunes.
Death of a Great City, an article written in September by Daniel Okrent, a Detroit native, outlines the city's economic plight and compares it to a natural disaster we all recall, hurricane Katrina, which devastated the city of New Orleans.
" Three years after Katrina devastated New Orleans, unemployment in that city hit a peak of 11%. In Detroit, the unemployment rate is 28.9%. That's worth spelling out: twenty-eight point. Unemployment in Pontiac is at 35.0%."
He concludes with:
"...the story of Detroit is not simply one of a great city's collapse. It's also about the erosion of the industries that helped build the country we know today. The ultimate fate of Detroit will reveal much about the character of America in the 21st century. If what was once the most prosperous manufacturing city in the nation has been brought to its knees, what does that say about our recent past? And if it can't find a way to get up, what does that say about our future?"
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