Guys - I left Detroit in 1991 for NYC and after 8 years there I moved to San Francisco and have lived in Oakland CA for the past 25 years.
So I have no idea who was the driving force behind those two amazing ballparks. Being a property owner in Oakland I’ve paid attention to the bickering between Raiders and A’s and Warriors ownership and their league offices over new stadiums. The Raiders and Warriors left stadiums in Oakland for new homes in Vegas and San Francisco. Just pathetic.
How did Ford Field and Comerica get built? Was it all the Ford Family and Illitch families just making it happen with $$$?
It’s a continual drama in the San Francisco Bay Area.
Was it a similar drama in Detroit or did it just get done? Who paid for it all?
And who gets the credit? Detroit politicians or the families?
They should build an exit ramp that empties directly into a parking section where you can only park, If you pay in advance. Said structures should empty directly onto the highway as well.
It’s hard to get behind funding a new stadium in my property tax even as an As fan.
I heard stories of ford’s contributing greatly to their stadium
While Niner fans paid a lot for Levi’s
Makes me appreciate Ford ownership more yet
As an investment in the metro
It might’ve been easier to get Detroit location than jockeying for a place in Oakland.
No doubt - property tax is already a fortune! I didn’t want to pay two cents for a new stadium.
I guess I could ask the same question about the new Giant’s stadium (which is awesome) and the Niner’s stadium, and the Warriors (Chase is spectacular). Just more $$$ in SF then the east bay.
This is my understanding but by no means complete educated knowledge/opinion:
Ford Field - built shortly after comerica park, WCF wanted to move the lions back to Detroit and paid for the entire stadium. As far as I know the only thing they needed approval from city council was for the land. But little if any money was put on the taxes of Detroit or the residents
comerica and LCA were all the Ilitch’s conning city council to have city of Detroit tax payers pay for both comerica and LCA. Like the Fox Theater, the Ilitch’s paid very little for the new stadiums and it was all taxed on the people of Detroit. The city council approved the building of these stadiums because the Ilitch family claimed to build low income housing and create many jobs for underprivileged people, and city council approved it. As time went on they reneged on basically everything, and have been a suck hole of Detroit. The proposed “District Detroit” they initially proposed has turned into parking lots, vacant land and nothing else compared to what they claimed they would develop.
I am not an expert nor do I know the intricacies of everything, so please feel free to correct me if I am wrong.
Yea Levi’s slso helped get support because Harbaugh and Colin had niners trending up and winning
Once they got the tax payer money approved snd stadium built
It seemed like they screwed fans with firing Harbaugh and hiring Tomsula
And then being terrible
I’m starting to wonder why owners don’t partner with the athletes to invest in the stadiums since they both need palaces to get paid.
Let nflpa partner
Or mlbpa for the As
Rather than put it on our backs
There’s gotta be a better way
I think giants might have relied less than on public money
It was a long fight for giants trying to get something done
I think the Fords paid as much up front as they could while still being able to use governmental powers for acquiring the property to get the stadium built. My impression is that the Fords either paid the government entities back or agreed to terms that were friendly to the governments.
I think the point of the Fords bearing way more of the financial burden of their stadium compared to other teams is true, but I think there’s some devil in the details.
Right on, and yeah I have no clue about the details and how it all worked out.
However, as far as I’ve heard the Ilitch’s have always added way more taxes to the city while promising things that don’t come to fruition, like district Detroit. But again I’m no expert, and like you said the devil is in the details…
Would love to know and understand more of course. As the years go by it gets hard to track what exactly was reported and agreed to vs what is actually happening
And it sucked… because there was only one way out for both which everyone took… at least in Detroit there are a ton of different ways to get out and you’re not stuck on a road for hours
I liked the sprawling lots of the Silverdome. We just fired up the grill, did a bit of post-game tailgating, and drove out fairly leisurely once the crowds died down a bit.
Nothing worse than parking garages when everyone is trying to leave at the same time.
Ford Field, located in downtown Detroit, replaced the Pontiac Silverdome as the home of the Detroit Lions NFL football team in 2002. Plans for constructing the stadium began in August 1996. The $500 million stadium broke ground November 16, 1999, three years after Wayne County voters approved a funding referendum that paid 51 percent of the building cost, with the team, owned by the William Clay Ford family, paying the remainder. The construction took 32 months to complete
What’s interesting to me is how few stadiums were built in California until recently. So it wasn’t just the 49ers, Raiders and Chargers getting hosed. There was a dead period where Cali barely built anything despite having so many teams.