Anything of real value has been stripped from the Silverdome, but the owners believe it’s worth $30 million, 51 times what they paid for the arena in 2009.
This isn’t sitting well with some Oakland County, MI, officials who unloaded the massive venue in 2009 as the economy cratered. The hope had been that the buyers, a Canadian company called Triple Investment Group, would take what was effectively a free stadium and do something positive with it, but nothing has come of the arena that used to hold more than 80,000 fans.
“The fire sale of the Silverdome for $583,000 without a development agreement to make sure the purchaser made the proper investments in the project and returned it to productive use is a worst-case scenario for Oakland County property values and one of the most strategic parcels in the region,” the Oakland County Treasurer tells Detroit News.
He calls the $30 million price tag “real estate speculation at its worst” and says the owner’s actions prove they never had any intention of actually developing the site.
The sad thing is that even though the $30 million figure is more than 50 times the auction sale price, it’s not even close to the $55.7 million that was spent to construct the stadium — and that’s in 1975 dollars! That’ more than $200 million these days.
Over the years, a number of brave souls have ventured into the corpse of the Silverdome, which is a misnomer since the fabric dome has long since vanished. Most recently, BMX rider Tyler Fernengel filmed this video of him pulling off some pretty breathtaking stunts among the incredibly depressing ruins of the arena:
by Chris Morran via Consumerist