PONTIAC, MICH. — Once an iconic symbol of one of America’s most powerful cities, Pontiac, Michigan’s Silverdome was a technological marvel. Now, 40 years later, it’s iconic for all the wrong reasons.
Years after the lights went out, the Silverdome isn’t a dome: it’s an empty, partially deconstructed shell, a symbol of Detroit’s fall from grace.
The Silverdome was the brainchild of Pontiac-area architect and professor C. Don Davidson, who wanted to build a new home for the Detroit Lions and envisioned a massive arena “fashioned after the Roman Coliseum.” That coliseum, he told the city and Lions owner William Clay Ford, would bring about development and revitalization in the area.
The 80,000-seat arena was completed—well, almost—in 1975, at a cost of $55 million. Its roof took another year, and the Lions played under what looked like a patchwork quilt.
That roof was easily the Silverdome’s most distinguishing feature. A series of massive fans pressurized the stadium, pushing the canopy upwards. Fans poured in through revolving doors, designed to keep as much air in as possible. The roof’s white, billowy, Teflon-coated fiberglass panels took on a silver hue when the sunlight hit them. “Pontiac Metropolitan Stadium,” as it had been originally called, became The Pontiac Silverdome.
The venue was a smash hit. The Who, Elvis, Led Zeppelin … all filled the Silverdome. 93,173 fans packed the place for Wrestlemania III in 1987, and about 500 more came out six months later to see the Pope. The Detroit Pistons joined the Lions as tenants in the late 70’s and stayed for nearly a decade.
Packed to capacity, the Silverdome hosts Wrestlemania III in 1987.
But in the ’90’s, with Detroit heading in full decline, the Lions left the Silverdome for Ford Field, a new facility downtown, built in 2002 with $200 million of public funding. The split was not without controversy. When the Lions tried to buy themselves out of the last four years of their lease, the city of Pontiac sued, claiming that they would lose millions in additional revenue. The two sides would eventually settle for $27 million, and the dome was left without an anchor tenant.
Over the next decade the city of Pontiac tried tirelessly to sell the place. Casinos, business parks, convention centers — every proposal came with an offer, some as high as $20 million, and every offer would eventually dissolve. By 2009, the city — now in dire financial straits — had been paying some $1.5 million a year in upkeep. The stadium, its contents, and the land surrounding it went to auction.
City officials had suggested the final sale price could reach into the millions, but when the dust settled, a Toronto-based firm — Triple Investment Group — walked away with the stadium for a shockingly low $583,000, the cost of a decent apartment in many American cities.
Triple, a family-run group led by real estate investor Andreas Apostolopoulos, had visions of bringing a Major League Soccer franchise to the dome and pumped millions of dollars into the facility in an attempt to revitalize it. Concession areas, concourses and scoreboards were revamped, luxury boxes were returned to their original glory. For the first time in years, events were booked at the building—monster truck rallies, concerts, trade shows.
But the family’s main goal — to bring top-tier pro soccer back to Detroit — didn’t pan out. The Silverdome is massive and MLS has always preferred smaller, more intimate “soccer-specific” venues, located in the heart of a city, seating around 20,000 fans. Triple made a different pitch: they’d remove the roof and split the venue in half, using the upper level as a 30,000 seat soccer facility while two 20,000 seat arenas would reside on the lower level of the stadium. MLS took a pass.
Things went from bad to worse in December of 2012, when the heating system for the dome’s fabric roof failed; ice and snow punctured it. The roof was deflated to prevent additional damage, but a wind storm two weeks later tore it to shreds. In 2014, much of the stadium’s fittings were auctioned off. Seats, bathrooms, parts of the playing field—you name it—sold to the highest bidder as Triple hoped to recoup some of their initial investment.
A Detroit icon, it would seem, was gone with the wind.
The Lions play a home game under the partially completed roof, 1975. (Photo courtesy Triple Properties)
After weeks of phone calls and e-mails, I’ve persuaded Peter Apostolopoulos —Andreas’ son—to let me loose in the Silverdome. He isn’t exactly eager to do so; I get the feeling he’s probably grown tired of accusations he’s neglected the property, charges that get tossed around a lot in a place like Pontiac.
My drive to the Dome showed me why. In recent years, Detroit—and the municipalities around it—have been creaking back to life, but entire blocks are still burned out, factories shuttered. Seen from the driver’s seat of a Chevrolet that rolled off a Detroit assembly line in the ’80’s, the blue, grey, and brown scenery blurs by my window like a post-apocalyptic flipbook.
A security guard drops my friend and I off at the entrance to the stadium and turns us loose.
By flashlight, we walk through the locker rooms and emerge onto the playing field. The roof – which has since been removed completely—was still partially intact, with tattered sections flapping in the wind. Torn off remnants are scattered about as if a herd of high-schoolers had “teepeed” the place. The size of the stadium gives you vertigo. Standing at midfield, rows of blue seats rise skyward. You feel a bit like you’re in a bland steel-and-concrete cathedral.
In a luxury suite sprinkled with broken glass, I stumble upon a box of pamphlets from the mid-’90’s, touting the dream of bringing an MLS franchise to Detroit. I chuckle. The Apostolopoulos’, it would seem, weren’t the first businessmen who wanted to bring soccer here.
In another area, filing cabinets overflow with old ads and ticket stubs. In an office is a pile of blueprints for the building and, just down the hall, darkrooms smell of the chemicals sports photographers used in the ’80s and ’90s.
Up through a narrow steel staircase we emerge onto the roof of the stadium. Again, the scale amazes: the cables that used to suspend the roof look wide enough to walk across. Everything looks solid; to me, the building feels perfectly safe. The Silverdome seems less like a victim of neglect, and more a victim of tough economic times—and our throwaway culture.
Midfield at the Silverdome. Photo by Pablo Iglesias Maurer.
Recently, the Dome has been back in the spotlight. A couple of weeks ago, a video of pro BMX rider Tyler Fernengel riding through the stadium went viral, and just last week it was reported that the Silverdome is up for sale again, for a “flexible” $30,000,000. Curious, I reached out to Peter Apostolopoulos. He confirmed, but clarified, the recent news.
“We aren’t selling the stadium,” he tells me. “It’s for sale—or for lease, or for redevelopment, or up for a co-development partnership. Flexible means just that—we are open to many ideas and need to put the word out that we are interested in all opportunities.”
I remind Apostolopoulos that many have suggested that his family purchased the stadium to flip it, or to let the property sit vacant for years and go to waste. He bristles.
“Not everyone can be happy with decisions that are made in communities that have hit hard times and need to find a way out of a tough spot,” he says. “Pontiac was one of those cities. The decision to sell the stadium was made by people [who needed] to relieve the city of some serious annual costs that the city just didn’t have the money to cover.
“Many people—but not everyone—remembers that after literally millions of dollars were re-invested into the stadium by Triple Properties to bring it back to life, many events were held there … The list [of events] was rather incredible considering the Stadium was literally empty for eight years prior to Triple Properties’ purchase of it.”
Apostolopoulos also thinks a meal is being made of the condition of the stadium. “Imagine a rather empty room,” he says. “Now imagine ripping up a pillow and allowing all the feathers to be strewn across that room—it would look like a disaster hit it, but that doesn’t mean the room is unsafe.” He’s quick to mention that Triple has worked extensively to maintain the exterior of the stadium, planting trees and replacing lights in its empty parking lot. “The exterior actually looks cleaner and in better condition now then it has in the past few years. So to call it an eyesore—then I guess it’s always been an eyesore.”
“You can’t please everyone,” he continues. “In the end you always have to do what’s right for yourself as an individual and your company; people are entitled to their opinions, and there is nothing wrong with anyone speaking their mind for the betterment of their community—but there always has to be a give and take and an understanding when someone is trying to make something out of nothing.”
Something out of nothing, and nothing out of something. It’s a thought I’ve often had during my explorations of once-grand spaces. Try as you might, you can’t save everything. And more often than not, especially when the value of a place is more nostalgic than truly historical, maybe it doesn’t make sense to save it at all. It’s a tough pill for some to swallow.
“It’s easy to tell someone else how to do things like spend their money, and even easier to complain about it,” he concludes. “But the truth is, there are a lot of blighted properties in Pontiac that don’t have 24-hour security, that don’t have lights or well kept grass and don’t pay property taxes.
“The Silverdome isn’t one of them.”
The Silverdome. Photo by Pablo Iglesias Maurer.
