It's Not Completely Over For Tiger Stadium

Was this guy the developer?

 

Quite to the contrary, the City of Detroit paid Olympia Entertainment (aka Mike Ilitch) $400,000 a year for "maintenance and security" after the team left for the new taxpayer-funded Comerica Park. (So in addition to giving him a new $300 million park on the front end, the taxpayers gave him $2 million on the back end.)

The "maintenance" consisted of nothing. The "security" consisted of slapping a few K-Mart Special padlocks on the chain-link fencing, which undoubtedly slowed down the swarms of scavengers and vandals for several dozen gruelling seconds.

The "maintenance and security " budget lasted for 5 years, until $2 million was paid to Ilitch. When the money ran out in 2006, the "maintenance and security" efforts, whatever they were to begin with, stopped.

The "maintenance and security" were so effective, that last year, when items from the stadium were finally going to be sold off as memorabilia, it turned out that most of the good stuff had already been looted or destroyed. Undoubtedly a few million bucks worth of stuff is stashed away in Kwame Kilpatrick's basement, to be sold to benefit his legal defense/cocaine & hookers fund.

 

My guess is most of the good stuff wound up in the hands of the people "watching" the place.

 

With a quick stop at Kwame's basement thrown in to boot.