TIGER STADIUM Becky Slogeris Urbanism, Dan D’Oca December 2008
I come from a baseball family; my parents met at Tiger Stadium, our family spent our “vacation� one summer at the All Star Week festivities in Detroit, and I have two salvaged blue stadium seats sitting in my living room. I was ten when the Tigers left their home for 87 years and moved to Comerica Park a few blocks away. The new park was pretty, clean, modern, and lots of new memories have been made within its walls. Looking back, I can barely remember things about the old stadium. Still, when I got word that the vacant building was slated for demolition, I did what any artist with an appreciation for baseball would do. I went and took pictures. There was no reason for me to panic, or to consider chaining myself to the fence to stop the wrecking ball. It was time. The stadium was demolished this past July, but only partially. A portion of it still remains, stretching from first to third base. The more I look into it, I realize now that it is not that easy to pull the plug. As it currently stands, the famous corner of Michigan and Trumbull has been awkwardly paused between two worlds. There is a past where historic preservation might have been possible, and a present where complete demolition looms. A handful of Detroiters are left to desperately appeal to that past in order to avoid such a destructive conclusion. There is something there for them. After further research, I found that the stadium means more than can be summed up in local news updates; its story holds a rich history, it represents an entire city, it reveals government priorities in spending, and shows the modernist realities of nationwide building trends.
Al Kaline, a Tiger legend who spent 46 years at the stadium in one form or another, once said, “Tiger Stadium’s strengths lie not in its dazzling architecture or creature comforts but in its character and charm.” This is a far cry from the bells and whistles of the new Comerica Park, a showcase stadium that boasts features like a baseball shaped ferris wheel, hand painted tiger carousel, and a water fountain that can be choreographed to music in center field. This is not to say that those amenities don’t sound desirable, especially for young fans, but more to suggest that perhaps somewhere along the way the pure purpose of playing baseball has been lost. There is a tremendous amount of pressure placed on teams to not just deliver on field, but to do more to benefit the city in which they play. Dennis R. Judd describes this as a “uniquely north American phenomenon.” According to him, the fact that “sports teams have long been central to the civic and cultural life of American cities” fortifies this “notion that a team expresses a city’s essence, spirit and sense of community.” (Judd, 44) However, in a struggling city where students don’t have textbooks and schools are being shut down, spending billions of dollars on a state of the art stadium calls for a priority check. The actual economic contribution of a new stadium to the surrounding area is questionable, but, according to Judd, “sports teams carry a substantial emotional charge, so that their worth is rarely, if ever calculated in simple economic terms.” (Judd, 45) Why are we spending so much money on stadiums? The muckraking book “Field of Schemes” lists common reasons for cities to dole out dollars. “Sports subsidies are good for economic development, the old place is obsolete, and you’ll loose your team if you don’t build one.” For the past two
decades, the building of these brand new stadiums has been yet another move for the construction of tourist bubbles within declining inner cities. Detroit’s formula was as follows. Build a new ballpark, bring money in with the All Star Game. Build a new football stadium, bring money in with the Super Bowl. (Which worked. Hosting the 2005 All Star Game produced the highest grossing revenue in MLB history.1) How a city is projected in the national media is very calculated. “Through the national and international publicity accompanying network broadcasts of games and playoffs, professional sports teams are a powerful vehicle for conveying a city’s image.” (Judd, 45) Detroit was projecting a renaissance. Unfortunately, this work towards a positive perception of Detroit may just been tarnished by former Detroit mayor Kwame Kilpatrick’s many abuses of power. In constructing the Tourist Bubble, Dennis R. Judd writes, “In many cities, a well-defined perimeter separates the tourist space from the rest of the city. Where crime, poverty, and urban decay make parts of a city inhospitable to visitors, specialized areas are established as virtual tourist reservations. These become the public parts of town, leaving visitors shielded from and unaware of the private spaces where people live and work.” (Judd, 36) Upper middle class white families drive in from the suburbs, and drive back out after the game. The Comerica Park microcosm was designed to sit safely apart from the city that so many of them still fear, decades after white flight. What perpetuates this fear? Our notion of safety is entirely dependent on perception. Sometimes, a fresh coat of paint or a well-designed sign can make you feel better about being at a place. This is what new stadiums do. They are reassurance that someone simply cares, 1
Olympia Entertainment. November 30 2008. <http://www.olympiaentertainment.com/articleDetail.jsp?id=16>
that because someone is invested in the area, you can be too. As years passed and Tiger Stadium fell into disrepair, it became clear that no one, especially in positions of power, cared. The Tigers handed over just $2 million to the city for maintenance or demolition upon leaving the stadium, a small amount in relation to the over $1 million collected in a ticket surcharge each year in since 1993 for “stadium maintenance”.2 Little was done to look for ways to continue engaging the space. It was opened for a handful of reasons under the direction of Detroit Tigers, Inc., including the HBO Movie *61, Tiger Fantasy Camps, and Snoop Dogg’s “Bud Bowl” during the Super Bowl. In the end, it cost the city too much to maintain a building left unused. In a city with an odd approach, or lack thereof, to abandoned buildings, demolition became the solution of choice. Anytime the definitive action of demolition enters the equation, emotions are triggered. Detroit is a mecca for abandoned building lovers, so it should come as no surprise that even a building as significant as Tiger Stadium sat empty and alone. It is not the only one. Dilapidated houses, train stations, and boarded up public schools dot the landscape. With a population that has been drastically decreasing to under 1 million since the 1950’s, vacancy is more common that inhabitance. Contrary to the typical associations made with city characteristics, there are vast amounts of land in Detroit that have actually reverted back to prairie. One could blame the 1968 riots, and the subsequent white flight to the suburbs for the ghost town atmosphere that envelopes the city. One could also blame the behind the scenes mismanagement in the city’s administration, where shady 2
Corner Chatter. November 30 2008. <http://www.preservetigerstadium.com/background.htm>
decisions made under Kilpatrick’s leadership are still being uncovered months after his resignation. After all, it was during his term that plans for redevelopment of the stadium were continuously rejected and demolition became the easy way out. This quick fix of demolition this past summer also made an easy profit. After removal of memorabilia for online auctioning, 94% of the stadium was actually able to be recycled. There was more than 11.4 million pounds of steel and almost 17.4 million pounds of concrete in the stadium’s structure, making the demolition deal very enticing to companies because of the 251% increase in price of scrap steel over the last five years.3 Regarding demolitions, Marshall Berman writes, “As I saw one of the loveliest of these buildings being wrecked for the road, I felt a grief that, I can see now, is endemic to modern life. So often the price of ongoing and expanding modernity is the destruction not merely of ‘traditional’ and ‘pre-modern’ institutions and environments but – and here is the real tragedy – of everything most vital and beautiful in the modern world itself.” (Berman, 295) This constant push forward by any means necessary is what it means to be modern. As James Merrill notices in An Urban Convalescence, “everything is torn down before you have had time to care for it… you would think the simple fact of having lasted threatened our cities like mysterious fires.” A similar kind of destruction has been occurring across the nation as old stadiums are replaced by newer versions often right down the road. The often illogical building process recalls the Federal Urban Renewal 3
USA Today. November 30 2008. < http://www.usatoday.com/money/economy/2008-10-10-2592441047_x.htm>
Program of 1949 led by Robert Moses. Here we see “relocation as a practical and technical challenge, not a social problem.” (Ballon, 101) With Urban Renewal, plans intended to provide a better life for the poor living in the city turned into displacement mechanisms benefiting the upper class. Today, the real people living in Detroit, almost 82% African American and almost 34% living below the poverty line4 are not the beneficiaries of the new sports stadiums. They will, in all honesty, probably never set foot inside one of the new stadiums to see a game because of the exclusionary tactic of ticket prices. The real beneficiary in this all is sitting snuggly in Oakland County, the fourth wealthiest county in the United States, Mike Ilitch, Detroit business mogul.5 Ilitch Holdings, Inc. manages and operates Comerica Park and Joe Louis Arena, home to the Detroit Red Wings. Both venues feature Ilitch owned Little Ceasars Pizza, a fan staple at $3 a slice. After purchasing the Tigers in 1992, the team recorded losses in 12 out of 13 seasons. It wasn’t until a 2006 turnaround that Ilitch began to pour more money into player payroll, making the Tigers the second most expensive teams in baseball. After moving the team to Comerica Park in 2000, Ilitch continued to accept city tax money, about $400,000 annually, to maintain the old stadium. Still, it was allowed to fall into disrepair. This is a familiar story with the Ilitch family, who happen to be one of downtown Detroit’s largest abandoned property owners. In 2005 the Ilitch owned Madison-Lenox Hotel, listed in the National Trust for Historic Preservation’s “11 Most Endangered Historic Places” was demolished. This was just in time to act as a parking lot during the All Star game. 4 U.S. Census Bureau. December 3 2008. <http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/26/2622000.html> 5
U.S. Census Bureau. December 3 2008. < http://quickfacts.census.gov/qfd/states/26/26125.html>
In his new book, “Free Lunch: How the Wealthies Americans Enrich Themselves at Government Expense (And Stick You with the Bill),” journalist David Cay Johnston discusses the use of government subsidies for things like sports stadiums as a way of transferring money from the poor and middle class to rich insiders. We’re not talking chump change. George Steinbrenner, the owner of the New York Yankees, is receiving more than $600 million for the new Yankee Stadium.6 In D.C., the new owners of the Washington Nationals received a $611 million government subsidy to build a stadium for a team they bought for only $450 million.7 Johnston’s biggest argument is simple, we are spending $2 billion a year to subsidize a sports industry that, aside from a few individual teams, does not profit. “At the same time that we’re doing this, we are starving our public parks for money. We used to have all sorts of programs in this country after World War II… After all, idle hands are the devil’s workshop is not exactly a radical new idea. …We’ve cut and cut and cut those programs to fund two different subsidies: one to sports teams’ owners, one that goes to big companies. Lo and behold, we’ve had a big rise in urban violence because of the vacuum being filled by young people who no longer have these organized activities.”8 Ultimately, the general public loses, paying higher taxes and ticket prices while the upper echelon of franchise owners profit. This imbalance has visible repercussions. In the Comerica Park bubble, the segregation is stark. Amid a predominately white crowd, African Americans are either outside the gates begging for change, working the concession stands for minimum wage, or playing center field. There is 6
New York Times. December 3 2008. <http://query.nytimes.com/gst/fullpage.html?res=9803E2DC1130F931A15752C1A96E958260> 7 Field of Schemes. December 3 2008. < http://www.fieldofschemes.com/news/archives/2006/02/> 8 Democracy Now! Interview November 30 2008. <http://www.democracynow.org/2008/1/18/free_lunch_how_the_ wealthiest_americans>
very little mixing. Interestingly, the giant Ford Field parking lot sits right on a part of Detroit’s historic Paradise Valley. Fans have the opportunity to read about the black culture that once thrived in those blocks after they park their car to go to $100 game. The segregation remains, it’s merely that a predominantly African American area of culture and arts gave way to an area of exclusively white leisure. One grassroots group, The Old Tiger Stadium Conservancy, remains optimistic. Their fight is contingent on a belief in an “inherent economic development value in Tiger Stadium’s contributions to the social history of Detroit and the development of the game of baseball.” Despite the number of curveballs thrown at them by the Detroit City Council for the past few years, they continue to believe that it is possible to save the stadium. With that purpose in mind, they plan to redevelop the site into a public park, youth sports venue, and historical destination for baseball fans. This is, albeit, dependent on their ability to raise a significant amount of money and produce a viable plan. They have until March 1 to raise $15 for the project. Senator Carl Levin has already secured a $4 million earmark in the federal budget.9 Fans rallying for some form of salvation see one underlying flaw of Comerica Park. What really got lost in it all was personality. There is an irony to it, Judd identifies, “As tourist spaces become more and more alike from city to city… the tourist space, not the historic city, become the principal signifier of a locality.” When we privilege the new over the past, the very stadiums built to captitalize on the unique essence of a city end 9
Detroit Free Press. November 30 2008. < http://www.freep.com/article/20081011/NEWS01/810110370>
up looking the same. The only difference between Citi Field and PNC Park is the name of the bank. With the U.S. becoming even more commercial, it only makes sense that corporations would begin to seep into as many other areas of our everyday life as possible, by sponsoring schools and naming stadiums. Citigroup, which has lost tens of billions of dollars and laid off tens of thousands of employees in light of our current economic crisis, purchased naming rights to the new Mets stadium, for $20 million per year over 20 years. Last week the government moved to back $306 million in assets and buy $20 billion in stock.10 What exactly are we assisting these companies with through our tax dollars? It is this greed of companies and the wealthy that drives all major decisions in cities. The little guy inevitably gets left behind. As I read articles chronicling the stop and go of demolition plans and pleas for preservation on the Detroit Free Press website, the online dialogue in reader comments that followed became more interesting to me. These were the few who cared enough to continue reading below the headline, who were passionate enough to articulate their feelings. Making a sweeping generalization, I would guess that most of them are middle-aged white fathers who just cannot bear to see a place that held so many memories gone. I would even go so far as to say that a good number of grown men in jerseys with the old english â&#x20AC;&#x153;Dâ&#x20AC;? have probably wept over this one. Still, concern is not coming solely from extreme fans of the game, there is a community at stake here as well. The stadium was once an anchor in Corktown, the oldest surviving neighborhood in Detroit. The 10
The New York Times. December 3 2008. <http://www.nytimes.com/2008/12/04/sports/baseball/04sandomir.html>.
area itself has changed since the stadium’s construction. As a result of past urban renewal projects, the addition of industrial buildings, and the construction of the Lodge Freeway, Corktown shrunk from an area that was once ‘a mile radius of the pitcher mound,’ Designated as a City of Detroit Historic District today, it is also on the National Register of Historic Places. The options for such a historic area now seem to be slim surrounding Tiger Stadium’s future. Either something happens, or they pick between a parking lot or field of weeds. This could be a piece of the puzzle to a widespread Detroit renaissance, one that would extend beyond the bubbles of Comerica Park and Ford Field or the Campus Martius area. It’s easy to look at the state of the city and loose hope in such a far-fetched vision, but I truly believe that things have to fall apart before they can get better. After the entire city was destroyed and leveled by a fire in 1805, Father Gabriel Richard created Detroit’s motto: “Speramus meliora; resurget cineribus.” “We hope for better things; it will arise from the ashes.” The last time the motto held so much weight was with the 1967 race riots. It wasn’t until a year later that the Tigers won the World Series and a hope was restored that things could indeed be rebuilt. Could a sports team, or stadium for that matter, reverse the motion of an entire city again? We are left to wait until March 1, 2008, the next fundraising deadline for Tiger Stadium preservationists.
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