Everything must go at Silverdome
PONTIAC, Mich. — The Pontiac Silverdome was the place Elvis, Led Zeppelin and the Rolling Stones played. And Pope John Paul II prayed. It’s where Barry Sanders and Isiah Thomas became Detroit sports legends.
A marvel of 1970s-era engineering, the stadium covered by a 10-acre, Teflon-covered roof supported by air once was THE place to see big events — the Super Bowl, the NBA finals, the World Cup, WrestleMania.
Nowadays, the 80,000-seat venue north of Detroit is a shell of its former self. The unforgiving Michigan weather shredded its roof, long strands of which hang from high above or are crumpled on the stadium floor.
The elements have wreaked havoc. Without electricity, the stadium’s innards are dark and mold-infested. The weed-covered turf, on which Sanders once made tacklers look silly, is floating on a foot of water like an oversized lily pad.
The Silverdome’s current owner — an investment company that tried to revive interest by holding events such as soccer and boxing in recent years — is determined to cash in before it’s too late, putting pretty much anything and everything inside up for auction starting on Wednesday.
“Every item starts at $5. If we don’t get that, it goes in the garbage,” said Jim Passeno of RJM Auctions, which is handling the online auction that runs through May 29.
Among the 4,000 items available for bidding are pretzel warmers, a boxing ring, a Zamboni turf machine, flat-screen televisions and scoreboards. A pre-auction sale of Silverdome seats is already under way.
Triple Investment Group LLC, which acquired the Silverdome for just over a half-million dollars in 2009, hasn’t said what it intends to do with the structure, Passeno said, putting its future in doubt.
