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Detroit Spiffs Up for Super Bowl

By Dan Schlossberg
ConsumerAffairs.com

January 18, 2005
Detroit is such a hot sports town that scheduling a Feb. 5 date for the 2006 Super Bowl was a no-brainer.

The city rolled out the red carpet for the All-Star Game last July. Following the Super Bowl are the NCAA Division I Wrestling Championship (2007), the PGA championship golf tournament (2008), and the NCAA Men’s Final Four (2009).

With such an active roster of top-tier sports events, Detroit may have to swap its Motor City moniker for something bolder. Even the glass cylinder that towers over the world headquarters of General Motors reflects the local fascination with things athletic; it depicts a giant baseball above a sign that reads 4,612 FT – the distance a ball would have to travel from home plate at six-year-old Comerica Park, home of the baseball Tigers.

Taking a page from Baltimore, Cleveland, and Denver -- all of which rallied around new ballparks to reverse downtown decay -- Detroit is erasing its long-standing negative image by turning its once-maligned city center into a showcase of urban design.

New buildings are going up, riverfront redevelopment is in the works, and the Cobo Convention Center is sending a siren call to such tourism-savvy groups as the National Tour Association (4,000 delegates came in November).

Sports fans will find lots to do in town -- much of it relating to one man. While some people collected baseball cards and others collected autographs, Henry Ford collected full-sized slices of American history.

The world-famous auto magnate not only bought, moved, and restored his own humble birthplace but the courthouse where Abraham Lincoln practiced law, the home where Noah Webster wrote his dictionary, the bicycle shop where the Wright Brothers found the secret of flight, and the Menlo Park, N.J. lab where Thomas Edison invented the lightbulb.

All are on display at the Henry Ford Museum & Greenfield Village, an 81-acre complex that has grown into the nation's largest indoor/outdoor museum. The huge slice of Americana, located in suburban Dearborn, includes 80 historic homes and workplaces, restored slave cottages, and a model of the first Ford assembly-line plant.

Just after the century's turn, the advent of the automobile age made Detroit a boom town. Tunnel and bridge access to Windsor, Ontario, the Canadian town across the river, was completed in 1928-29, Detroit native Joe Louis won the heavyweight boxing crown in 1937, Martin Luther King tested his 1963 "I Have a Dream" speech in Detroit two months before he gave it at the Lincoln Memorial, and Ronald Reagan was nominated for President when the 32nd Republican convention came to Detroit in 1980.

The Detroit Historical Museum has a $2 million Motor City exhibit weaving the city's history with that of its most prized export. The cobblestone floors of the "Streets of Old Detroit" exhibit at the same museum suggest what life might have been like before the car. Gas lamps and wooden storefronts complete the image.

Further information: Detroit Metro Convention & Visitors Bureau, Suite 1000, 211 W. Fort St., Detroit, MI 48226 (Tel. 1-800-DETROIT or 313-202-1800)

Dan Schlossberg of Fair Lawn, NJ is president of the North American Travel Journalists Association, and a frequent contributor to AAA Traveler and USAirways Magazine.

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