Are you ready for some football?? by Amy Loo Who
A year ago, the national media was focused on the city of Detroit for the 40th Super Bowl. A study commissioned by the Detroit Metro Convention and Visitors Bureau found that Super Bowl XL generated $261 million in economic impact for the city and surrounding area. In Super Bowl XL +1, South of 8 Mile writes that despite the general economic nosedive we've seen, the impact was great and is still being felt.
Last year during the Super Bowl something happened that hasn't happened in a very long time, probably something long time Detroiters haven't seen in decades. People took buses by the masses via shuttle services to downtown offered throughout the region. These people waited sometimes for hours in temperatures around freezing, just to get downtown. If there was one apparent failure to come from the Super Bowl, it would be how obvious it was that this region was in dire need of a serious overhaul of its current system, as well as the addition of a rail or other type of system to move more people.
A year later, serious talks of such a system are taking place. Perhaps by year's end, a train will be run regularly between Ann Arbor and Detroit for a 3 year trial run. Last summer the Tigers ran a train from Pontiac to Midtown for Tigers fans. The train was a smashing success, as tickets sold out almost immediately. Plans were already being made to offer the service again this season, perhaps even running trains regularly on weekends, to attract people downtown's night life in Detroit.
The above article includes a lot more and has a ton of great photos! What do you think about the impact of the Super Bowl on Detroit and Michigan? Did it help and how (or why not)?
Check out all kinds of Super Bowl XL photos from Michigan in Pictures and browse through Absolute Michigan's extensive Super Bowl XL coverage.
2 Comments
u should watch this
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=B099nM7bpZQ
IMPACT!
The big thing is perception. Detroit garnered a ton of attention and earned some new respect from the rest of the country. Even more importantly, tons of suburbanities realized that their city can be world class, and in visiting the downtown festivities and seeing all the people walking the streets and enjoying themselves, the comfort level with the city, at least downtown, increased for metro Detroiters, who are probably the most anti-urban people in America on the whole. Throughout the last year, several events, big and small, brought more and more people to the center of the city. An average summer day saw a park full of people in Campus Martius Park. Last weekend, Motown Winter Fest happened again, and just like during the Super Bowl, it brought in huge crowds.
In real terms, the Super Bowl broughts tons of money to the area, and exacerbated (in a good way) the already scorching downtown entertainment/restaurant industry. More and more restaurants continue to open, and now, with more residents, practical stores and other services are appearing downtown, too. The SB may have created more reason to believe in downtown Detroit as a destination, and this may have influenced the Book-Cadillac and Fort-Shelby deals that were closed last year and now underway. The major residential boom downtown, though, most recently manifested in the announcement of The Griswold condo development on Michigan Ave, and which will probably culminate in a Broderick Tower renovation, probably has very little to do with the Super Bowl. Likewise, the East Riverfront redevelopment and other lesser-publicized moves such as the renovation of the Book Tower by a NY firm, probably have little to do with the SB.
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