Sale of Pontiac Silverdome: But to Whom?

The sale of the Pontiac Silverdome has seemed to have backfired for the city of Pontiac Michigan. It seems two people have laid claim to have purchased the once home of the Detroit Lions. It appears that the Silverdome is not going to go quietly into the night. This once active venue brought in a lot of revenue to Pontiac, but now just keeps sucking out the dollars. Has the Pontiac Silverdome sold? The courts will be deciding this one.

The Pontiac Silverdome was built in 1975 at the cost of $55.7 million. The Silverdome is an 80,300 seat stadium that hosted Super Bowl XVI on January 24, 1982 when the San Francisco 49ers defeated the Cincinnati Bengals 26-21. The Silverdome is the place that saw 93,000 rabid fans file in for Wrestlemania 3 in 1987 -- the largest indoor sporting event in American history.

The latest sale of the Pontiac Silverdome by the City of Pontiac occurred at an absolute auction held Monday. The sale went to a family-owned Canadian company for $583,000. The Toronto based company plans on converting the grand stadium into a professional soccer arena for men and women.

Silver Stallion Corp. two years ago went into a deal with Pontiac to purchase the Pontiac Silverdome for $20 million. Silver Stallion made a $100,000 deposit of earnest money in escrow in August of 2008, under a purchase agreement with the city. At that time an engineering firm was hired to do an environmental assessment of the facility. The reviews found possible contamination at which time closing was delayed. The city asked that the $100,000 be released from in escrow to the city and dropped the purchase price to $17 million due to damage to a mini-dome and missing property.

According to the complaint from Silver Stallion Corp., on November 12, a $17 million bid was submitted to the auctioneer.

Now it is left to the courts to decide the fate of the Pontiac Silverdome. The saga of the sale of the Pontiac Silverdome may be settled quickly or drag on for some time yet. I don't think we have heard the last of the sale of the Pontiac Silverdome yet.