The Cass Corridor's Comet Bar was a quintessential hole-in-the-wall dive bar that served cheap booze to mix of grizzled old-timers and young, artsy transplants. You'd never mistake it, or the land it sat on, as an enterprise worth $7.8 million. But that's what the Red Wings reportedly paid for the parcel so they could build their hockey arena.
However, the city decided its land wasn't quite so valuable so they sold 39 parcels to the Wings today for just $1. And no community benefits agreement to ensure this supposed economic juggernaut of a hockey arena creates employment opportunities for Detroiters.
And we wonder how Detroit ended up bankrupt?
City Council approved the land transfer today on a 6-3 vote, with Brenda Jones, James Tate, and Raquel Castaneda-Lopez voting no.
Detroit Free Press: Jerry Belanger, who owns buildings that house Cliff Bell’s jazz club, the Park Bar and Bucharest Grill, said the arena deal gives Ilitch an unfair advantage over other nearby businesses that operate with little to no public assistance.
“He can’t go toe-to-toe with me on a fair playing field. He can’t win without public money,” Belanger said
Other residents said they oppose the land transfer because the Ilitch organization has not agreed to a legally binding community benefits agreement that would include benchmarks for hiring Detroiters and guidelines for residents who could be displaced by the arena project.
Red Wings President Tom Wilson, however, told Council that a taxpayer-subsidized hockey arena is “a once-in-a-generation opportunity” for Detroit because it will allow "business to thrive."
The consensus of independent economists would disagree with that assertion, but can we really trust serious social scientists and their years of research when interested parties paint such a rosy picture?
