Pontiac Silverdome saga continues

Last week’s bargain basement auction of the Pontiac Silverdome is far from the end of the story.

After the 80,000-seat arena was sold for $583,000 — about 1 percent of what it cost to build the stadium in the early 1970s — a rival buyer filed an injunction to halt the sale, claiming that a $17 million offer made on the long-vacant Silverdome last year is still valid. And on Wednesday, Judge Edward Sosnick of Oakland County Circuit Court agreed, issued the injunction, and scheduled a hearing for this coming Monday to settle the matter.

We now know that the extreme, low-ball winning offer came from Toronto-area businessman Andreas Apostolopoulos of Triple Properties Inc.

Yet, curiously, that rival-buyer — Attorney H. Wallace Parker, head of the Silver Stallion Development group that wanted to transform the Silverdome into a horse-racing track and entertainment venue — apparently couldn’t even come up with the $250,000 refundable-deposit to participate in last week’s auction.

Meanwhile, another potential buyer — a Bloomfield Hills-based group called Greendome Development LLC — also couldn’t come up with the auction deposit. This company was supposedly offering $22 million for the Silverdome with plans to use the property as a “recycling, alternative energy and bioconversion disposal,” according to the Oakland Press.

Pontiac Emergency Financial Manager Fred Leeb described the offer in much simpler terms: “It would have become a landfill.”

These developments prompted Time writer Darrell Dawsey to reach this conclusion in a post published earlier today: “Looking at it now, I don’t see how the city can’t take the 583 grand.” He added:

I mean, I’d love to see the Silverdome become the $250-million entertainment complex that the Silver Stallion folks said they’d convert it into. After all, selling the Silverdome for a fraction of what it cost to build the place nearly 35 years ago represents a huge “L” for the city of Pontiac. And I think the stadium, which sits near key freeways in the richest county in the state, is really worth well more than that, so it seems clear the city is getting badly lowballed, gypped even.

If the auction sale price stands, it will no doubt lend even more credence — a symbol, even — to the perception and reality of Michigan’s plunging real estate values. If there’s a silver lining to the Silverdome fiasco, it’s that would-be investors can’t help but take notice the buy-low-sell-high opportunities that clearly abound.