THE SUPER BOWL AT 50
DOES THE SUPER BOWL HAVE A LASTING IMPACT ON THE HOST COMMUNITY?
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on February 01, 2015 at 8:30 AM, updated February 01, 2015 at 12:19 PM
EDITOR'S NOTE: Many believe the turning point for Downtown and Midtown Detroit was the preparation for hosting the Super Bowl in 2006. If you haven't been to Detroit lately don't laugh, in those two areas its starting to look like a real city, not the set of Blade Runner. The neighborhoods? Now that's a different story.
DETROIT, MI - Super Bowl XL drew 100,000 people and millions of dollars in outside spending to Detroit as the world's attention briefly focused on the Motor City and Ford Field for the NFL's massive event.
The city spent years preparing for the 2006 game and many of those preparations live on in Detroit nearly a decade after the Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the Seattle Seahawks. While the Super Bowl and its national spotlight didn't flip the city itself, some peg it as a catalyst for today's surge of redevelopment in Detroit.
Jeanette Pierce, executive director of Detroit Experience Factory and a downtown resident since 2003, said the Super Bowl required city leaders to set deadlines for things officials had been talking about for some time. She speaks from experience.
Pierce founded Inside Detroit (which later became Detroit Experience Factory) on Jan. 6, 2006, just under a month before Super Bowl XL kicked off at Ford Field on Feb. 5, 2006. While Inside Detroit wasn't started because of the Super Bowl, Pierce said the event lit a fire to get her tour company up and running.
Super Bowl XL was like a big party Detroit was hosting, she said. "You set a date and you've got to get stuff done," Pierce said. "That's what happened with a lot of projects."
What Super Bowl XL did to Detroit
Some of the biggest vacant buildings in Detroit were torn down in the year or so leading up to Super Bowl XL, Pierce said.
In 2005, the Madison-Lenox Hotel, the Detroit Statler Hotel and the Motown Building were all razed. It wasn't hidden that the vacant buildings were demolished due to the Super Bowl coming to town.
In the years leading up to the game, Detroit saw Campus Martius Park become a destination, the Compuware Building go up and the YMCA Building downtown built. In the years following Super Bowl XL, the Detroit River Walk was revamped and the Westin Book Cadillac was redeveloped, to name a few things.
There was work on the ground, too. Programs like Clean Downtown were established to beautify the downtown area, and next weekend's Meridian Winter Blast was started in 2005 as a countdown to the Super Bowl.
But not all of the Super Bowl prep work as clearly positive. The effort to "clean up" Detroit included gimmicks like facades to hide blighted conditions, and programs dedicated to moving people off downtown streets to make the city more comfortable for Super Bowl visitors.
Justin Petrusak, program manager for the Neighborhood Service Organization's Recovery Services in Detroit, said it's no secret that Super Bowl XL granted now-defunct Project Helping Hands enough money to start homeless outreach downtown. Whether totally good or bad, he couldn't say. The point is the NSO was able to get a large number of the Detroit homeless into shelters in the months leading up to the game.
"There was a very small program ... that was created because of the media attention," he said.
The group was a four-person response team created to engage with "individuals experiencing homelessness" in downtown Detroit. Essentially, Project Helping Hands was created to prevent people from panhandling to visitors to the city, improving Detroit's image, Petrusak said.
The efforts did help people find shelter, but may also not have been the right solution.
"The city didn't know how to respond," Petrusak said. "It's not as though they're the bad guys here. ... It just wasn't really the appropriate response," because the homeless aren't always panhandlers, and panhandlers aren't typically homeless.
And while some viewed the move to bus those on the streets to the NSO's Tumaini Center and other shelters as cold-hearted and ill-willed, Petrusak said there was another side to that.
"It was also an opportunity for those experiencing unsheltered homelessness to experience the Super Bowl" because there were TVs to watch the game at the shelter.
Between October 2005 and March 2006, the team helped 518 people in downtown Detroit, Petrusak said. By 2009, just before their funding was cut by the state, the NSO had grown to be a 24-hour response team that staffed 35 people.
In 2009, they helped 893 people gain access to shelters and mental health care. But just three years after the Super Bowl packed up and left town, funding was cut by $2.7 million, Petrusak said. Project Helping Hands was essentially shut down.
Today, the mobile outreach arm of the NSO, The Road Home, staffs three people. It could die off by April due to lack of funding, Petrusak said.
Looking back, he doesn't fault the city or state for taking action while in the national spotlight.
"That's the ideal time to act," he said. "We were managing homelessness back then."
Petrusak jokes that in order to really help the homeless in Detroit, the city needs another Super Bowl. "The spotlights have continued to come, they just have not been as bright," he said.
The Super Bowl XL aftershock
The sheer volume of people that would be flocking to the city in the weeks leading up to the game was enough to spur some action from city and state officials as well as local business owners, according to Pierce
"Super Bowl was really the first time in a long time that the national spot light was on Detroit," Pierce said.
There was a sort of popcorn effect in the city, Pierce said. Once one project was successful, a couple others started, and so on.
Pierce said that while she doesn't credit the Super Bowl as the main factor in everything that's happened for Detroit in the last nine years, it's definitely a point of reference.
In addition to everything being built or rebuilt, people began taking an interest in the city.
"You had people coming who hadn't been downtown in a long time," she said. "Everyone was pleasantly surprised ... amazed, if you will.
But she said Detroit already had some momentum behind it leading up to the 2006 showcase. Another downtown business owner agreed.
Tony Piraino, owner of Firebird Tavern in Greektown, said Super Bowl XL's spot on the Detroit timeline was coincidental.
"What it did was it brought a tremendous amount of attention to Detroit," Piraino said.
He opened a bar, Pulse, not far from Firebird Tavern's location in 2005, but he said he'd been looking to get something opened in downtown Detroit for some time. While 2006 had been the best year for Pulse, the influx of activity in Detroit isn't a direct result of the Super Bowl that year.
"It started the conversation off a little bit," he said. "There were all of these potential projects - all these fancy renderings, businesses, bars and restaurants."
Really, all the activity showed that Detroit had a "tremendous amount of promise."
Pierce said that Super Bowl XL was definitely a step along the line of investments and future development projects in the city.
A series of big events coming to the city, all within 18 months of Super Bowl XL, added to the fact that Detroit was already a hub of activity, Piraino said.
He opened up shop in Detroit because he wanted to be a part of everything.
And Detroit seems to have shed the training wheels since 2006, things like the annual Winter Blast are still around to remind everyone of what Super Bowl XL helped bolster.
Where would Detroit be without the big game?
Piraino and Pierce differ on their opinions of where Detroit would be in 2015 had Super Bowl XL never come to town.
"Maybe six months to a year behind on some projects," Pierce said. "It did provide a common ground for people to start from."
Pierce said that back when all the initial development was happening, she remembers wishing she could peek ahead in time a few years to see what Detroit would become.
"But then that's (the redevelopment) just continued," she said. "It just hasn't slowed down.
"Once people saw Detroit...in an authentic way, it was really difficult not to like it."
With buildings like Broderick Tower and the David Whitney Building being redeveloped into upscale housing, and other once-sore-thumbs like The Wurlitzer being bought, there's a still a feeling of excitement in the city.
Even Pierce's business has grown from showing 75 people around the city on their first tour in 2006, to leading 12,000 people on tours last year.
Piraino said Detroit would have been fine without the Super Bowl, though. In fact, the city would be exactly where it is today regardless.
"There was some residual (effect) after the Super Bowl," he said. "After that, it was back to business as normal.
"At the end of the day, man, it got things going...it got people down to the city," but that was starting to happen anyways.
After all, 2008's recession did cause the city to take a hit, threatening to push Detroit back to square one.
Quicken Loans mogul Dan Gilbert revitalizing the city and changes in the city government are two of the main reasons Detroit is "where it is today and where it's going tomorrow," Piraino said. Admittedly, Super Bowl XL did make people get up and clean up the city, he said.
Piraino had a chance to take his business anywhere in the world in 2013 when the original location of Pulse was torn down, he said, but he didn't leave.
"We chose to stay downtown without question," he said. "We felt we had unfinished business. We saw tangible evidence of shovels in the ground, people moving downtown (and) people living downtown..."
Both Pierce and Piraino said there is plenty of work left to be done.
"More people need to live downtown," Piraino said.
Pierce said there are a number of things she'd like to see happen in the city, including further redevelopment of Capitol Park downtown, and something, anything, done to save the vacant National Theater building.
She's most excited to see the Detroit neighborhoods see some investment coming their way now. The excitement downtown is palpable, though.
"We are still progressing, we are still moving forward," Pierce said. "There's a lot of work to be done. Downtown isn't finished."
Ian Thibodeau is the entertainment and business reporter for MLive Media Group in Detroit. He can be reached at ithibode@mlive.com, or follow him on Twitter.
The city spent years preparing for the 2006 game and many of those preparations live on in Detroit nearly a decade after the Pittsburgh Steelers defeated the Seattle Seahawks. While the Super Bowl and its national spotlight didn't flip the city itself, some peg it as a catalyst for today's surge of redevelopment in Detroit.
Jeanette Pierce, executive director of Detroit Experience Factory and a downtown resident since 2003, said the Super Bowl required city leaders to set deadlines for things officials had been talking about for some time. She speaks from experience.
Pierce founded Inside Detroit (which later became Detroit Experience Factory) on Jan. 6, 2006, just under a month before Super Bowl XL kicked off at Ford Field on Feb. 5, 2006. While Inside Detroit wasn't started because of the Super Bowl, Pierce said the event lit a fire to get her tour company up and running.
Super Bowl XL was like a big party Detroit was hosting, she said. "You set a date and you've got to get stuff done," Pierce said. "That's what happened with a lot of projects."
What Super Bowl XL did to Detroit
Some of the biggest vacant buildings in Detroit were torn down in the year or so leading up to Super Bowl XL, Pierce said.
In 2005, the Madison-Lenox Hotel, the Detroit Statler Hotel and the Motown Building were all razed. It wasn't hidden that the vacant buildings were demolished due to the Super Bowl coming to town.
In the years leading up to the game, Detroit saw Campus Martius Park become a destination, the Compuware Building go up and the YMCA Building downtown built. In the years following Super Bowl XL, the Detroit River Walk was revamped and the Westin Book Cadillac was redeveloped, to name a few things.
There was work on the ground, too. Programs like Clean Downtown were established to beautify the downtown area, and next weekend's Meridian Winter Blast was started in 2005 as a countdown to the Super Bowl.
But not all of the Super Bowl prep work as clearly positive. The effort to "clean up" Detroit included gimmicks like facades to hide blighted conditions, and programs dedicated to moving people off downtown streets to make the city more comfortable for Super Bowl visitors.
Justin Petrusak, program manager for the Neighborhood Service Organization's Recovery Services in Detroit, said it's no secret that Super Bowl XL granted now-defunct Project Helping Hands enough money to start homeless outreach downtown. Whether totally good or bad, he couldn't say. The point is the NSO was able to get a large number of the Detroit homeless into shelters in the months leading up to the game.
"There was a very small program ... that was created because of the media attention," he said.
The group was a four-person response team created to engage with "individuals experiencing homelessness" in downtown Detroit. Essentially, Project Helping Hands was created to prevent people from panhandling to visitors to the city, improving Detroit's image, Petrusak said.
The efforts did help people find shelter, but may also not have been the right solution.
"The city didn't know how to respond," Petrusak said. "It's not as though they're the bad guys here. ... It just wasn't really the appropriate response," because the homeless aren't always panhandlers, and panhandlers aren't typically homeless.
And while some viewed the move to bus those on the streets to the NSO's Tumaini Center and other shelters as cold-hearted and ill-willed, Petrusak said there was another side to that.
"It was also an opportunity for those experiencing unsheltered homelessness to experience the Super Bowl" because there were TVs to watch the game at the shelter.
Between October 2005 and March 2006, the team helped 518 people in downtown Detroit, Petrusak said. By 2009, just before their funding was cut by the state, the NSO had grown to be a 24-hour response team that staffed 35 people.
In 2009, they helped 893 people gain access to shelters and mental health care. But just three years after the Super Bowl packed up and left town, funding was cut by $2.7 million, Petrusak said. Project Helping Hands was essentially shut down.
Today, the mobile outreach arm of the NSO, The Road Home, staffs three people. It could die off by April due to lack of funding, Petrusak said.
Looking back, he doesn't fault the city or state for taking action while in the national spotlight.
"That's the ideal time to act," he said. "We were managing homelessness back then."
Petrusak jokes that in order to really help the homeless in Detroit, the city needs another Super Bowl. "The spotlights have continued to come, they just have not been as bright," he said.
The Super Bowl XL aftershock
The sheer volume of people that would be flocking to the city in the weeks leading up to the game was enough to spur some action from city and state officials as well as local business owners, according to Pierce
"Super Bowl was really the first time in a long time that the national spot light was on Detroit," Pierce said.
There was a sort of popcorn effect in the city, Pierce said. Once one project was successful, a couple others started, and so on.
Pierce said that while she doesn't credit the Super Bowl as the main factor in everything that's happened for Detroit in the last nine years, it's definitely a point of reference.
In addition to everything being built or rebuilt, people began taking an interest in the city.
"You had people coming who hadn't been downtown in a long time," she said. "Everyone was pleasantly surprised ... amazed, if you will.
"It really kind of showed of the city. It was a great kind of coming out party."
"The spotlights have continued to come, they just have not been as bright." -- Justin Petrusak on Super Bowl XL's effect on Detroit
There was a sense, Pierce said, that Detroit was getting the chance to showcase something that had remained hidden away for a long time. But she said Detroit already had some momentum behind it leading up to the 2006 showcase. Another downtown business owner agreed.
Tony Piraino, owner of Firebird Tavern in Greektown, said Super Bowl XL's spot on the Detroit timeline was coincidental.
"What it did was it brought a tremendous amount of attention to Detroit," Piraino said.
He opened a bar, Pulse, not far from Firebird Tavern's location in 2005, but he said he'd been looking to get something opened in downtown Detroit for some time. While 2006 had been the best year for Pulse, the influx of activity in Detroit isn't a direct result of the Super Bowl that year.
"It started the conversation off a little bit," he said. "There were all of these potential projects - all these fancy renderings, businesses, bars and restaurants."
Really, all the activity showed that Detroit had a "tremendous amount of promise."
Pierce said that Super Bowl XL was definitely a step along the line of investments and future development projects in the city.
A series of big events coming to the city, all within 18 months of Super Bowl XL, added to the fact that Detroit was already a hub of activity, Piraino said.
He opened up shop in Detroit because he wanted to be a part of everything.
And Detroit seems to have shed the training wheels since 2006, things like the annual Winter Blast are still around to remind everyone of what Super Bowl XL helped bolster.
Where would Detroit be without the big game?
Piraino and Pierce differ on their opinions of where Detroit would be in 2015 had Super Bowl XL never come to town.
"Maybe six months to a year behind on some projects," Pierce said. "It did provide a common ground for people to start from."
Pierce said that back when all the initial development was happening, she remembers wishing she could peek ahead in time a few years to see what Detroit would become.
"But then that's (the redevelopment) just continued," she said. "It just hasn't slowed down.
"Once people saw Detroit...in an authentic way, it was really difficult not to like it."
With buildings like Broderick Tower and the David Whitney Building being redeveloped into upscale housing, and other once-sore-thumbs like The Wurlitzer being bought, there's a still a feeling of excitement in the city.
Even Pierce's business has grown from showing 75 people around the city on their first tour in 2006, to leading 12,000 people on tours last year.
Piraino said Detroit would have been fine without the Super Bowl, though. In fact, the city would be exactly where it is today regardless.
"There was some residual (effect) after the Super Bowl," he said. "After that, it was back to business as normal.
"At the end of the day, man, it got things going...it got people down to the city," but that was starting to happen anyways.
After all, 2008's recession did cause the city to take a hit, threatening to push Detroit back to square one.
Quicken Loans mogul Dan Gilbert revitalizing the city and changes in the city government are two of the main reasons Detroit is "where it is today and where it's going tomorrow," Piraino said. Admittedly, Super Bowl XL did make people get up and clean up the city, he said.
Piraino had a chance to take his business anywhere in the world in 2013 when the original location of Pulse was torn down, he said, but he didn't leave.
"We chose to stay downtown without question," he said. "We felt we had unfinished business. We saw tangible evidence of shovels in the ground, people moving downtown (and) people living downtown..."
Both Pierce and Piraino said there is plenty of work left to be done.
"More people need to live downtown," Piraino said.
Pierce said there are a number of things she'd like to see happen in the city, including further redevelopment of Capitol Park downtown, and something, anything, done to save the vacant National Theater building.
She's most excited to see the Detroit neighborhoods see some investment coming their way now. The excitement downtown is palpable, though.
"We are still progressing, we are still moving forward," Pierce said. "There's a lot of work to be done. Downtown isn't finished."
Ian Thibodeau is the entertainment and business reporter for MLive Media Group in Detroit. He can be reached at ithibode@mlive.com, or follow him on Twitter.
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