Wednesday, November 18, 2009

Not so fast with that sale of the Silverdome

Recently the city of Pontiac Michigan had an action to sell the Silverdome (a football stadium that the Lions used to play at from 1975 to 2002 for those who didn't know) the winning bid was to an unnamed Canadian company (with plans of turning the Silverdome to a soccer stadium) for the really low price of $583,000.

Silverdome so cheaply is because they haven't done much with it since the Lions left and it cost the city over a $1 Million a year for the up keep of the building. The city is already is in debt and saving a $1 million a year would be a great thing for the the city.

So this sale is a good thing...sadly it looks like it might not be a GOOOAAAAAAAALLLLLLL. It seems that last year the Pontiac City Council approved the sale of the Silverdom for $17 million to Silver Stallion Development Corp to turn the silverdome into a casino racetrack. But at the time the Mayor of Pontiac vetoed the sale because he didn't think Silver Stallion Development Corp president and CEO H. Wallace Parker could come up with the funding to actually pay for the Silverdome. Now H. Wallace Parker has came back with a vengeance getting a court order to stop the sale of the Silverdome to the Canadian company.


Crain's Detroit
is reporting that Parker says the reason his bid was turned down was racial discrimination. But He and then Mayor Clarence Phillips are both Black. Either Crain's report just assumed that the bias in this qoute from Parker...

“The defendant mayor openly expressed a bias against the plaintiff and in favor of our bid competitors,” Parker wrote in the complaint, referring to Pontiac Mayor Clarence Phillips. “He shared that bias openly so as to jeopardize the plaintiff’s ability to maintain funding for the project.”


...was racial.

Giving as I stated the key players are Black I'd have to say whatever bias Phillips has against Parker probably isn't racial (though I guess there is some chance Phillips is full of self hate.)

Maybe Phillips was right and Parker doesn't actually have a way of paying for all this, Parkers plains are big and would cost a lot of money, plus even if he did have the money he would have to get all the paper work to make it happen and it hard to say if the state would approve of his plans. Or maybe Phillips just didn't want a racetrack/casino in the city, there is always fear of what a gambling establishment will have on the community it is in and Pontiac isn't really doing so well right now and doesn't need the negatives that could come from a racino. Or maybe there's another factor that I am not a were of.

Sunday, November 01, 2009

Fly advertising

below is a marketing campaign by Jung von Matt, a marketing agency did at the Frankfurt book convention

they attached little banners on to flies and let them fly around



this ideal is truly unique (I mean really who would have thought of using flies to advertise a product) and is giving them lots of buzz. I would think a lot more buzz then the people that actually read those tiny little signs. Though watching the video as many people looked to see what the banner says as they where people that where bugged by it.