Michigan State Fairgrounds Coliseum, 1922-2022

Attachment 41930


Recently, I was corresponding with the owner of a climbing gym in London, Ontario, and I sent him photos of the Coliseum. From the pictures of the building and site, and he said the Coliseum seemed to have all of the prerequisites for conversion into a huge indoor climbing gym.

Even with Amazon taking ½ the site, the remainder of the Fairgrounds could have still been re-used as a PUBLIC SPACE [as it was for 104 years] focused on hosting numerous indoor/outdoor recreational, athletic, and cultural events that would have added to the cultural offerings of the city/metro area –

- indoor rock climbing as stated above
- a large outdoor community ice skating rink built by the Detroit Red Wings
- batting cages
- putt-putt golf
- a large covered outdoor roller skating pavilion [like this one in Washington, DC]
- a real, proper beer garden
- a drive-in theater
- a Russell Industrial Center-type art space
- a new home for the Puppet Art Theatre and Museum [it’s an obscure warehouse in Southfield now, after leaving downtown]
- indoor skate boarding park
- indoor horseshoe pitching facility
- a food hall
- a new Michigan Sports History Museum
- a huge techno venue [like they have in Europe]
- a zipline
- Outdoor concerts by the DSO at the bandshell? Theater companies at the bandshell [Shakespeare in Detroit]?

Anything is better than what they are doing there now. You could have gotten funding from next-door Amazon, Meijer, Canadian National, as well as non-profit organizations that fund the arts.

https://www.freep.com/story/news/loc...it/9238378002/

Farewell vigil today at 5:30.

Once the corporate/government power structure reflexively decides that a landmark needs to be "cleared for redevelopment," regardless of how space could be rearranged to keep and reuse it, no amount of logic will change its mind.