Where was the Motor City Arena?

[EastsideAl]

Thanks everybody! I've not only been in that building, but my sister even worked there far a while. Having been in the rather low-ceilinged first floor, it's bizarre to me that it once was an "arena" that was a boxing venue, and even more so that it was host to regularly televised events. I never would have thought that.

When I first started to run into listings for "Motor City Arena" in boxing records, I assumed that it was probably just a mislisting for Arena Gardens, which I knew to have hosted boxing cards. However, the question for this thread came up when I was doing some research on Detroit baritone saxist Pepper Adams and ran into a listing for a Stan Kenton Orchestra show in 1956 [[when Pepper was in that band) that was supposedly at Motor City Arena.

I was very surprised to see a musical event listed for this venue [[although now, knowing where it was, I have to wonder if that wasn't a mislisting itself for the Greystone). It occurred to me that Arena Gardens would have been gone by that date - having been torn down for the building of the Ford Freeway - so the "Motor City Arena" must have been a separate place. The intrigue took me to that Sports Illustrated article I linked above, which confirmed the existence of the venue and led me to wonder just where exactly the place was.

I also wonder about if the connection to the Norris family and Olympia that's suggested by that SI article was an actual one.