June 17, 2006

Tiger Stadium to be dismantled before developer is found

Another bit of disturbing news about Detroit's plans for Tiger Stadium, courtesy of this morning's Detroit News:

So far, though, officials have no developer or architects. They'll solicit architects in a few weeks, while requests for bids from developers would come by late fall or winter.

And:

Seats, signs and other artifacts would be removed around September and should be up for sale to the public by October, [Detroit Economic Growth Corp. president George Jackson] said.

I'm sure many Detroiters, knowing their city's track record on knocking things down and not replacing them, are worrying what I'm worrying: Tiger Stadium could be stripped and gutted by the fall, only for the city to fail to find a developer who wants to build those condos the mayor wants. At which point it would be too late to save what would now be an empty shell, and Detroit would find itself with one more vacant lot - and you can't have too many of those, apparently.

LATE NOTE: You can hear me discussing the fate of Tiger Stadium, as well as other stadium goings-on, on this week's Baseball Prospectus Radio (mp3 download here, I come on about halfway in).