Super Bowl News
Cleveland Will Ask For Super Bowl L
Cleveland City Council members Monday night approved the proposal to request Super Bowl L (50) be held in Cleveland. As part of the deal, the city will install a retractable dome on the Cleveland Browns Stadium.
Approving the proposal to request the Super Bowl is the first step in a rather lengthy process of getting one of the most popular championship games in sports, WEWS reported.
The cost of putting a retractable dome on the Stadium is estimated at $90 million, but the debate remains on how the project will be funded.
The retractable roof would also permit the stadium to be used year-round for functions other than football.
The developer of the project has created a Web site that shows photos of the roof model and has a downloadable petition.
As Super Bowl host, the new Detroit eager to please
NFL players said it all season: We want to go to Detroit.
While the Motor City is destination No. 1 for professional football players, it is probably not among the top tourism destinations for most Americans.
But city officials and members of the Super Bowl host committee want out-of-towners to know that a new and improving Detroit awaits them.
The 40th edition of the Super Bowl hits Detroit's Ford Field on Feb. 5, and along with it will come tens of thousands of people, from players and fans to the media and celebrities.
What will they find? Everything from a winter carnival and casinos to world-renowned works of art and local history, including a tour of a Ford factory and a museum devoted to Motown.
Those who still think of Detroit as a blighted, dangerous industrial city in decline will be especially surprised by the new look of the city's downtown.
Abandoned buildings are being converted into loft apartments and office space along Woodward Avenue, Detroit's main thoroughfare.
The skyscrapers of the Renaissance Center -- the most recognizable feature of the city skyline -- have been overhauled along the redeveloped waterfront of the Detroit River, which separates the U.S. and Canada. The largest tower has been decorated with a 24,000-plus-square-foot vinyl wrap celebrating the Super Bowl. The WinterGarden, a five-story glass atrium with sweeping views of the river on the south side of the RenCen, opened in 2001 and has several restaurants and Detroit-themed stores. It will house the Super Bowl's media center.
Software developer Compuware Corp. has moved downtown from the suburbs into a 15-story complex with a Hard Rock Cafe, Borders bookstore and a Ben & Jerry's ice cream shop.
On the south side of the Compuware building sits Campus Martius Park, which opened in late 2004. In summer, a park fountain shoots jets of water more than 100 feet in the air, while a skating rink is the main winter attraction. During Super Bowl week, a winter carnival called Motown Winter Blast will be held there, with a 200-foot-long snow slide, sled dogs and ice skating. Heated tents will showcase musical entertainment and some of the city's best cuisine.
The park "has been an economic catalyst for the development of downtown Detroit, and we probably could say that many of the new buildings and the new things that are taking place in Detroit are there because of the fact that the park exists," said Edsel Ford II, chairman of the Detroit 300 Conservancy Board, a group involved in revitalizing the city's downtown.
The NFL Experience, an annual interactive football theme park run by the league, will set up shop at nearby Cobo Center.
A different kind of game can be found at the four area casinos -- three in Detroit and one in Windsor, Ontario. In all, the MGM Grand Detroit, MotorCity and Greektown casinos and Casino Windsor offer gamblers more than 10,000 slot machines and hundreds of tables.
Nighttime recreational opportunities will abound during Super Bowl week at nightclubs throughout the region, especially downtown and in the suburban communities of Ferndale, Royal Oak and Birmingham. A-listers from the worlds of entertainment and athletics also will converge on Detroit to see and be seen at a multitude of parties -- many of them invitation-only.
The Detroit area also boasts many cultural attractions. The Detroit Institute of Arts is home to four works by Vincent van Gogh and Diego Rivera's Detroit Industry murals. The DIA also is the only U.S. stop for an exhibition (running through Super Bowl Sunday) showcasing the story of French sculptors Camille Claudel and Auguste Rodin through their sculptures, drawings, photographs and love letters.
There are also museums devoted to Detroit's best-known creations -- cars and music.
The Motown Historical Museum chronicles the music company that transformed artists from Detroit's housing projects into superstars.
The Henry Ford complex in nearby Dearborn is comprised of the Henry Ford Museum, Greenfield Village and the Ford Rouge Factory Tour.
At the museum, visitors can see the restored bus on which civil rights pioneer Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat to a white passenger in 1955 in Montgomery, Ala. Greenfield Village includes an 1820 Georgia slave cabin, Thomas Edison's research laboratory and the Detroit workshop where Ford built his first car in 1896. The Ford Rouge Factory Tour lets you see F-150 pickup trucks being built.
Detroit backers are hoping Super Bowl visitors will focus on the new Detroit and not the old -- which, for many Americans, was symbolized in past decades by the city's outbreaks of arson each Halloween. The "Devil's Night" rampages no longer take place, and other urban ills are also being remedied as the city works hard to clean up downtown, repaving roads, tearing down vacant buildings, removing graffiti and giving business owners grants to improve building facades.
"I don't know if a person comes in here and says `Wow. Look at that sidewalk,' but at the end of the day, it is about the people. And that is what's going to define what their experience is," said Susan Sherer, executive director of Detroit's Super Bowl host committee. "I'm confident that we as Detroiters can make a great impression."
If You Go.
Motor City hospitality will bowl over Pittsburghers
Steelers fans taking a road trip to Detroit for Super Bowl XL can expect a pedestrian's paradise: a downtown buzzing with excitement, busy stores and restaurants, a street scene full of festivals, parties, ice sculptures and -- weather permitting -- even dog sledding.
OK, it ain't the real Detroit. Any other time, a pedestrian in the Motor City is about as rare as a Cowboys fan in Pittsburgh. But it is representative of the changes in place this week for guests coming downtown. They're closing off streets, for crying out loud. They're encouraging people to walk.
Next thing you know they'll be telling people to root for Ohio State.
But that's what hosting a Super Bowl does to a town. For the better part of a year, the city of Detroit, its suburbs and a committee of local heavy hitters that includes former race car driver and NASCAR team owner Roger Penske have been planning for this week, spending about $18 million to transform this gritty industrial city's downtown in time for the sporting world's biggest extravaganza. Freshly applied paint and colorful murals cover empty storefronts and the worn plywood of the many abandoned buildings that dot the downtown landscape. While many of the eyesores still stand, some of the worst have been torn down, and vacant lots have been converted into parking lots.
Streets and sidewalks have been newly paved, holiday lights strung around light poles and trees glow bright.
It's all for you, fans.
Sure, Detroit has taken its fair share of abuse (not unlike Pittsburgh). It's been the relentless butt of jokes and copes with some of the highest crime, unemployment and poverty rates in the country. But for one week, Detroit is working hard to be liked, rough edges and all.
"I think people will be impressed by how clean, how much actual development there is in the area and how spruced up the place looks," said Robert Ficano, executive of Wayne County, where Detroit is located. "We want this to be a success because the world is watching us."
Downtown was unusually busy Friday night.
Restaurant and bar owners hung giant Super Bowl XL welcome banners in their windows. Road crews closed streets and erected tents for the many festivals, including the Motown Winter Blast, which will feature snowshoeing, ice skating, Model-T rides, a 200-foot-long snow slide, ice sculptures, dog sledding, and local music and food.
But to get a real flavor for Detroit, past the gussied-up downtown that will be the hub of the Super Bowl action, visitors will need to venture into the rest of the city and its suburbs.
And metro Detroit -- which gave the world Aretha Franklin, Ted Nugent, Eminem, Kid Rock and the White Stripes -- has plenty of flavor.
You taste it in its food, with its Coney Island hot dogs, which you eat with plenty of onions and mustard and wash down with a Vernor's ginger ale or a Faygo cola, two homegrown pops. (In Detroit it's pop, not soda, remember.)
You see it in its politics, in which a recently elected Detroit City councilwoman and wife of a U.S. Congressman, Monica Conyers, engaged in bar room fisticuffs with another woman and allegedly gave her a black eye.
But Detroiters are quick to point out that it is their hospitality that Pittsburghers will remember most.
In the basement barber shop of Detroit's city hall, about 12 blocks away from Ford Field, where the game will take place Sunday, shoeshine man Rick McGowan, barber James "Slate" Slater and their cadre of customers waxed philosophical about the upcoming influx of 'Burgh fans to their fair city.
"They'll see we're friendlier than any other urban area," said Eugene Jones, Jr., a city employee who, like many Detroiters, is rooting for the Steelers because of homegrown players Jerome Bettis and Larry Foote. "Jerome Bettis, that's my man."
Jones is also hoping a Steelers victory in Ford Field might rub off on his team, the perpetually losing Detroit Lions.
"Can they bring us some of those good spirits for the Lions?"
Detroit and Pittsburgh aren't so different, said lawyer Taylor Segue III as he was having his hair trimmed.
"I think a lot more people here will relate to Pittsburgh," he said. "A lot of people don't know this, but prior to Pittsburgh becoming the steel town of America, Detroit was. We had Great Lakes Steel. We made locomotives and iron stoves. We share a common heritage."
The barber shop crew urged visitors to go out and get to know their town.
Visit Belle Isle, a 983-acre island park located minutes from downtown, or the Motown Historical Museum, which charts the history and fame of one of the country's most recognizable recording companies and its performers. And check out the murals of Mexican artist and activist Diego Rivera at the Detroit Institute of the Arts.
But to really get to know the area, you'll also need to venture into the suburbs. Unlike Pittsburgh, where Shadyside, the South Side, Squirrel Hill, Oakland and other city neighborhoods offer a variety of action, Detroit is much more spread out, with plenty of activity outside the city proper.
For a taste of history, visit Dearborn and the Henry Ford Museum, where you can see the limousine in which President John F. Kennedy was assassinated and the bus in which Rosa Parks refused to give up her seat.
Or go north and cross 8 Mile, the stretch of road that marks the city-suburb divide immortalized by rapper Eminem. Don't expect much from the super wide avenue itself with its few grungy strip malls and even grungier strip clubs.
And speaking of earthier pursuits, those so inclined can take a trip to Windsor, Ontario, where they'll find an array of all-nude strip clubs and a large casino with a hotel. And they sell Cuban cigars to boot. Just don't bring them back across the border, or you might find yourself with a Motown experience you won't relish.
And for you geography nerds, Detroit is the only major city in the United States actually situated north of Canada.
For slightly less flesh but a lot of partying, head to Royal Oak, Ferndale and Dearborn, suburbs known for their bar and club scene. Birmingham, with its chichi restaurants and shops, is always a hit with the haute couture set.
But no matter where you step foot, Detroiters say, Pittsburghers will take to Motown.
"Visitors are going to see the best hospitality that any city has ever given them," said newly named Detroit City Councilwoman Martha Reeves, of Motown's Martha and the Vandellas fame.
"We are going to work to show that we are not what we've been reported to be," said Reeves, known for her hits, "Heat Wave" and "Dancing in the Street."
"We've got a great city, and it's going to be a great place to be."
Super Bowl notebook
How do you make snow when it rains?
If you haven't guessed it already, the half-inch or so of rain Sunday did absolutely nothing to help organizers of the 2006 Motown Winter Blast in their quest to manufacture fluffy white stuff for one of the outdoor festival's most popular activities: the snow slide.
"Rain is not our friend," says Jon Witz, producer of the Winter Blast.
The weather, however, has not entirely muddled Witz's hopes that the complete 26-foot-high slide will be in place when the festival opens on Thursday.
Two snowblowers will join the four machines already in place by this evening, when temperatures are expected to dip to around 29 degrees, according to the National Weather Service. The Winter Blast folks predict they need a couple of nights at around 28 degrees or colder to make the 2,000 tons of snow for the slide and for activities like snowshoeing, dogsledding and snowmobiling.
Even if the slide doesn't fly, there will be 14 blocks of fun at the Winter Blast, said Witz.
"The Motown Winter Blast is about a Detroit celebration," he said. "It doesn't have to be about a couple of winter activities."
