When Teams Leave, What Do You Do With the Stadium?
Many cities, though, simply try to cut their losses. In a controversial move in 2009, the state-appointed emergency manager of Pontiac, Mich., sold the 80,000-seat Silverdome, once home to the NFL’s Detroit Lions, for just $583,000. Some residents thought the city got fleeced, but in his resignation later, the manager wrote that the stadium “had been sapping the lifeblood of the city for many years while it was sitting idle.”
