Conception/development The idea of a major sports complex was part of a dream of C. Don Davidson, a
Pontiac native and star high school athlete. Davidson, upon graduating from
Pontiac Central High School in 1947 and completing active duty with the U.S. Marine Corps, attended
North Carolina State University on a football scholarship. After earning a master's degree in urban planning and architecture, Davidson began his career as an architect and was recognized for several government and city projects throughout the south including Florida's
Jacksonville International Airport. He returned to Pontiac in 1965 and was shocked to see the deterioration of the city and its lack of a future plan. Davidson embarked upon what would eventually become an obsession for him to see his beloved city succeed. In 1965–66, he was hired as a professor of architecture and urban planning at the
University of Detroit under the direction of Bruno Leon. As part of an ongoing, comprehensive study by his architecture class on urban renewal for the city of Pontiac, Davidson met with various city and state authorities including
William Clay Ford, owner of the Detroit Lions, to discuss the possibility of a new stadium, made it a college class project to find a suitable site for a new stadium and even started his own weekly newspaper known as
The Pontiac Times, Already having a stadium concept as part of his master plan for the city, Davidson was interviewed and ultimately hired as chief project designer for the stadium project by the architectural firm of
O'Dell, Hewlett and Luckenbach. Initial designs included a dual stadium complex for both football and baseball (potentially housing the
Detroit Tigers) that was later scrapped due to high costs. Davidson was pleased to see a part of his vision for the city of Pontiac accomplished in the building of the 80,000-seat sports complex. Completed in 1975 as the
Pontiac Metropolitan Stadium,) The roof was replaced by a new canvas fabric, reinforced by steel girders after a strong snowstorm on March 4, 1985, caused structural damage to the old roof. Because of the damage, the Detroit Pistons played the remainder of the
1984–85 season at the now-closed and demolished
Joe Louis Arena. The accident, and the delay in repairs, partially prompted the Pistons moving three seasons later north to their new, privately owned, 20,000-seat sports arena,
The Palace of Auburn Hills (like Joe Louis Arena, it also has since closed down and demolished). The 1985 repairs were necessitated by a collapse of the original 1975 roof around noon EST on March 4, 1985. Heavy, wet snow accumulated on the southwest corner of the dome and depressed the fabric panels low enough so that the fabric came in contact with a steel lighting catwalk that was positioned just below the inner lip of the roof's ring beam. The hole caused a loss of air pressure and the Dome deflated slowly – there were no injuries. The shift from a "dome" to "bowl" caused all the heavy, wet snow to slide down into the bowl and rupture more roof panels, collapse some precast risers in the SW upper deck, and dislodge more plastic seats "... than a Rolling Stones concert" according to Bob Haney, the Dome's Operations Manager. Crews from Owens-Corning Fiberglas, the dome's original roof installer, were on site by 1:30 pm on March 4. Repair operations began immediately but were interrupted for over a week due to high winds. During the high winds event nearly all of the remaining panels in the deflated roof, 100 in all, were badly damaged. The decision was made to replace the entire roof and incorporate some improvements to prevent a similar event from occurring in the future. Repair cost of the roof was just under $8 million. The repairs were completed and the dome re-inflated at noon on May 28, 1985. A thunderstorm passed through the Pontiac area the morning the Dome was to be re-inflated and a partial inflation, or "puff", was performed so that the scheduled inflation could occur in the presence of the many city and area politicians as well as a number of corporate executives. The original-style, Teflon-coated fiberglass material was used to make the repairs – not canvas as described in the article. There were several snow-melting and waterproofing improvements that kept the dome inflated until January 2, 2013 – almost 28 years.
Notable audience attendance numbers The largest crowd to gather at the Silverdome was on September 18, 1987, for
Mass with
Pope John Paul II, with a reported attendance of 93,682 — just shading the reported record of 93,173 set at the Silverdome on March 29, 1987, for
WrestleMania III. Another notable audience attendance record had earlier been broken on April 30, 1977, when the English rock band
Led Zeppelin played in front of 76,229 fans at the Silverdome. This was, at the time, a new world record attendance for a solo indoor attraction, beating the 75,962 that
the Who attracted there on December 6, 1975. The
Detroit Pistons also set numerous NBA attendance records during their time at the Silverdome; Regular Season, 61,983 vs. Boston, January 29, 1988; Playoffs, 41,732, vs. L.A. Lakers, June 16, 1988.
1994 FIFA World Cup The Silverdome was a venue for the
1994 FIFA World Cup. In an exhibition game between
Germany and
England in June 1993, English coach
Graham Taylor criticized the indoor venue's lack of weather as removing an unpredictability factor from soccer. The lack of air conditioning contributed to extreme heat and humidity, an advantage to the Germans playing for Italian clubs. The 62,126 attendance was the highest in any US soccer match since 1984. On June 18, 1994, the
United States tied 1–1 with
Switzerland in the first World Cup game to be played indoors. Swiss coach
Roy Hodgson later admitted that his team had not prepared for the extreme temperature and humidity.
Marching band activities and events The Silverdome was also the home to many marching band activities and events, including the
Michigan Competing Band Association State Marching Band Championships until 2005, the
Bands of America Regional championships from 2003 to 2005, and the Bands of America Grand National Championships in 1987 and 1988. Following its reopening, the Silverdome was host to the 2010, 2011 and 2012 Bands of America Pontiac Regional Championship.
Usage after Lions' move to Ford Field The Lions moved from the Silverdome to
Ford Field after the end of their
2001 season. Despite being the Lions' home for 27 seasons, the day of the last home game, January 6, 2002, was marked by a noticeable absence of nostalgia among the fans as well as the players. In particular, long-time Lions' defensive end
Robert Porcher singled out the stadium's
artificial turf as the worst part about playing at the Silverdome, echoing other players present that day. When the
World Hockey Association (WHA) tried to re-introduce itself, the
new WHA Detroit team was slated to play its home games at the Silverdome. Plans were also mooted for a
Windsor-based
Canadian Football League team which could have used the dome for possible playoff games, but that team also did not materialize. After the Lions relocated, activity in the Silverdome dropped drastically; however, it still staged some events. Annually,
Jehovah's Witnesses used the Silverdome from the late 1970s to 2004. Due to talk of renovation in 2004, the Witnesses opted to travel to The
Dow Event Center in
Saginaw, and the
SeaGate Convention Centre in
Toledo, Ohio for their District Conventions. Between 2003 and 2006, a three-screen
drive-in theater operated in the parking lot; this theater reopened in 2010 before closing again on July 13, 2011. The Silverdome hosted
Monster Jam on January 7, 2006, and was used as a practice facility for the
AFC champion
Pittsburgh Steelers for
Super Bowl XL, with the NFL adding
FieldTurf, which was later donated to a local high school.
Sale After the Lions' departure, the city of Pontiac began to experience several years of serious financial problems. Due to the continued high maintenance costs of the structure, it made several unsuccessful attempts to sell the stadium. In early 2008, United Assurance Company Ltd. made the highest purchase offer to date, with a bid of $18 million to convert the Silverdome into a Hollywood-style entertainment complex, following an earlier bid of $12 million by an attorney. However, the city announced in October 2009 that the property would go to auction with no minimum bid, and that zoning regulations would be relaxed for any buyer in order to spark development. The city engaged the firm of Williams & Williams to conduct the auction in November 2009. After reading about the auction in a newspaper, Greek-born Canadian real estate developer
Andreas Apostolopoulos, CEO of Toronto-based Triple Properties Inc., submitted a winning bid of US$550,000. Real estate fees of 6% raised the price to US$583,000. The sale of the Silverdome, completed in 1975 at a cost of $55.7 million (approx. $225 million in 2012 dollars) and sold in 2009 for $583,000, was viewed by many as a symbol of the collapse of
real estate prices in the
Detroit metropolitan area though many local leaders and residents claimed the sale was brought about due to the incompetence of city management and their not having a vision or future plans for the stadium and surrounding area.
Reopening (2010–2013) In the March 11, 2010, edition of the
Detroit Free Press, Apostolopoulos vowed "to revive the stadium as a big-event venue by investing millions of dollars". The Silverdome re-opened on April 17, 2010, with a
monster truck event. On January 29, 2011,
professional boxer Timothy Bradley defended his
WBO light welterweight title in a unification fight against
WBC champion
Devon Alexander. The fight aired live on
HBO World Championship Boxing, with an attendance of about 7,000. The owners indicated that they were pursuing a possible expansion team for
Major League Soccer, and contemplated renovating the Silverdome for this purpose. Ultimately, the lack of events coming into the stadium, combined with the 2013 roof collapse, put any further development plans on indefinite hold. before it was removed in 2017.
Auctioning of contents and demolition In March 2014, the owners announced that they would be auctioning off the contents of the facility, including seats and fixtures. In December 2014, Cleveland-based photographer
Johnny Joo captured the Silverdome in a state of abandonment, showing destruction caused by the 2013 roof collapse. Afterwards, in October 2015, it was announced that the Silverdome would be demolished in the Spring of 2016, and the area would be part of an
Oakland County mixed-use development. Demolition was then scheduled for December 3, 2017. In June 2016, fire caused by arson destroyed the former press box. Around the same time, the parking lot began being used as storage for hundreds of Volkswagen diesel cars as a result of Volkswagen's
2015 emissions scandal. The dome owner and the city were in conflict over the condition of the dome and the cars in the lot. In 2017, the Silverdome was condemned and cleared for demolition. Workers had been on the site for the past few months before main power feeds were disconnected preparing the Silverdome for demolition, including completing environmental remediation, universal waste removal and tearing out transite asbestos panels that were used in a majority of the suites around the perimeter of the dome; though not without a few local trespasser visits to explore the place leading up to the demolition. On September 18 and 19, 2017, four power feeds were disconnected, officially starting the final preparation process for demolition. The firm contracted to handle the demolition, the Detroit-based Adamo Group, also imploded the
Georgia Dome in
Atlanta on November 20 before moving on to the Silverdome. The demolition of the Silverdome was to commence on December 3, 2017, with a partial implosion of the upper deck, followed by an excavation of the building from the inside out. Due to a wiring issue, eight of the explosive charges failed to detonate, preventing the stadium from imploding as planned. A second attempt was successful the next day. While Adamo could not pinpoint the exact cause of the issues, they did note that trespassers had been seen on the property a couple of days prior to the first attempt. It was noted that on the second attempt, Adamo doubled the amount of explosives used from of
TNT. By the end of March 2018, the last free standing wall of the Silverdome was destroyed, leaving a deep hole where the stadium once stood. of crushed concrete remained on site to be used as landfill material. Demolition officials stated that final filling and grading operations of the former Silverdome site were expected to be completed by the end of November 2018. The project cost an estimated $250 million. ==Significant events==