RailRoadFan.com

Detroit believer, Red Wings, Tigers, and Little Cesar's pizza owner Mike Ilitch has passed away at 87 years old. He is being praised as a great person, sports team owner, businessman, and Detroiter.

http://www.freep.com/story/money/busine ... /91475642/

Much of what Illitch did was for Mike Illitch and family. Most or all of his downtown developments had many year tax abatements and paid no taxes. In the case of his taxpayer stadiums, there was no spillover business for the local businesses, because everything was at the stadiums, the games, food, drink, souvenirs, parking, etc. People came to the stadium, ate, drank, watched the game, and beat it out of town.
Illitchs stadiums were paid for by the taxpayers of Michigan. Illitch bought up all the vacant buildings in the Cass Corridor, surrounding his downtown empire, for pennies on the dollar. Then he sold them to the Stadium Authority for big bucks, and they built him a stadium...err, two stadiums. Instead of building the stadiums in different areas of the city, to help other areas develop, he demanded they all be built within spitting distance of the Fox Theater. And the city doesn't get a dime of revenue from the hockey arena. And Illitch gets it rent free for 95 years! That's right, 95 years, rent free. Apparently the city is supposed to be eternally grateful Illitch didn't take his team and go elsewhere. And all those jobs? Most are selling hot dogs, taking tickets, and working the concession stands for minimum wage.

http://www.sportsbusinessnews.com/conte ... ings-arena

Why not tell us what you really think?

Smart businessman.

Why not tell us what you really think?

And furthermore....................

http://www.deadlinedetroit.com/articles ... KD9DFUrI-d

Instead of building the stadiums in different areas of the city, to help other areas develop, he demanded they all be built within spitting distance of the Fox Theater.

The Olympia wasn't downtown. Red Wing fans stopped going there in the 1970s.

I know where it was. I grew up in the W Grand Blvd/ Lawton area, waaaaaaay back in the 40s. We used to walk to the Olympia. I saw Ricky Nelson at the Olympia in the 50s. I went to many Red Wing games at the Olympia, before they started wearing those weenie helmets and face masks. All the hockey players had a few teeth missing.
They used to carry them off the ice, bleeding like a stuck pig. The team doctor sewed them up in the locker room, and they were back on the ice for the third period. I saw Gordie Howe, Ted Lindsay and Alex Delvichio in their heyday. The arch enemy at the time, was Maurice Richard of the Montreal Canadians. Good times.

I'm not posting this to get into a debate. I just wanted to show that the guy wasn't all bad

Little Caesar's founder made sure Rosa Parks had appropriate housing in her last years

Civil rights icon Rosa Parks is remembered across the nation for her refusal to give up her seat on a city bus one fateful day in Alabama.

On December 1, 1955, in the city of Montgomery, Parks refused to obey bus driver James F. Blake’s order to give up her seat in the “colored” section to a white passenger — after the “whites only” section was filled.

A businessman who appreciated the life and actions of the woman known as "the mother of the civil rights movement" made sure she had safe housing in her later years. Mike Ilitch, founder of Little Caesars Pizza chain and owner of the Detroit Red Wings and Detroit Tigers, made a difference in Parks’ life, without fanfare or attention.

Ilitch died last week at age 87. Several articles about him in recent days have revealed that for years he paid Parks' rent in a safe neighborhood after she was assaulted and robbed in her Detroit home in 1994, The Week reported. Parks, an Alabama native, moved to Detroit in 1957.

When Ilitch read about Parks' robbery and assault, he notified mutual friends and let them know he was going to pay her rent for as long as necessary.

Parks, then 81, moved to a safe apartment building, where she lived until her death in 2005.

Their mutual friend, Judge Damon Keith, said Ilitch was always doing kind things for others. "It's important that people know what Mr. Mike Ilitch did for Ms. Rosa Parks because it's symbolic of what he has always done for the people of our city," he told The Sports Business Daily in 2014.

It's unknown exactly how long Ilitch paid Parks' rent, said USA Today. Riverfront Associates, owner of Riverfront Apartments, decided in 2004 to allow Parks to live there rent-free until her death.

We can only hope parents will continue to teach the lessons of Ms. Parks — bravery, certainty, and working in your own way to advance society. “The only tired I was, was tired of giving in,” she said later of her actions on the city bus that day.

Perhaps children will learn, too, that the best measure of success is what you are humbly and quietly able to do for others — as Mike Ilitch so admirably did, keeping an American icon safe.