A DIAMOND IN THE HEART OF DOWNTOWN:
STADIUM-DRIVEN URBAN RENEWAL, 1955-2000
By
Jesse James Draper

A DISSERTATION
Submitted to
Michigan State University
in partial fulfillment of the requirements
for the degree of
History—Doctor of Philosophy
2014

ABSTRACT
A DIAMOND IN THE HEART OF DOWNTOWN:
STADIUM-DRIVEN URBAN RENEWAL, 1955-2000
By
Jesse James Draper
This dissertation analyzes the processes behind post-World War II stadium-driven urban renewal
in three major American cities: Los Angeles, Chicago and Detroit. The historical and political
contexts varied dramatically within these cities, allowing for an analysis of similarities and
reoccurring trends in the processes of stadium-driven urban renewal that transcend the
limitations inherent in an analysis of one particular place or time in history. This historical
analysis of stadium construction provides a lens through which we can better understand the
processes behind postwar urban renewal over the second half of the twentieth century. Previous
scholarship on stadium construction, as discussed in the introduction, has demonstrated the welldocumented motives of Major League Baseball owners who see publicly-funded stadiums as a
means to dramatically increase revenues while catering to an increasingly upper-class clientele.
And yet, even with more than three decades of scholarship that has definitively shown stadium
construction to be a poor investment of public dollars, public officials all over the country
continue to find ways to invest public money into private enterprise with little, if any, tangible
return on investment for taxpayers.
American cities are complex organisms made up of multiple clusters of associated people
whose reasons for association vary as widely as kinship, race, gender, community, faith,
employment, commercial partnership, or political affiliation. These clusters, which yield very
different levels of influence and power, have competing visions and interests regarding the

development of the city. And when it comes to stadium construction, or any other form of urban
redevelopment, there are varying levels of personal impact; some clusters have more at stake.
Losing a baseball team is extremely painful for local fans. The loss of local homes, businesses,
and entire communities in the process of stadium development has adversely impacted the lives
of local citizens. Major League Baseball owners always profit from the construction of a new
stadium. But for this unequal return on investment to have continued successfully for so long,
there must be clusters of association within the urban power structures that also, as they say,
“make a killing” in these deals.
This dissertation examines the clusters, or the connected associated interests, involved in the
process of stadium construction. The term coalition is often used in public discussion and
scholarship in the field, but there are some associated interests involved in these processes that
are not overtly named (often intentionally) in the public presentation of these clusters. Moreover,
one often finds “stadium coalitions” working with “pro-growth coalitions” with connections to
“political coalitions” all simultaneously involved in these processes. This dissertation will first
identify, and then articulate, the general processes and interests that form and influence those
larger clusters of urban power and demonstrate that urban power nexuses continue to be shaped
primarily by race, political connections and ultimately, and the will of the private sector. The
history of postwar stadium-driven urban renewal demonstrates that the American city has been,
and continues to be, refashioned for those willing to spend their discretionary income in rising
urban tourist economies, often to the detriment of a once proud and increasingly displaced urban
working class.

Copyright by
JESSE JAMES DRAPER
2014

This dissertation is dedicated to my incredibly supportive lover, Natalie, and to our three
beautiful children, Harley, Jack and Wesley. I love you all.

v

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

I would first like to thank the members of my doctoral committee, Maureen Flanagan, Sayuri
Shimizu, Michael Stamm, and Douglas Noverr. This would not be possible without their tireless
faith in me as a scholar and their commitment to my success.
I would also like to thank Professors Malcolm Magee, Peter Knupfer, Pero Dagbovie, David
Bailey, John Bratzel, and David Stowe. Special thanks to my colleagues in graduate school who
offered sage advice and great friendship: Morgan Shipley, Jack Taylor, Darren Brown, Ernesto
Mireles, Mike Spencer, Tony Kolenic, Adam Capitanio, Ben Philips, Aaron McCullough, Ben
Dettmar and many others.
Thank you to Susan Matheson for editing the final dissertation for submission.
I especially want to thank my mom and dad, Jim and Janna Draper, my brother Jason and the rest
of my family and friends for their love and support throughout the years.

vi

TABLE OF CONTENTS
LIST OF FIGURES........................................................................................................................ix
INTRODUCTION
Stadium-Driven Urban Development..............................................................................................1
Building the Monopoly......................................................................................................14
Maintaining the Cartel: Managing the Economic Structure..............................................18
Los Angeles.......................................................................................................................27
Chicago..............................................................................................................................30
Detroit................................................................................................................................33
Conclusion.........................................................................................................................35
CHAPTER 1
Conquerors of the West:
Julian Chavez, Walter O'Malley and the Construction of Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles.........38
Julian Chavez: The Conquest of Los Angeles (Last of the Conquistadors)......................42
The Immigrant Californio: A Member of Early Los Angeles' Urban Elite.......................48
We Already Have Baseball in California...........................................................................54
The Battle of Chavez Ravine: It Was Over Before the Century Began.............................59
Walter O'Malley: "An heir to both the Wigwam political tradition and the Irish American
practice of blarney and charm.".........................................................................................62
Postwar Urban Development: Cities/Suburbs, Transportation Infrastructure and Land
Use.....................................................................................................................................65
In Search of the Taj O'Malley............................................................................................73
The Battle of Chavez Ravine and the Significance of Dodger Stadium............................76
Conclusions........................................................................................................................78
CHAPTER 2
Building Community:
Bringing the Suburbs to Chicago's South Side..............................................................................83
Baseball and Building Community....................................................................................85
Mechanism's of Entrenchment: Public/Private Partnership in the Development of
Chicago..............................................................................................................................89
The Corporate-Center Strategy..........................................................................................95
Exploring the Options: Finding a Politically Feasible and Mutually Agreeable
Site...................................................................................................................................101
Urban Planning by Concession: The Tempo and the Tone of Negotiations Driven by
the Team...........................................................................................................................104
Building Community in the South Loop..........................................................................109
Community Makeover: The White Sox Begin Courting the Suburbs.............................116
Suburbs and Suburban Stadiums.....................................................................................118
White-Collar Communities..............................................................................................121
He's No O'Malley.............................................................................................................124
Mayor Washington Gets His Team?................................................................................126
vii

The Dignity of Resistance: The Battle for South Armour Square...................................129
Mechanisms of Entrenchment: Disinvestment and Isolation...........................................131
Conclusions......................................................................................................................137
CHAPTER 3
Little Caesar Brings the Coliseums to Detroit.............................................................................141
In Detroit They Call it Urban Crisis................................................................................142
Keeping Up with the Joneses...........................................................................................150
A Different Kind of Legacy.............................................................................................156
A Confluence of Timing and Vision................................................................................158
Little Caesar Restores the Faith of the People.................................................................162
A Symbolic Gate to the City............................................................................................164
An Enterprising Mayor....................................................................................................171
Let the Games Begin: Diversifying Detroit's Tourism Economy....................................176
Back to the Business of Baseball.....................................................................................188
Conclusions......................................................................................................................199
CONCLUSION
The Suburban Re-Conquest of the American City......................................................................202
Los Angeles: If You Build It...........................................................................................207
Chicago: Restoring an Icon and the Power of Reinsdorf................................................209
Detroit: Emergency Managers, Bankruptcy and a $650 Million Entertainment
Complex...........................................................................................................................212
A Placemaking Vision for Downtown Detroit.................................................................214
APPENDICES.............................................................................................................................218
Appendix A: Casino/Sports/Entertainment-Driven Development...................................219
Appendix B: Future Site for new Detroit Red Wings Arena...........................................220
BIBLIOGRAPHY........................................................................................................................221

viii

LIST OF FIGURES

Figure 1: Casino/Sports/Entertainment-Driven Development................................................219
Figure 2: Future Site for new Detroit Red Wings Arena.........................................................220

ix

INTRODUCTION
Stadium-Driven Urban Development
Cities’ willingness to believe the claims of these stadium boosters, despite all
evidence to the contrary, reminds Robert Baade of Pascal’s Wager. “The idea
was somebody asked if [French philosopher Blaise Pascal] believed in God, and
he said, ‘Yes, I believe in God because I can’t take a chance that there isn’t
one.’” Baade says, “I think in some ways that resembles city attitudes with regard
to this thing. I think that people who make decisions about these things say to
themselves that we believe there is an economic impact because we really can’t
take the chance that there isn’t one. In part I think that’s a reflection of the state
of urban America.”1
Stadium construction is a process of producing semi-public space, a process that began in
earnest during the first decades of the twentieth century. Originally, stadiums were privately
developed structures built by wealthy, politically connected entrepreneurs seeking to capitalize
on the growing public interest in organized sport.2 Between 1955 and 2000, developers, city
officials, and team owners in Los Angeles, Chicago, and Detroit engaged in the process of
stadium development with varying results. These processes offer concrete historical examples of
the forces that shaped the policy and practice of postwar urban development and renewal
programs that contributed to the production of urban semi-public social spaces.3 Studied together
as comparative urban history, the examples of stadium construction in Los Angeles, Chicago,
and Detroit elucidate the power nexuses behind baseball stadium-driven urban development in
American cities.

1

Joanna Cagan and Neil DeMause, Field of Schemes: How the Great Stadium Swindle Turns Public Money into
Private Profit (Monroe, ME: Common Courage Press, 1998), 41.
2
Steven A. Riess, City Games: The Evolution of American Urban Society and the Rise of Sports (Champaign:
University of Illinois Press, 1991), 227.
3
In City Games Riess defines semi-public spaces as “privately owned but open for a fee to the general public” (38).
That was true of the stadiums built around the turn of the twentieth century; however, the stadiums built after World
War II were increasingly funded by public tax dollars and other municipal government subsidies. A clearer
definition of the term within the context of this study would be “publicly owned spaces open for a fee to the general
public,” constructed to generate profits for private team owners, increase commercial activity in areas surrounding
the stadium, and provide entertainment for large public audiences. Seemingly an exception, privately funded Dodger
Stadium was built on municipally owned land, prepared at the city’s expense.

1

The stadium-driven urban redevelopment model, in conjunction with racialized urban
planning (described, for example, by Thomas Sugrue for Detroit, and by Bradford Hunt, by
Arnold Hirsch, and by Gregory Squires and colleagues for Chicago)4 directly affected the
residents of neighborhoods, particularly in relation to employment, housing, changes in public
transportation, and increasing commercialization. The stadiums built in Los Angeles, Chicago,
and Detroit faced significant, if not ultimately effective, opposition from city residents. In
fiercely contested battles over urban property rights, the proper municipal use of that property,
and the symbolically powerful cultural meanings ascribed to urban property, coalitions of city
politicians, business interests, and civic boosters built monuments to civic pride and the immense
(private) profitability of socially produced, privately controlled, semi-public spaces. For just like
towering skyscrapers, housing projects, and mass-transit, baseball stadiums are powerful urban
symbols. For pro-growth urban coalitions (made up of team owners, the press, and the local
business interests and politicians that stand to profit from the construction of new stadiums),
these stadiums symbolize urban renewal, economic prosperity, and the internationally recognized
prestige afforded to “Major League Cities.” However, for the small businesses and residents
displaced by new stadium projects, they often symbolize the corrupt urban political processes
that serve powerful commercial interests, to the detriment of the tax-paying residents forced to
fund stadium development and the poor communities of racial minorities targeted for slum
clearance.
On one level, municipal authorities, in their efforts to redevelop failing commercial
districts or develop areas with untapped commercial potential, have capitulated to the
4

Thomas J. Sugrue, The Origins of the Urban Crisis: Race and Inequality in Postwar Detroit (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 1996); D. Bradford Hunt, Blueprint for Disaster: The Unraveling of Chicago Public Housing
(Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2009); Arnold R. Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto: Race and Housing in
Chicago, 1940–1960 (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 1998); Gregory D. Squires et al., Race, Class and the
Response to Urban Decline (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987).

2

manipulation of baseball owners who threaten to relocate their team unless their demands for a
publicly funded new stadium and extensive tax subsidies are met. City politicians and boosters
who are fearful of losing their status as a “Major League City” sell these stadium projects to the
public through the dissemination of overly optimistic financial projections. Such reports,
presented by a financially and politically controlled local media, promise urban renewal and a
boost to the local economy through the creation of additional jobs and commercial investment.
This economic model, driven by Major League Baseball’s antitrust monopoly which perpetually
maintains an environment where the demand always exceeds the supply, fosters intercity
competition for teams that can prove to be detrimental to residents and businesses located in
areas targeted for stadium construction.
At the same time urban development of any kind involves incredibly complex processes
and a vast web of urban power coalitions, often with competing interests. A thorough
examination of those processes demonstrates that changes in the economic and political
conditions of major cities have proven to affect stadium-driven urban development policies as
significantly (if not more so) than Major League Baseball’s profit-driven ownership. As
American cities have transitioned from industrial and manufacturing economies to economies
dominated by the service and entertainment sectors, municipal leaders have looked at stadium
development as an attractive way to boost both the cities’ emerging tourist economies and their
symbolic status as “Major League Cities.”5 And when the boosters finally succeed, there are
always (what one scholar calls) “Major League Losers,”6 often the poor racial and ethnic

5

For the most part, professional sports stadiums tap into and help form regional rather than national tourist
economies, such as national parks, Disney World and historic landmarks.
6
Mark S. Rosentraub, Major League Losers: The Real Cost of Sports and Who’s Paying for It (New York: Basic
Books, 1997).

3

minorities living in older neighborhoods targeted by city officials as areas of urban blight in need
of renewal.
Race was a dominant thread in the history of postwar urban development efforts in what
scholars have called “the age of white flight.”7 Suburbanization gave those living in increasingly
crowded and racially diversified big cities a way to get out and form their own communities. Of
course, that typically only applied to whites who had the financial means to buy newly developed
suburban homes. Racial minorities with the means to buy homes in or near white suburban
communities were regularly denied access through the use of racial covenants and intimidation.8
Poor Southern African Americans, Puerto Ricans and Puerto Rican Americans, Mexicans and
Mexican Americans, and other “colored” ethnic groups migrating into cities of the North to find
manufacturing jobs were left to fight over the scraps of older, decaying inner-city neighborhoods.
In Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles, Eric
Avila cites this particularly relevant example from an oral history given by a Brooklyn native
who suggests that the decision of Dodgers owner Walter O’Malley to move the Dodgers out of
Brooklyn was a part of that “white flight” process: “I guess O’Malley was like everyone else in
Brooklyn. As long as you’re not my neighbor . . . it was okay. But once [Puerto Ricans and
African Americans] started to live in the neighborhood . . . it was time to move out.”9 From the
nation’s founding, America’s development both at the local and national level have been shaped
7

Examples of recent scholarship dealing with the problems of “white flight” include: Eric Avila, Popular Culture in
the Age of White Flight: Fear and Fantasy in Suburban Los Angeles (Berkeley: University of California Press,
2004); Kevin M. Kruse, White Flight: Atlanta and the Making of Modern Conservatism (Princeton: Princeton
University Press, 2005); Sugrue, Origins of the Urban Crisis; Rachael A. Woldoff, White Flight/Black Flight: The
Dynamics of Racial Change in an American Neighborhood (New York: Cornell University Press, 2011).
8
Sugrue, Orgins of the Urban Crisis; Robert O. Self, American Babylon: Race and the Struggle for Postwar
Oakland (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2003); Don Parson, Making a Better World: Public Housing, the
Red Scare, and the Direction of Modern Los Angeles (Minneapolis: University of Minnesota, 2005); Robert M.
Fogelson, Bourgeois Nightmares: Suburbia, 1870–1930 (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 2005); Becky M.
Nicolaides, My Blue Heaven: Life and Politics in the Working-Class Suburbs of Los Angeles, 1920–1965 (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2002); Roger Biles, Richard J. Daley: Politics, Race, and the Governing of Chicago
(DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1995).
9
Avila, Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight, 151.

4

by migration, racial difference, and conquest justified on the basis of that difference. The story of
Los Angeles (presented in chapter 1) articulates the transnational development of that process
from Spain to Mexico to Los Angeles over the span of a century.
In the 1950s, many of the older industrial manufacturing cities in the Rust Belt had begun
extensive urban renewal programs centered on slum clearance. Urban planners and municipal
leaders argued that the best way to revive cities suffering from the centripetal forces of white
flight and commercial disinvestment was to demolish sections of the city suffering from “urban
blight.” In his seminal work on the crisis in postwar Detroit, Thomas Sugrue argued, “City
officials expected that the eradication of ‘blight’ would increase city tax revenue, revitalize the
decaying urban core, and improve the living conditions of the poorest slum dwellers.”10 These
assumptions were at the core of urban renewal policies in cities throughout the nation, such as
Chicago, Camden, Boston, and New York.11 Municipal leaders and boosters looking to generate
public support for the construction of new stadiums in the urban core have continued to work
from these assumptions. Thus, over the second half of the twentieth century, stadium
construction has increasingly become part of the broader discourse of post–World War II urban
renewal policies.
When the Dodgers left Brooklyn in 1958, Los Angeles was still a relatively young
metropolis with growing manufacturing and entertainment economies. One of the great
advantages available to the developers of metropolitan Los Angeles was vast tracts of open land,
a luxury that many of the older cities located in the northeast corridor of the country had long
10

Sugrue, Orgins of the Urban Crisis, 48–49.
Biles, Richard J. Daley; Howard Gillette Jr., Camden after the Fall: Decline and Renewal in a Post-Industrial
City (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 2005); Alexander Von Hoffman, House by House, Block by
Block: The Rebirth of America’s Urban Neighborhoods (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2003); Jon C. Teaford,
The Rough Road to Renaissance: Urban Revitalization in America, 1940–1985 (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1990).
11

5

since exhausted. Moreover, O’Malley, who moved the Dodgers from Brooklyn to Los Angeles,
benefited from the good luck of historical timing. The leaders of Los Angeles were looking to
redevelop their “downtown” right at the moment when the United States began to dramatically
expand its infrastructure to accommodate automobiles and the suburbanites who preferred cars to
public transportation by rail. Ironically, although O’Malley sought to follow his “preferred
customers” out to the suburbs, his deal with Los Angeles put him on the northern edge of
downtown—right on the site of what was formerly a working-class neighborhood of Mexican
and Mexican American migrants. Conveniently, the site also happened to be located at the
intersection of California’s new and growing highway system.
In a discussion about race and attendance at baseball games in his work on the
development of American sports and cities, sports historian Steven A. Riess points to research by
economist Roger G. Noll, who in 1974 “found a negative correlation between attendance at
baseball games . . . and the presence of a large black population” near the stadium. Riess
continued, noting that “Noll did not identify a direct linkage between urban decay and racial
composition but pointed out that cities which have . . . old baseball parks in undesirable
neighborhoods were mainly in large northern and Midwestern cities with relatively large black
populations.”12 In this respect the owners of baseball teams in these older cities—like Boston’s
Lou Perini, as well as O’Malley and Horace Stoneham in New York—were no different than
other business owners trying to find a solution to white flight from America’s cities after the
Second World War.
In It’s Hardly Sportin’: Stadiums, Neighborhoods and the New Chicago, authors Costas
Spirou and Larry Bennett suggest that even as late as the mid-1980s, the same concerns over the

12

Riess, City Games, 248; Roger G. Noll, Government and the Sports Business: Papers Prepared for a Conference
of Experts, with an Introduction and Summary (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1974), 128–30, 140.

6

racial composition of the neighborhoods were shared by Chicago White Sox owners Jerry
Reinsdorf and Eddie Einhorn. Citing an article written by Phil Hersh for the Chicago Tribune,
the authors point to a growing perception that the predominantly African American
neighborhoods surrounding Comiskey Park on Chicago’s South Side were increasingly viewed
by fans as poor and dangerous, particularly after the riots of the late 1960s.13 And the numbers
backed up the view that this was an area of poor people. According to data cited by Spirou and
Bennett from a 1995 study of South Armour Square:
In 1989, the neighborhood’s median family income was $7,000, and the majority
of the households were headed by women (82%). Most of the households
received public aid or Social Security. The population was also aged: 43 percent
were more than fifty-five years old.14
Beginning with Dodger Stadium in Chavez Ravine in Los Angeles, and throughout the
second half of the twentieth century, stadiums built as part of urban redevelopment projects often
were part of larger gentrification plans. As is the case with any form of urban development, there
are competing interests with very different ideas about how the targeted public space should be
utilized and who should benefit or profit from its redevelopment. As the extensive scholarship in
urban history has clearly demonstrated, in the end, those coalitions with the most power and the
most to gain financially always win. The profitable city always trumps the livable city.15
With relatively few exceptions16 the extant literature on stadium construction focuses on
the power of Major League Baseball’s antitrust exemption as the central force behind stadium-

13

Costas Spirou and Larry Bennett, It’s Hardly Sportin’: Stadiums, Neighborhoods, and the New Chicago (DeKalb:
Northern Illinois University Press, 2003), 65; Phil Hersh, “Comiskey Park Bears Skid Mark of White Flight,”
Chicago Tribune, July 13, 1986.
14
Spirou and Bennett, It’s Hardly Sportin’, 32; Voorhees Neighborhood Center, “South Armour Square
Neighborhood Coalition Redevelopment Project Report” (Chicago: Voorhees Neighborhood Center, 1995).
15
Maureen A. Flanagan, Seeing with Their Hearts: Chicago Women and the Vision of the Good City, 1871–1933
(Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002). See Hunt, Blueprint for Disaster, 135, for one example of post–WWII
use of federal housing funds for private gain.
16
Notable exceptions include: Riess, Stadium Games; Robert C. Trumpbour, The New Cathedrals: Politics And
Media in the History of Stadium Construction (Syracuse, NY: Syracuse University Press, 2006); Jay Weiner,

7

driven urban renewal. That is not to suggest that scholars in the field overlook the role of urban
politicians and growth coalitions in the process of stadium construction. They often present the
actions of urban leaders, however, as a defensive reaction to the threat of relocation by baseball
owners who have monopoly control over the territorial structures of Major League Baseball
(MLB). But as John Mollenkopf clearly articulates in his study on urban political economy, The
Contested City, “Progrowth political coalitions . . . provide a framework for the creation and
exercise of power. They are not a transmission belt by which outside interests manipulate or
directly control government.”17 Stadium-driven urban renewal, then, is a result of the dialectic
between the economic and political forces at work in urban development. A clear understanding
of the stadium-driven urban renewal process must elucidate the political power nexuses working
in concert with outside commercial interests in their efforts to build a new stadium. An overemphasis on the economic factors behind stadium construction neglects the very political
structures that make such development possible.
Critical studies specifically dealing with the effects of stadium construction and
relocation first entered into the historiography of American sports with the 1974 publication of a
Brookings Institution study entitled Government and the Sports Business, which seriously
addressed the policy of publicly subsidized stadiums.18 There were a handful of publications
released in the mid-to-late 1980s dealing with stadium construction,19 but as Steven A. Riess
suggests, it was not until the stadium boom of the 1990s that the issues of public subsidies and

Stadium Games: Fifty Years of Big League Greed and Bush League Boondoggles (Minneapolis: University of
Minnesota Press, 2000).
17
John H. Mollenkopf, The Contested City (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1983), 4.
18
Benjamin A. Okner, “Subsidies of Stadiums and Arenas,” in Government and the Sports Business, ed. Roger G.
Noll (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution, 1974), 325–48.
19
Notable examples include: George Lipsitz, “Sports Stadia and Urban Development: A Tale of Three Cities,”
Journal of Sport and Social Issues 8 (1984): 1–18; and Neil Sullivan, The Dodgers Move West (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1989). Steven A. Riess also briefly commented on stadium construction in City Games (1989).

8

the role of government in stadium construction “became a cottage industry among economists.”20
With the exception of a few historical studies about individual stadiums (for example, Bruce
Kuklick’s To Every Thing a Season: Shibe Park and Urban Philadelphia, 1909–1976), the flood
of literature on stadiums published during the previous decade has focused almost exclusively on
what many of those scholars have labeled “corporate welfare.”21 Some of these works will be
discussed in greater detail later in an effort to contextualize my own research within what has
become, more or less, the generally accepted understanding within the field regarding how
stadium economics work in a largely one-sided manner.
At the turn of the twenty-first century, case studies on individual stadiums or cities became
an increasingly common methodological approach in the scholarship on stadium construction,
which began to expand its scope beyond public subsidies (though that issue is still dominant in
the literature). As stadium-driven urban redevelopment models were pushed by local politicians
and boosters with the assurance that the new stadiums would prove economically beneficial to
city residents and surrounding businesses, scholars released a steady flow of evidence to the
contrary. More recent scholarship on the role of the media in stadium development, most notably
the work of communications professor Robert C. Trumpbour, demonstrates that financial
interests most often dictated how the stadium construction projects were presented by the press.
Moreover, the nostalgic, or retro, designs of the new stadiums themselves have been presented to
the public in a manner that articulates a mythic American past in an effort to justify the economic
interests of those in positions of power. Baseball in particular has a long and successful history

20

Steven A. Riess, “Historical Perspectives on Sports and Public Policy,” The Economics and Politics of Sports
Facilities, ed. Wilbur C. Rich (Westport: Quorum Books, 2000), 13–52, 14.
21
A short list of some of the titles released over that time span clearly underscores the dominance of works of that
nature: Baseball and Billions: A Probing Look Inside the Big Business of Our National Pastime (1994); Pay Dirt:
The Business of Professional Team Sports (1997); Sports, Jobs, and Taxes: The Economic Impact of Sports Teams
and Stadiums (1997); Major League Losers: The Real Cost of Sports and Who’’s Paying for It (1999).

9

of invoking artificial myths—created by the entrepreneurs and controllers of the game—as the
sport’s dominant promotional vehicle.22
In his review of Daniel Rosenweig’s Retro Ball Parks: Instant History, Baseball, and the
New American City (2005), Trumpbour states that “Rosenweig offers compelling evidence that
the stadium experience of both early and contemporary baseball was and still is rife with artifice.
Control and freedom are at the core of what he uses as indicators.”23 Discussing the lingering
persistence of racial and ethnic differences following the Progressive Era—despite claims by
reformers who lauded the socially unifying effect of the shared stadium experience—Stephen
Hardy suggests that only the literature of baseball history has turned a blind eye to such
criticisms.
For some reason, scholars love to wax romantic about the national pastime. For
some, it is the lure of the stadium itself. According to Bruce Kuklick, a place like
Philadelphia’s Shibe Park (built in 1909, razed in 1976) acts as a medium of
collective memory: “Meaning and the items that bear it are fragile. The meanings
accrue over time in their visible embodiments, artifacts like Shibe Park.”24
According to Trumpbour, “The push to build new retro stadiums has been fueled by what
Eric Hobsbawm (1983) has identified as ‘the invention of tradition,’ what he argues are ‘a set of
practices, normally governed by overtly or tacitly set rules . . . of a ritual or symbolic nature . . .
which automatically implies continuity with...a suitable past.’”25 Kuklick’s suggestion that Shibe
Park was capable of unifying “generations, races, and ethnic groups in the collective memory of
a special place ‘where uncommon deeds gave people a sense of commonality,’"26 posits the

22

One example would be Albert G. Spalding’s elaborate “origin” myth about baseball’s American founding by
Abner Doubleday. See James A. Vlasich, A Legend for the Legendary: The Origin of the Baseball Hall of Fame
(Bowling Green, KY: Bowling Green State University Popular Press, 1990).
23
Robert C. Trumpbour, “Sport and the Urban Landscape,” Journal of Urban History 33 (2007): 848–56, 853.
24
Stephen Hardy, “Sport in Urbanizing America: A Historical Review,” Journal of Urban History 23, no. 6 (1997):
687.
25
Robert C. Trumpbour, “Rituals, Invented Traditions, and Shifting Power: The Role of Communication in the
History of Stadium Construction,” Journal of Communication Inquiry 31, no. 4 (2007): 325.
26
Bruce Kuklick quoted in Hardy, “Sport in Urbanizing America,” 687.

10

mythos of the stadium squarely within the tradition of the early twentieth-century boosters of
America’s “national pastime.” Moreover, the “invention of tradition” in urban development is
not confined to the construction of retro ballparks. As demonstrated by urban scholarship such as
Dennis R. Judd and Susan S. Fainstein’s The Tourist City, since the end of World War II, many
urban planners and civic leaders have sought to revitalize American cities by commodifying
historic sites (both real and contrived) and developing tourism-based economies.27
As private, unregulated businesses, however, MLB teams are not required to open their
books to public scrutiny. And as the revelation of their legitimate book and operating revenues
could seriously undermine their leverage with cities in stadium negotiations, there is no reason to
expect disclosure. As such, the majority of scholarly work on the economics of MLB and
stadium construction must work from carefully qualified estimates. After presenting a summary
of their data on stadium subsidies in Pay Dirt: The Business of Professional Team Sports, James
Quirk and Rodney D. Fort remark, “The point that has to be kept in mind is that these figures
underestimate the amounts of subsidies provided by the stadiums and arenas, because data were
not available for all investments in the facilities subsequent to original construction.”
Nonetheless, due to the shocking results of their conservative estimates, Quirk and Fort point out
that “if the data here reported are in fact typical of publicly owned arenas and stadiums in
general, then such facilities housing major league sports teams would have been providing
around $500 million in subsidies to tenants in 1989.” 28
Given the size of the subsidies that these and other scholars have estimated, it seems
relatively clear that the subject demands attention even in the face of such limitations. Some
27

Dennis R. Judd and Susan S. Fainstein, eds., The Tourist City (New Haven, CT: Yale University Press, 1999). See
also Alison Isenberg, Downtown America: A History of the Place and the People Who Made It (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2004) for other examples.
28
James Quirk and Rodney D. Fort, Pay Dirt: The Business of Professional Team Sports (Princeton, NJ: Princeton
University Press, 1992), 171.

11

scholars, such as Kevin J. Delaney and Rick Eckstein, have even gone so far as to employ the
reporter’s tactic of “not naming names” in an attempt to gain insider access to individuals who
can offer insight into the complex processes and power struggles that go into stadium
development and construction.29 While this somewhat unorthodox approach makes it difficult (if
not impossible) to check references, it does offer a fresh perspective to use in conjunction with
the more traditional economic analyses from scholars like Andrew Zimbalist, Mark Rosentraub,
and Quirk and Fort, upon whose work Delaney and Eckstein build.
Still other scholars, such as urban economist Charles Santo, have questioned some of the
assumptions from which many recent scholars of stadium construction have worked. Santo
challenged the utility of a frequently cited study by arguably one of the most influential scholars
in the field, Robert Baade, because of the inherent problems of criticizing stadiums built today
based on his 1989 data. Baade and Richard Dye found primarily negative impacts associated
with stadium development, which they briefly explained as follows:
Stadiums divert economic development toward labor-intensive, relatively low
unskilled labor (low-wage) activities. To the extent that this developmental path
diverges from less labor-intensive, more highly skilled (high-wage) activities
characteristic of other economies within the region, it would be expected that the
sports-minded area would experience a falling share of regional income.30
In his own work, Santo suggests that “the stadiums of the recent construction boom have been
built amidst a very different context than those of the previous generation. The new findings
reported here, along with a closer examination of previous analyses, indicate that context
matters.”31 And while I am no economist, there would seem to be merit to that argument. Using

29

Kevin J. Delaney and Rick Eckstein, Public Dollars, Private Stadiums: The Battle over Building Sports Stadiums
(New Brunswick, NJ: Rutgers University Press, 2003).
30
Robert Baade and Richard Dye, “The Impact of Stadiums and Professional Sports on Metropolitan Area
Development,” Growth and Change 21 (Spring 1990): 10.
31
Charles Santo, “The Economic Impact of Sports Stadiums: Recasting the Analysis in Context,” Journal of Urban
Affairs 27, no. 2 (2005): 190.

12

data from 1984 to 2001, Santo found what he termed “sports-related variables”—gaining or
losing an NFL or MLB franchise or stadium construction—“to be positively correlated with
regional income share for eight of . . . nineteen metropolitan areas.”32
Santo’s work would seem to go against prevailing attitudes among scholars regarding the
now near universally assumed negative impact of stadium construction. And given that we are
looking at less than a 50 percent positive impact rate among the nineteen metropolitan areas
studied, this evidence hardly overturns the general consensus among scholars like Zimbalist,
Rosentraub, etc. But it is worth noting here before we start sifting through pessimistic titles like
Major League Losers, Field of Schemes, and It’s Hardly Sportin’. Even Zimbalist, discussing
new subsidies provided by MLB for stadium construction costs, has recently suggested that “if
baseball still uses its monopoly power to leverage public subsidies for stadium deals, it seems to
be practicing a more benevolent form of monopoly these days.”33 This may be so, but the
taxpayers of New York who were taken for roughly $1.8 billion dollars in tax-free bonds as new
stadiums opened for both the Yankees and the Mets in 2009 might not see the $230 million that
Zimbalist estimates MLB contributed to the construction of the new Yankee Stadium as all that
benevolent. So long as MLB retains its antitrust exemption, the monopoly is secure. The
argument that new sports stadiums have a positive and substantial economic impact has largely
been dispelled, or at least heavily qualified. As my research focuses on other factors in stadiumdriven urban development, I assume (along with the majority of scholars in the field) that the
economic benefits of stadium construction to their host cities are largely negligible.

32

Ibid., 177.
Andrew Zimbalist, “More Benevolence in Stadium Games,” The Bottom Line: Observations and Arguments on
the Sports Business (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006), 165.
33

13

Building the Monopoly
Professional baseball in the United States has been commercially monopolized since the
end of the nineteenth century. Despite several challenges in court and the threat of Congressional
hearings, the commercial monopoly held by Major League Baseball has been legally exempt
from antitrust laws since 1914 when the New York Supreme Court ruled that baseball was “not a
commodity or an article of merchandise.”34 This legally sanctioned monopoly gives Major
League Baseball owners incredible leverage over urban leaders during the process of stadiumdriven urban development and renewal.
Contrary to the popular myth espoused by Major League Baseball and countless fans of
an older generation, organized professional baseball has always been about the money. Zimbalist
even suggests that money “was already a significant part of the game when the first professional
baseball team, the Cincinnati Red Stockings, was formed in 1869.”35 In the preface to the
twenty-fifth anniversary edition of Alan Trachtenberg’s seminal work, The Incorporation of
America, the author describes the process of incorporation that took place at the end of the
nineteenth century: a process driven by new notions of professionalism and efficiency that
forever changed American culture.
Measured on a scale of material well-being, incorporation has seemed a
spectacular success. But the same process that has raised the standard of living for
most (not all, by a long shot) Americans also installed top-down hierarchies,
inequalities of wealth and power threatening the values of democracy.36

34

Andrew Zimbalist, Baseball and Billions: A Probing Look Inside the Big Business of Our National Pastime,
updated ed. (New York: Basic Books, 1994), 9.
35
Ibid., 2.
36
Alan Trachtenberg, The Incorporation of America: Culture and Society in the Gilded Age, twenty-fifth anniv. ed.
(New York: Hill and Wang, 2007), xi.

14

The parallels to the development of professional baseball in the United States are striking. As
baseball steadily grew in popularity after the Civil War, savvy entrepreneurs began to realize that
there could be money made from this “pastime.”
According to Zimbalist, “teams began to enclose their ballparks and charge 10 to 25 cents
admission to see their games.”37 In 1871 the National Association of Professional Baseball
Players (NAPBP) was established with ten teams, but just five years later, William Hulbert, the
owner of the Chicago White Stockings, induced the best pitcher of the era, Albert (A. G.)
Spalding, to break his contract and bring three teammates with him from the Boston Red
Stockings. Once Hulbert had successfully built the strongest team in the league, he pulled out of
the NAPBP and established the National League of Professional Baseball clubs in 1876.
Zimbalist explains that Hulbert’s plan was “based on territorial monopolies and a restricted
number of financially solid franchises. Among other things, the reduction in the number of teams
would limit the demand for players, reduce salaries, and enhance profits.”
With this consolidation “baseball became a business with distinct, separate roles for
players and owners.” 38 The incorporation that Trachtenberg describes as changing US culture at
the turn of the twentieth century was clearly evident in the development of professional baseball
as well. And it knew no limits. As thanks for Spalding’s role in establishing the NL, Hulbert
awarded an exclusive contract to him (who with his brother conveniently opened a sporting
goods store in 1876) as the league’s supplier of goods.39
Beginning in 1879, at the suggestion of Boston owner Arthur Soden, the NL secretly
agreed to reserve five players. By 1890, the “reserve clause” was extended to cover all players.
The establishment of the reserve clause led to the periodic formation of rival leagues that
37

Zimbalist, Baseball and Billions, 1.
Ibid., 3.
39
Ibid., 3.
38

15

promised better contracts to players and freedom of movement from team to team. Between 1882
with the formation of the American Association (AA) and the 1903 agreement that brought the
rival American and National leagues together under Major League Baseball, four attempts were
made to create leagues that could rival the NL. In each case, the NL was able to fend off the
competitors by incorporating new teams into the league, generally headed by wealthy owners
happy to get a piece of the action.40
By the time of the 1903 agreement between Ban Johnson’s American League (AL) and
the NL, the monopoly had been once again firmly established, along with a universally accepted
reserve clause. It wasn’t until 1913 that the creation of another league, the Federal League (FL),
once again threatened to shake up the monopoly of professional baseball, and to the incredible
good fortune of MLB owners, the courts stepped in and legally secured their monopoly.
Beginning with the 1914 case of Hal Chase, one of the players who defected to the FL, the New
York State Supreme Court ruled that baseball was not subject to antitrust laws because it was “an
amusement, a sport, a game . . . not a commodity or an article of merchandise.” By 1915, MLB
had succeeded once again in squashing the rebellion by paying off FL owners with almost
$600,000 in compensation and by incorporating two of the FL owners into Major League
Baseball. Unhappy with the settlement, the owners of the Baltimore Terrapins filed an antitrust
suit against MLB in 1916. 41 After a string of appeals, the case went before the US Supreme
Court in 1922, led by Chief Justice Oliver Wendell Holmes, which upheld a ruling in a 1921
appeal that said that as a sport, baseball was not trade and thereby not subject to antitrust
legislation.42 And with that final decision, Major League Baseball became the United States’
only legally sanctioned, completely unregulated monopoly. With the help of the US Congress
40

Ibid., 4-7
Ibid., 9.
42
Rosentraub, Major League Losers, 84–86.
41

16

and the courts, professional sports teams have been given the power to create an artificial
scarcity of teams, control market territories, and retard the development of competing leagues. In
stadium development projects, then, urban leaders are dealing in a fixed rather than a free
market.43
Major League Baseball’s antitrust exemption has played a longstanding and integral role
in American society, particularly within the context of urban development. Federally supported
postwar urban renewal programs gave urban leaders the funding and political capital necessary
to entice owners to rebuild or relocate. As cities in the South and West experienced massive
growth as a result of increased wartime production and the development of interstate highways,
the politicians who represented those regions in Washington, DC, began to pressure Major
League Baseball to expand for the first time since professional baseball’s “National Agreement”
in 1903. In 1951 the Subcommittee on the Study of Monopoly Power of the House of
Representatives began hearings on baseball’s special status. Zimbalist reports that “when the
hearings opened in July, no less than eight antitrust cases were pending against MLB as well as
three bills that would have legislated antitrust exemption to baseball and other sports.”44 Over the
next ten years, baseball’s special status would be challenged in repeated congressional hearings,
proposed bills, and court challenges. Yet, the 1953 US Supreme Court case Toolson v. New York
Yankees made it clear that the court had no intention of overruling the federal baseball case from
1922 and that any further action on the matter should be taken up by Congress:
In Federal Baseball . . . this Court held that . . . professional baseball . . . was not
within the scope of the federal antitrust laws. Congress had the ruling under
consideration but has not seen fit to bring such business under these laws by
legislation. . . . We think that if there are evils in this field which now warrant
application to it of the antitrust laws it should be by legislation.45
43

Ibid., 73.
Zimbalist, Baseball and Billions, 13.
45
Rosentraub, Major League Losers, 86–87; Zimbalist, Baseball and Billions, 15.
44

17

The owners clearly knew what was at stake. Representative Emanuel Celler, who headed the
subcommittee, acknowledged: “I want to say . . . that I have never known, in my 35 years of
experience, of as great a lobby that descended upon the House than the organized baseball
lobby. . . . They came upon Washington like locusts.”46 With the courts and Congress refusing to
act, MLB has been able to stave off antitrust regulations through various compromises over time
that, while producing significant changes in the economic structure of the league, have left their
monopoly status largely unchallenged to this day.
Maintaining the Cartel: Managing the Economic Structure
According to Zimbalist, Major League Baseball has “three main sources of revenue:
broadcasting revenues, gate and stadium revenues, and licensing revenues.”47 MLB owners have
monopoly power in negotiations over each of these sources of revenue. With the advent of free
agency for players beginning with the 1976 basic agreement between the owners and the players
union, however, player salaries naturally began to rise. Although the fairly steady and evenly
distributed licensing revenue that helped to cover rising costs, gate receipts and broadcasting
revenues were tricky and subject to forces beyond the owners’ control. The sudden burst of
franchise relocations that began with Lou Perini’s move of his Boston Braves to Milwaukee in
1953 painfully demonstrated the importance of gate revenue to MLB owners.48 And the promise
of increased broadcasting revenue led the same franchise to relocate to Atlanta just thirteen years
later.49

46

Celler quoted in Zimbalist, Baseball and Billions, 14.
Ibid., 48.
48
In 1953 Lou Perini moved the Boston Braves into Milwaukee County Municipal Stadium, the first ballpark in the
United States to be financed with public funds. This began what is now standard practice for financing stadium
construction.
49
Zimbalist, Baseball and Billions, 128. MLB’s national media contracts are shared across the league, but their local
contracts are not. As such, teams in smaller markets have been able to point to the economic disparity caused by
huge local media contracts (like the Yankees YES network, or NESN for the Red Sox) as evidence of their inability
47

18

Since the Braves moved to Milwaukee in 1953, small-market teams have been using the
great disparities in local broadcasting revenue as leverage to increase their other primary source
of revenue: gate and stadium revenues. The Brooklyn Dodgers’ and New York Giants’ stadiums
were deteriorating, and both stadiums were in neighborhoods dealing with the white flight and
disinvestment of postwar suburbanization. The experiences of relocation taught other owners in
the league that their monopoly control over the number and location of franchises could be used
to play cities against each other. The owners have help in this process, however, beyond even the
protections provided by the courts and Congress.
City governments have been in the business of subsidizing private investment for decades.
In a feverish attempt to stave off the flood of postwar capital from the cities to the suburbs,
explains Joanna Cagan and Neil DeMause, “city governments large and small have made tax
breaks and other subsidies a part of their regular repertoire in the drive to keep businesses in
town—or lure them to relocate from elsewhere.” They further report that “in 1977, less than half
of all states provided tax incentives or public loans for private development; fifteen years later,
hardly a state was without them.”50 During the early 1950s, the first attempts at renewing the
area just south of the Loop in downtown Chicago were undertaken by the private sector. Led by
the Illinois Institute of Technology (IIT) and Michael Reese Hospital, a coalition made up of
urban housing authorities, the Roman Catholic Archdiocese of Chicago, the AFL-CIO, and
private businesses formed the South Side Redevelopment Agency, which worked in concert with
local government to develop the Lake Meadows housing project that opened in 1953. The project
was intended to create racially integrated affordable housing, an effort praised nationally as “a
pioneering experiment in urban renewal.” Undertaking what would become standard practice in
to sustain a competitive roster. Stadium boosters in small markets often argue that team owners need the increased
revenues generated by a new stadium to field a competitive team.
50
Cagan and DeMause, Field of Schemes, 30.

19

postwar urban renewal programs, the city bought up the real estate, relocated the displaced
African American inhabitants, and then sold the land at a discount to private investors.51 Four
decades later, the same processes were in motion when city officials worked with Jerry
Reinsdorf to build new stadiums for the Chicago White Sox south of the Loop near IIT, and for
the Chicago Bulls on the Near West Side. As was the case with the Lake Meadows housing
development, the city also built middle-class housing that priced the original residents out of the
area.52
Cities looking to attract a team or sell a new stadium to the public often develop “growth
coalitions” that Rosentraub describes as being “comprised of individuals and businesses
(newspapers, land developers, etc.) in the local community that will benefit from the team’s
presence.”53 One example would be the coalition of politicians, journalists, Hollywood
celebrities, and business magnates like Howard Hughes who lured the Dodgers to Los Angeles.
Another example is the purchase of the Cleveland Indians by local real estate moguls, Richard
and David Jacobs, who used the Central Market Gateway Project formed in 1990 to push the
construction of new stadiums for the Indians and the Cavaliers of the NBA in an area they were
already developing downtown.54
With the flurry of franchise moves that took place in the 1950s, MLB had more or less
made it clear that city leaders looking to attract a team had to include “a stadium (at favorable
rental terms) as part of the bargain.” By 1960, “mayors and city managers got the point,” and
“began to invest in stadiums to replace the older facilities owned by existing major league teams,

51

Biles, Richard J. Daley, 11–12.
Spirou and Bennett, It’s Hardly Sportin’; Von Hoffman, House by House, Block by Block, 144–53.
53
Rosentraub, Major League Losers, 9.
54
Michael D’Antonio, Forever Blue: The True Story of Walter O’Malley, Baseball’s Most Controversial Owner,
and the Dodgers of Brooklyn and Los Angeles (New York: Riverhead Books, 2009), 193; Cagan and DeMause,
Field of Schemes, 14–15.
52

20

in order to keep the teams in town.”55 Given the postwar urban crisis clearly articulated in
Sugrue’s analysis of Detroit,56 owners in older cities like Brooklyn (Ebbets Field), New York
(the Polo Grounds) and Philadelphia (Shibe Park) could point to the deteriorating neighborhoods
and demand that cities take some responsibility for making their environment profitable. On the
other hand, emerging metropolitan areas like the Twin Cities in Minnesota could offer owners
fresh starts in new stadiums with the potential for greater media contracts. But even with newly
constructed Metropolitan Stadium just outside of Minneapolis in 1956, it took the threat of a new
league (the Continental League) headed by Branch Rickey toward the end of the 1950s to force
MLB to agree to expansion before Minnesota got their team. What is interesting to note, is that
even with the expansion of four teams for the 1962 season, MLB clung tightly to their territorial
monopoly with only Minnesota and Houston representing new markets. The other two expansion
teams (Angels and Mets) were placed in California and New York respectively.
The story of Minnesota’s quest for a major league team, thoroughly described in Jay
Weiner’s Stadium Games, powerfully demonstrates the ability of MLB teams to use desperate
cities as bargaining chips in their search for higher revenues. Prior to moving to the West Coast
with Walter O’Malley’s Dodgers in 1958, Horace Stoneman, owner of the Giants, had both
privately and publicly committed to moving his team to Minneapolis. In the early stages of
Minnesota’s hunt for a baseball team, St. Paul and Minneapolis were competing with each other
for the right to host the new franchise. While Stoneman was buying property in Minneapolis for
a potential new stadium, St. Paul was building their own, which was inspected by none other
than Walter O’Malley, who had yet to commit to Los Angeles and was still exploring his options.
As if these two historic franchises weren’t enough to whip local Twin Cities boosters into a

55
56

Quirk and Fort, Pay Dirt, 135.
Sugrue, Origins of the Urban Crisis.

21

frenzy, at various times, they were also courted by the Washington Senators (whom they would
eventually land with expansion in 1962) and the Cleveland Indians. Weiner aptly describes the
process as follows: “The Twin Cities became ‘a joke. . . .’ Met Stadium, built to attract a team,
had been used to gain leverage for teams elsewhere.”57
Revenues continued to rise for baseball clubs thanks to new media contracts with the
emergent television market and increasing profits in light of decreased stadium expenses. Quirk
and Fort report that on average between 1960 and 1982, baseball teams “moving into a new
stadium increased attendance by 62 percent—over 600,000 per year—during the first five years a
team was in a new stadium, as compared to the previous five-year period.”58 The massive spike
in gate receipts is exponentially multiplied when one considers additional revenues from the
beneficial rent contracts teams are able to secure from cities as a result of their monopoly status.
Quirk and Fort describe the typical pattern of stadium contracts in baseball as follows:
The stadium gets most or all of the revenue from parking, teams get most or all of
the revenue from the sale of programs and novelties, and food and drink revenues
are split, with between one-third and one-half going to the stadium and the rest to
the team . . . luxury box revenues . . . generally . . . go mainly to the team.59
Zimbalist explains that “the more modern the stadium, the more important are luxury
boxes in generating gate revenue for a franchise.” By way of demonstration he points out that
“the new Orioles stadium at Camden Yards raised franchise profits by upwards of $25 million in
1992, its first year of operation.”60 He also points out that neither the AL nor the NL share luxury
box nor concession revenue.61 But the most significant returns generated by the baseball
monopoly come from franchise sales, which are obviously affected by the presence of new state-

57

Weiner, Stadium Games, 38.
Quirk and Fort, Pay Dirt, 138.
59
Ibid., 145, 148.
60
Zimbalist, Baseball and Billions, 55.
61
Ibid., 57.
58

22

of-the-art stadiums. Between 1980 and 1990, the average annual rate of increase for franchise
profits was 23.5 percent.62 And while baseball owners continue to moan about losing money
(particularly those in small-market cities), Zimbalist reminds us that “in 112 years of major
league baseball, there has been only one bankruptcy filing.”63 So the baseball teams are clearly
profiting handsomely from their monopoly. The same cannot be said of their host cities.
With the massive direct (free land) and indirect (tax abatements) subsidies that cities are
providing to MLB teams, the argument forcefully pushed by growth coalitions is that the team’s
presence will improve their city’s status, both economically and symbolically. But the consensus
among scholars in the field is that “stadium activity brings mostly low-wage, part-time jobs.”64
Furthermore, there is the matter of limited discretionary spending for fans. Assuming fans are
buying hot dogs and merchandise at the park, after the additional cost of tickets and parking, how
much can actually be expected to be spent in the surrounding area? Stadiums like Denver’s
Coors Field (opened in 1995) have attempted to deal with this by supplying limited parking near
the stadium, forcing fans to take a short walk through the recently revitalized LoDo (lower
downtown) district. But the majority of new stadiums are designed with additional revenue
streams like team stores, restaurants, and even hotels, so that the fans’ discretionary income is
funneled directly into the pockets of the owners. Moreover, as Quirk and Fort highlight (echoed
by others), recent scholarship has suggested that “it is difficult for cities funding stadiums to
capture whatever benefits occur because of the stadium. Instead, whatever benefits are generated
by a stadium tend to be spread over an entire region.”65

62

Quirk and Fort, Pay Dirt, 56.
Zimbalist, Baseball and Billions, 72.
64
Ibid., 137; Cagan and DeMause, Field of Schemes, 38.
65
Quirk and Fort, Pay Dirt, 176; Rosentraub, Major League Losers, 286.
63

23

Finally, there is the matter of whether that money could have been spent in a more
fruitful, if not profitable, manner. Quirk and Fort suggest that “in an era in which local
governments are under intense budgetary pressures, this raises the question of whether it is
possible to find an economic justification for stadium subsidies [in 1989] of $500 million per
year.”66 Speaking about the potential influx of “jobs” created by a new stadium in Cleveland, one
activist said, “None of them are jobs that the mayor hugs his [own] kids and says, ‘I hope you
can get one of those jobs someday.’”67 Cagan and DeMause go so far as to claim that the stadium
construction process is similar to the way in which the World Bank and the International
Monetary Fund treat developing nations:
Devote ever-decreasing amounts of public wealth to support the services needed
by the poor and helpless, and invest more and more in ways that will return
increasing profits to the small numbers of rich and privileged. Oftentimes in the
Third World that has meant an emphasis on the tourist and export economy over
more indigenous industrial or agricultural solutions.68
If we’re at the point where we are comparing cities in their relationship with MLB owners to
developing nations, clearly, then, the economic justifications do not stand up to reason.
There can be little economic justification for the public/private “partnerships” that exist
for the purpose of constructing stadiums. Even when scholars like Charles Santo suggest that
fifty percent of teams involved in stadium construction create a positive economic impact for a
region, it is important to note that there are other factors that also go into the growth of a region,
and oftentimes we cannot attribute that growth solely to stadium construction. Furthermore, as I
stated before, when dealing with overall subsidies in excess of $500 million annually, cities
ought to be after better than 50-50 odds that their investment will pay off. The scholars briefly
discussed here have clearly demonstrated over the past two or three decades that Major League
66

Quirk and Fort, Pay Dirt, 172.
Cagan and DeMause, Field of Schemes, 38.
68
Ibid., 159.
67

24

Baseball has a government-sanctioned monopoly that allows it to leverage cities for everincreasing profits, little to no expense, and zero risk. Unfortunately, as the latest construction
boom ending with Yankee Stadium and Citi Field has demonstrated, cities are still willing to
spend (or as is the case for the team owners, defer) tax-funded revenues for the right to be
“Major League Cities.”
Major League Baseball’s owners are profiting immensely from their collaboration with
politicians and commercial partners in the media through promotional efforts for publicly
financed stadiums that invoke baseball’s mythic past while creating the artifice of instant history
in the design of retro stadiums. Stephen Hardy has lamented the notable absence of the largely
silent majority of laborers and unions in the historiography of stadium construction.69 I would
include the taxpayers in that group of citizens who have been silenced in an era of profit, politics,
and journalism that has completely disregarded democratic representation. To date, research on
this issue has not included a study driven by the perspective of the taxpayers, laborers, and small
businesses who are sold on these myths. While the primary focus of this dissertation will be to
examine the urban power coalitions responsible for stadium-driven urban development and
renewal policies and the roles that race and migration have played in that development, it will
also give voice to the equally determined, though generally powerless, coalitions of citizens
working together to oppose stadium construction.
I chose three stadiums as examples of stadium-driven urban development taking place
within cities of various size, economic and social vitality, and historical context. I have
contextually connected the cities using an analytical narrative attempting to discover particular
generalizations, or patterns, which can be derived from different urban power nexuses over time

69

Stephen Hardy, “The City and the Rise of American Sport: 1820–1920,” Exercise and Sports Sciences Reviews 9
(1981): 183–219.

25

and space.70 For example, just as the Blighted Areas Redevelopment Act and the Relocation Act
adopted by the Illinois General Assembly in 1947 provided a framework for future post–World
War II federal urban renewal and housing legislation, so too the Collier Burns Highway Act
passed by California state legislators (also in 1947) influenced the 1956 National Interstate and
Defense Highways Act and the companion 1956 Highway Revenue Act.71 The pattern of locally
driven, federally supported development has dramatically altered the shape of American cities
and has had a direct impact on the construction of each of the stadiums discussed in these pages.
There are similarities of association, urban development policy, and public/private partnership in
these particular examples of stadium-driven urban development that suggest the possibility of
uncovering more general urban power structures and processes in American cities.
Analyzing the urban processes behind stadium construction in major cities will be an
essential part of this dissertation. The motives of Major League Baseball owners are well
documented and obvious. Cities, on the other hand, are complex organisms made up of multiple
clusters of associated people whose reasons for association vary as widely as kinship, race,
gender, community, faith, employment, commercial partnership, and political affiliation. These
clusters, which yield very different levels of influence and power, have competing visions and
interests regarding the development of the city. And when it comes to stadium construction, or
any other form of urban redevelopment, there are varying levels of personal impact; some
clusters have more at stake. Losing a baseball team is extremely painful for local fans. The loss
of local homes, businesses, and entire communities in the process of stadium development has

70

John Lewis Gaddis, The Landscape of History: How Historians Map the Past (Oxford: Oxford University Press,
2002). Gaddis has described these patterns as “fractals.” In chap. 2 below, those fractals are examined within the
context of Paul Starr’s “constitutive choices” and “mechanisms of entrenchment” framework to articulate the
processes that led to the decision to build a new stadium for the Chicago White Sox. See Paul Starr, The Creation of
the Media: Political Origins of Modern Communications (New York: Basic Books, 2004).
71
Avila, Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight, 198; Mollenkopf, The Contested City, 119.

26

adversely impacted the lives of local citizens. Major League Baseball owners always profit from
the construction of a new stadium. But for this unequal return on investment to have continued
successfully for so long, there must be clusters of association within the urban power structures
that also, as they say, “make a killing” in these deals. If nothing less, they might be seen as
accessories to the owners’ self-interests, and as demonstrated in the previous section, urban
power structures reach as high as the federal government.
I have used the term clusters in the last few paragraphs purposely distinct from the term
association because it better describes the connected associated interests involved in the process
of stadium construction. The term coalition is often used in public discussion and scholarship in
the field as well, but there are some associated interests involved in these processes that are not
overtly named (often intentionally) in the public presentation of these clusters. Moreover, one
often finds “stadium coalitions” working with “pro-growth coalitions” with connections to
“political coalitions” all simultaneously involved in these processes. This dissertation will first
identify, and then articulate, the general processes and interests that form and influence those
larger clusters of urban power. Postwar stadium construction can serve as a powerful focusing
lens for studying the processes of urban development.
Los Angeles
In chapter 1, I present the story of Los Angeles stretching back to the middle part of the
nineteenth century, as power and dominance in the Southwest rapidly changed, moving from
Spanish to Mexican to American control and leaving a violent legacy of migration and racial as
well as territorial conquest. Between 1829 and 1875, a migrant of the lineage of Spanish
Conquistadors made his way from New Mexico Territory to Los Angeles, eventually becoming
one of the city’s most prominent citizens and political figures during the transition from Mexican

27

to American rule. Though Julian A. Chavez was essential to easing that transition, ultimately he
was left landless at the hands of Anglo American conquest. All that remained of his legacy was
roughly 300 acres of mostly undeveloped land on the northern part of downtown around a ravine
that bore his name. After the eviction of hundreds of Mexican American migrants and a decade
of legal battles, the city of Los Angeles agreed to sell that land to a professional baseball team
from Brooklyn, New York.
The opening of Dodgers Stadium on April 10, 1962, was a pivotal moment for stadiumdriven urban development on several levels. It was the first baseball stadium to be built with 100
percent private financing since the original Yankee Stadium in 1923. It was also the last, until the
San Francisco Giants opened the 2000 Major League Baseball season in their new home, Pacific
Bell Park (now AT&T Park). Then Brooklyn Dodgers owner, Walter O’Malley, was the first
baseball magnate to try to pressure local government officials to invoke their powers of eminent
domain to secure property large enough for a stadium and parking with direct access to multiple
forms of public transportation. When his efforts were rebuffed by urban planner Robert Moses in
New York, who argued that baseball stadiums could hardly be considered “public use,”
O’Malley found a willing and powerful coalition of political, business, and civic leaders in Los
Angeles, led by recently elected mayor Norris Poulson.
Boston Braves owner, Lou Perini, was the first to relocate a Major League Baseball
franchise when he moved the Braves to Milwaukee in 1953. But Boston also had the Red Sox,
and while “New Yorkers” by incorporation, residents in the proud borough of Brooklyn found
the Yankees a pale substitute for “Dem Bums.” This was partially due to the manner in which
Ebbets Field was architecturally built into the urban fabric of the borough. Their original name
was Trolley Dodgers, a reference to the dangers that fans faced making their way through the

28

intense concentration of foot and trolley traffic around the stadium. Furthermore, the interior
design of the stadium put the fans right on top of the action, creating an intimacy between
players and fans that few other stadiums matched. With the move from Brooklyn to Los Angeles,
the Dodgers set a painful precedent which led to what can essentially be viewed as ransoming the
community identity of baseball cities for publicly subsidized stadiums. The pain felt by the
residents of Brooklyn who lost their Dodgers has been well documented. Moreover, newer cities
in the southern and western sections of the country, long denied access to the game, could finally
compete with cities in the east to lure Major League Baseball teams with the promise of publicly
funded stadiums and tax subsidies.
When the city of Los Angeles finally acquired a professional baseball team, it did so at
the cost of the working-class Mexican and Mexican American migrants living in the Chavez
Ravine area. After years of fighting over the proper use of the land—which included the city’s
invocation of its rights of eminent domain to evict the migrants from their homes, the proposed
plan and subsequent defeat by referendum to build public housing on the site, and the political
maneuvering that made it possible to sell publicly seized land as private property for commercial
use—the construction of Dodger Stadium magnified the problems of race in postwar urban
development policies attempting to deal with the problem of urban blight. Racialized housing
policy at the local and federal level ultimately made the construction of Dodger Stadium in Los
Angeles possible.
The construction of Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles not only significantly influenced
national urban development policy; it also demonstrated the effects of global capitalism and
transcontinental/national migration on urban development. O’Malley understood that Los
Angeles offered the potential for international markets across the Pacific. His travels to Japan not

29

only influenced the architectural design of Dodger Stadium, but they also helped to pave the way
as Major League Baseball, and particularly the Dodgers, began to tap into a vast, largely
untouched Asian market. And the explosive debut of Mexican-born Fernando Valenzuela in the
early 1980s demonstrated just how profitable Southern California’s vast Chicano population
could be for professional baseball.
The construction of Dodger Stadium also served as an example for franchises located in
cities facing the problem of white flight in two ways. First, if local fans and politicians failed to
accommodate owners looking for land or tax subsidies, a franchise could simply relocate and
move to a different city or region where there were plenty of wealthy white customers willing to
meet the team’s demands. But the construction of Dodger Stadium also showed franchise owners,
like Jerry Reinsdorf of the Chicago White Sox, that proper regional marketing in conjunction
with ample parking and direct highway access could serve to import a newly (auto)mobile
clientele, and their increasing discretionary income, in from the suburbs. In this way Dodger
Stadium and stadiums such as Chicago’s new US Cellular Field operated more like suburban
shopping malls than urban ballparks.
Chicago
The new Comiskey Park (since renamed US Cellular Field) makes for an interesting case
study because it is such an architectural anomaly. Following the construction of Dodgers
Stadium, there was a wave of publicly owned (and funded), multi-purpose stadium projects,
which arose as cities sought to increase the revenues of publicly funded stadiums by having
multiple tenants. These stadiums were designed to accommodate multiple sports and concert
events and were at times the cornerstone in a city’s Olympic bid. (It is not within the scope of
this dissertation to cover the era of multi-purpose stadium construction.) While US Cellular Field

30

was built as a baseball-only, open air stadium on the South Side of Chicago, it embodies many of
the features of the suburban style stadiums from the 1970s.
US Cellular Field opened on April 18, 1991, and was the last stadium built before the
“retro ball park” wave of the 1990s, which began with the opening of Baltimore’s Camden Yards
the following year. But US Cellular Field is neither a multi-purpose stadium nor a “retro ball
park.” It was the first baseball-only stadium to be built in the major leagues since Royals
Stadium (now Kauffman Stadium) opened in 1973, and though influenced in part by Royals
Stadium, US Cellular Field stands architecturally alone, between two of the biggest stadium
construction waves of the twentieth century. In stark contrast to Dodgers Stadium, which was
100 percent privately financed,72 Chicago’s US Cellular Field was 100 percent publicly financed.
Coincidentally, Chicago White Sox owner, Jerry Reinsdorf, also had the political clout to build a
new stadium for his Chicago Bulls basketball team (and the Chicago Blackhawks hockey team)
the following year. Chicago provides an excellent opportunity to look at the political power
structures and policies at work in stadium-driven urban development.
Just as the construction of the original Comiskey Park in 1910 has been viewed in
conjunction with efforts to make the city more respectable as part of the progressive “City
Beautiful” movement,73 the construction of US Cellular Field (as well as the United Center) has
likewise been viewed as part of city officials’ efforts to clean up and rejuvenate the city through
extensive and ambitious urban redevelopment building programs. One of the more interesting
layers to this story, however, is the presence of a strong alternative stadium plan (Armour

72

While the stadium was 100 percent privately financed, the acquisition, pricing, grading, and infrastructural
development of the land were, on the other hand, publicly financed.
73
Robin F. Bachin, Building the South Side: Urban Space and Civic Culture in Chicago, 1890–1919 (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2004), 226.

31

Field),74 which arguably held truer to Charles Comiskey’s original intention to design and build a
stadium that architecturally meshed with existing neighborhood structures as well as
aesthetically elevated the area. In the end, the “coalition” behind the Armour Field project was
no match for the cluster of urban power coalitions that ultimately built US Cellular Field where it
stands today.
As was the case in Los Angeles, the territory where the new stadium was to be built for
the White Sox in Chicago was contested by a community of isolated racial minorities. This
community developed as a result of segregated housing policies and failure to adequately address
overcrowding and housing shortages due to African Americans migrating from the South seeking
wartime manufacturing jobs in Northern cities. Black families living in Wentworth Gardens, a
public housing project originally built to house African American war workers, saw vast
segments of their community wiped away by postwar urban redevelopment: first, when the black
commercial strip along Wentworth Avenue was cleared to make room for the Dan Ryan
Expressway in the early 1960s, and again when the northern portion of the housing development
and a home for senior citizens were bulldozed to make way for the new US Cellular Field.
In chapter 2, I demonstrate that the leverage wielded by White Sox owner, Jerry
Reinsdorf, through the threat of relocation allowed him to build a stadium intended to serve the
very northwestern suburbanites who prevented Reinsdorf from building his stadium at his
preferred location in their own backyards. While the Dodgers similarly surrounded their stadium
with parking lots and direct access to the highways, Los Angeles is a more sprawling metropolis
with less clearly defined borders between city and suburb. Wary of how his suburban, primarily
white fans might feel about coming to see a game on the South Side next to an African American
public housing project, Reinsdorf secured a deal that allowed him to essentially seal off his
74

Cagan and DeMause, Field of Schemes, 138.

32

stadium from the surrounding city, funneling suburbanites directly off the highway into vast
parking lots that serve only the stadium. This is an economic model similar to that of suburban
shopping malls; the “Chicago” White Sox developed a tourist-based entertainment economy that
imported its revenue from towns as far away as Addison, Arlington Heights, and Wheaton (25–
30 miles away). Expanding on this model, Mike Ilitch built Comerica Park in Detroit, turning the
entire north side of downtown into a sports and entertainment district under his control. Where
Reinsdorf had settled for opening a shop in the mall, Ilitch engineered a financial cut of every
shop in the mall.
Detroit
Detroit has had a long and contested history of urban development, particularly during
and after World War II as racial tensions erupted in the streets, signaling the decline of the
“Arsenal of Democracy.” As whites and their money left the city due to deindustrialization
caused by the relocation of automobile manufacturing plants, city officials were left with a
rapidly deteriorating downtown and a rapidly increasing underclass of African Americans stuck
without jobs, housing, or proper education. Over the second half of the twentieth century, city
officials and local business leaders have searched for ways to stem white flight, encourage local
business development, and maintain tax revenues. With the legalization of casino gaming and the
construction of two new professional sports arenas, Detroit officials have “gone all in” on the
sports and entertainment tourist economic model for urban development. But it took them a
while to decide that, and it took a special man with a big vision to sell them on the plan.
Comerica Park opened April 11, 2000, in Detroit, the first of two stadiums75 to be built
downtown as part of a public revitalization initiative. After nearly a decade of fruitless efforts to
get the city to build a new stadium for the Tigers, team owner and Domino’s Pizza founder, Tom
75

Ford Field, home of the Detroit Lions, opened two years later across the street from Comerica Park.

33

Monaghan, was forced to sell the team to his direct competitor, Mike Ilitch of Little Caesars
Pizza. Comerica Park was a relatively small part of Ilitch’s grander vision for Detroit’s
development that also included a football stadium, theaters, restaurants, and ultimately, a new
hockey arena. I chose to include Comerica Park for three primary reasons. First, the stadiumdriven urban renewal initiative in Detroit provides an excellent context for the study of the
“tourist city” model of urban development.76 In terms of architectural design, Comerica Park fits
within the “retro ball park” model, but the presence of Ford Field right across the street takes
away from the sense of “naturally” blending into preexisting urban space that so distinguishes
retro parks like Camden Yards. The second reason Comerica Park makes for such an interesting
study is that unlike the polar opposite split between private and public financing found in the
examples of Los Angeles and Chicago respectively, only 38 percent of the $300 million needed
to build Comerica Park was publicly financed. Detroit Tigers’ owner, Ilitch, privately financed
the remaining 62 percent.77 In light of the extensive literature on the fallacy of stadium
economics that has developed over the last two decades, one might assume that Detroit offers an
example of at least moderately successful community opposition to publicly subsidized stadiums.
But Ilitch did not stop with Comerica Park.
Detroit is undeniably one of the most lasting and intensely scrutinized examples of post–
World War II urban decline. It is the city that first comes to mind when many Americans see
articles like “America’s Most Dangerous Cities.” It is the heart of the American auto industry,
also recently bailed out of bankruptcy with taxpayer money. The city itself now finds itself in
bankruptcy and is publicly soliciting the state for money to satisfy their creditors. And yet, even
as Detroit fell under the control of an emergency manager, city officials signed off on a $650
76

By “tourist city” model, I am referring to competitive cities looking to survive on tourist economies.
“Comerica Park,” ballparks.com, last modified April 2005,
http://www.ballparks.com/baseball/american/detbpk.htm
77

34

million hockey arena for Ilitch’s Red Wings National Hockey League (NHL) franchise. But it is
a proud city, a city that lives and dies with its sports teams. A deep playoff run by the Tigers,
Lions, Red Wings, or Pistons can bring radically diverse communities together with collective
shouts of joy. In chapter 3, I focus on how urban leaders attempted to tap into that communal
identity and hopeful spirit to bring renewal to a long-dying city through the development of a
downtown stadium district.
Ilitch is to sports and entertainment (the urban tourist economy) what Andrew Carnegie
was to the steel industry. Ilitch controls or profits from nearly every aspect of Detroit’s growing
tourist economy: from parking to concessions, to booking and promotions, to broadcast and
ticket revenues, and even to the casinos in the area that call to wayward souls after a
heartbreaking loss for the home team. Over the course of three decades, Ilitch has combined
urban development and vast sports and entertainment holdings to build an empire just north of
Grand Circus Park downtown that stretches from the Motor City Casino just west of the Lodge
Freeway to the stadium district where the Fisher and Chrysler Freeways meet. “Little Caesar”
has also made quite a fortune making pizzas. Stadium projects are now being developed near
Atlanta and again in Los Angeles, and these projects mirror Ilitch’s vision—they both encompass
the broader sports and entertainment tourist economies.
Conclusion
After analyzing these three cities, the conclusion of the dissertation will bring together
their multiple histories and their baseball stadiums to place the processes and people that make
up urban power nexuses into the broader context of post–World War II urban development.
Urban renewal and redevelopment influenced by patterns of racial migration and the subsequent
legacy of housing segregation in Los Angeles, Chicago, Detroit, and other cities, have formed a

35

core analytical trope for US cities.78 The private-public power brokerage that has made baseball
stadium construction a core requirement for urban redevelopment has received far less attention
from urban historians, particularly given the increasing number of cities that are embracing
sports and entertainment–based tourist economy development strategies. Investigating the
similarities in cross-sections of power structures and policies involved in stadium construction in
Los Angeles, Chicago, and Detroit and how they affected urban renewal, urban neighborhood
developments, and pro-growth urban policies will contribute to expanding our understanding of
urbanization in the United States.
In 2010, former (and the last)79 American League president, Gene A. Budig, published
Clearing the Bases: Nine Who Did It with Grit and Class, a memoir and tribute to nine
significant individuals he had known during his time in Major League Baseball, including Mike
Ilitch. In the forward to Budig’s book, former National League president and chairman of the
Jackie Robinson Foundation, Len Coleman, though referring specifically to Major League
Baseball, articulated the problem that has plagued urban development (including stadium
construction) for over a century: How and where do we include the minorities?
We were convinced that Major League Baseball had to do a far better job in
promoting the game, especially among young minority students. We focused
many of our thoughts on programs for the young from the inner city, those who
inundate the sand lots in the major league cities. We also worried about the low
number of minorities who were attending baseball games and we suggested
remedies, many of which were implemented with success. . . . Commissioner Bud
Selig encouraged the American and National League presidents to pursue new
and different initiatives that would increase the number of minorities on the field
and in youth leagues, in the front offices, in support areas like marketing and
concessions, and at the games. Clearly, the increased numbers have made the
78

Sugrue, Origins of the Urban Crisis; Avila, Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight; Biles, Richard J. Daley;
Gillette Jr., Camden after the Fall; Kruse, White Flight; Self, American Babylon; Parson, Making a Better World;
Amanda I. Seligman, Block by Block: Neighborhoods and Public Policy on Chicago’s West Side (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2005); also see articles by Eric Avila and Mark H. Rose, Andrew R. Highsmith,
Michelle Ferranti, and Irene V. Holiman in a special issue on urban renewal in the Journal of Urban History 35, no.
3 (2009).
79
The position was abolished in 1999.

36

game more appealing to people of color who regard the game as an attractive,
entertaining outing.80
Though he broke Major League Baseball’s color barrier in 1947 and had a long history of
fighting for equal political and economic rights for African Americans, Jackie Robinson’s life
work continues. America’s national pastime and its cities are still struggling to deal with the
legacy of racial animosity and segregation built from years of institutionally sanctioned and still
unresolved residential, economic, and political disparity. The following chapters will articulate
specific historical manifestations of that legacy revealed in the process of stadium-driven urban
redevelopment over the second half of the twentieth century as well as the gradual shift to
entertainment-based tourist economies in urban development. We begin over sixty years ago at
the height of postwar urban renewal, in the entertainment capital of the United States, Los
Angeles, California.

80

Len Coleman, foreword to Clearing the Bases: Nine Who did it with Grit and Class, by Gene A. Budig
(Champaign, IL: News-Gazette, 2010), xii.

37

CHAPTER 1
Conquerors of the West: Julian Chavez, Walter O’Malley and the Construction of Dodger
Stadium in Los Angeles
The history of urban America is inseparable from the history of race in America.81
From its American inception following the end of US–Mexico War in 1848, Los Angeles
has been touted as the “city of the future.”82 Of course, a city that is perpetually identified with
things to come cannot represent anything but a wished for, though certainly planned for, fantasy
that promises, at best, an uncertain outcome. A historical analysis of the development of Los
Angeles, culminating in this chapter with the construction of Dodger Stadium, provides a clear
example of some of the issues that have continued to both shape and frustrate urban development
in American cities. The legacies of Anglo American conquest and efforts to enforce and protect
white hegemony, massive waves of migration, and the failure to deal with rapidly growing
populations of transplanted racial others in American cities have dominated, and continue to
dominate, the urban experience in the United States.83 This has been particularly true regarding
the roles that ethnicity and race have played in ’Los Angeles’s urban planning and promotion.
Examples of this include, but are not limited to, the expansion of black Los Angeles into the
Leimert Park area, which was originally developed as a racially exclusive planned community
for whites; the construction of a privately owned professional baseball stadium on 300 acres of
81

Josh Sides, L.A. City Limits: African American Los Angeles from the Great Depression to the Present (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2003), 8.
82
Greg Hise, Magnetic Los Angeles: Planning the Twentieth-Century Metropolis, (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins
University Press, 1997), 1; William Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe: The Rise of Los Angeles and the Remaking of Its
Mexican Past (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2004), 1–10; Avila, Popular Culture in the Age of White
Flight, 218; William Alexander McClung, Landscapes of Desire: Anglo Mythologies of Los Angeles (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2000), 21.
83
Hise, Magnetic Los Angeles, 15–22; Darnell Hunt and Ana-Christina Ramón, eds., Black Los Angeles: American
Dreams and Racial Realities (New York: New York University Press, 2010), 60–78; McClung, Landscapes of
Desire, 15; Avila, Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight 155–70; Parson, Making a Better World, 163–86;
Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe; Nicolaides, My Blue Heaven; Fogelson, Bourgeois Nightmares.

38

land originally seized from Mexican American migrants and cleared for the purpose of building
public housing; and the dichotomous development of what Eric Avila has called “chocolate cities
and vanilla suburbs.”84 The dominant, conquering Anglos of Los Angeles’s idealized “future”
have both celebrated and sought to contain the racial and ethnic others they encountered there.
While boosters have continually advertised Los Angeles as a city of the future, it was
built on a fabricated past that whitewashed (Anglicized) the region’s history and cultural
symbols. One of the city’s most glaring holdovers from its ethnic/racial history—and therefore
one of the most obvious targets for “blight” clearance—Chavez Ravine, was erased and replaced
with Dodger Stadium, a symbol of urban America’s (white) past dressed up to accommodate the
city of the future. It is more difficult to rationalize pro-growth urban development as “progress”
when the “vernacular” of public/urban spaces is looked at more honestly; when the uncivilized,
poor barrio that “blighted” Chavez Ravine is recognized as not merely the vernacular expression
of inferior or incapable creatures.85 Much like the blight that symbolically defined public housing
developments in older industrial cities like Chicago and Detroit, the blight in Chavez Ravine was
due in no small part to the intentional, unequal allocation of public funds for the maintenance of
urban spaces. Though the people living in those communities took pride in their homes and did
what they could with steadily decreasing resources to maintain a sense of home, as non-whites
they were viewed as liabilities to property values, particularly when located relatively close to
downtown commercial interests.
Studying the construction of Dodger Stadium as situated within the larger historical
context of the urban development of Los Angeles can provide a clearer understanding of the
84

Avila, Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight, 1–19.
For examples of reading architecture for the vernacular expression of those who use urban spaces, see Daphne
Spain, How Women Saved the City (Minnesota: University of Minnesota Press, 2001); and Dolores Hayden, The
Power of Place: Urban Landscapes as Public History (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1995).
85

39

historical processes that institutionalized and still shape publicly-funded stadium construction in
American cities. Los Angeles became the archetype of both postwar stadium design and the
fiercely competitive intracity battles for the opportunity to host (and fund) an American cultural
icon of national (even international) scope and local pride. In many ways, the construction of
Dodger Stadium set the standard for what sports team owners could use as leverage (community,
civic pride, promised economic growth) and what they could demand in return from prospective
host cities. It also heralded changes to the institutional and economic framework of the game of
baseball such as: the internationalization of the game; the intentional transition to a middle- to
upper-class clientele with a stadium that featured automobile/highway accessibility and a
ballpark experience catering to that clientele; the team’s growing monopoly over consumer
spending; and finally, the use of baseball’s historical “community-building” mythos and cultural
capital to secure public funding and a nearly exclusive claim to the profits generated by the
stadium. These aspects of the stadium building process are commonplace now, but the Dodgers
move to the West Coast largely set those changes in motion.86
Moreover, a broader historical study of stadium construction in Los Angeles can also
broaden our understanding of the political, economic, and cultural issues that fueled postwar progrowth urban development across the nation. Each city faces unique political, social, and
economic pressures that work together to influence the decision-making process in urban
development. On the surface, for example, the historical urban development of Los Angeles and
Chicago appear to be vastly different. Most urban scholars would agree that the sprawling
86

The National League Boston Braves were actually the first franchise to relocate since the Baltimore Orioles
became the New York Yankees in 1903 when owner Lou Perini moved the team to Milwaukee in 1953. The
American League also saw two franchise shifts early in that decade when the St. Louis Browns moved to Baltimore
(also in 1953) changing their name to the Orioles and the following year when a new owner moved Connie Mack’s
once dominant Philadelphia Athletics to Kansas City. The Dodgers’ move to Los Angeles, however, is regarded as
more of a significant precedent to franchise relocation because unlike the Braves, Browns, and A’s, O’Malley’s
team was successful both competitively and financially prior to relocation. The other teams were playing (poorly) in
multi-team cities, so their loss created far less emotional stress to their original host cities.

40

diffusion of Los Angeles County is very different from the more traditionally “monocentric”87
city of Chicago. But by finding a common focal point for the study of urban development in both
cities—baseball stadium construction—and by broadening the historical scope/breadth of that
study, we come across patterns of urban development that span across both time and space.88
This chapter looks less at primary political sources for instances of institutionalized
precedents and more so at the similarities between Walter O’Malley’s conquest of the West and
the transborder connections in Los Angeles’s developmental history between the United States
and Mexico. Following the trail of the region’s romanticized “Spanish fantasy past” provides a
detailed look at perhaps the physical manifestation, or personification, of that fantasy past in the
figure of Julian A. Chavez, the New Mexican migrant for whom the Dodgers’ home in Chavez
Ravine is named. The story of Julian Chavez’s pioneering migration from New Mexico Territory
to Los Angeles and the social and political successes that followed are not only connected to, but
help explain in new ways, the racially charged “Battle of Chavez Ravine.”
The chapter begins by looking back into both the real and imagined past, with a brief
explanation of the romanticized past of the city of Los Angeles that directly influenced the
historical process that brought the Dodgers to Chavez Ravine. A detailed summary and
exploration of the life of Julian Chavez within that context demonstrates how fantasy meets
reality in the life of this early transnational Los Angeles pioneer. Following the sections on
Chavez, a brief look at the history of Mexican American participation in baseball in Los Angeles
will further highlight the differences between the white establishment (as represented by Dodgers
owner Walter O’Malley and California’s political leaders) and the Mexican Americans they
sought to exclude and ultimately displace. The historical narrative will then shift to Walter
87

For a discussion of LA’s development in contrast to the “monocentric” city model see Hise, Magnetic Los
Angeles.
88
Gaddis, Landscape of History. Gaddis has described these patterns as “fractals.”

41

O’Malley and his upbringing as a member of New York City’s elite, followed by an analysis of
how O’Malley’s attempt to build a new stadium fits into the larger project of American postwar
urban (re)development. Finally, I will articulate the now familiar story of the Dodgers move to
Los Angeles and the subsequent construction of Dodger Stadium from 1959 to 1962 at Chavez
Ravine in light of this exploration deeper into the past. The story of the construction of Dodger
stadium is one of physical, racial, and ideological conquest.
Julian A. Chavez: The Conquest of Los Angeles (Last of the Conquistadors)
Chavez Ravine is the westernmost of five ravines located within the roughly 300 acres of
land on which Dodger Stadium was built. The stadium itself is actually located on what was once
Sulfur Ravine, but over time the entire area came to be called simply Chavez Ravine. The area
lies just to the north of downtown Los Angeles, and the actual Chavez Ravine itself has a long
history in connection with the city. According to a report produced by an organization of small
business owners opposed to the city’s contract with the Dodgers, in the early 1830s, a laborer
from the New Mexico Territory by the name of Julian Chavez moved to the pueblo of Los
Angeles and eventually managed to get the city council to grant him the title to the ravine. He
went on to have a successful career as a local politician, holding numerous public offices, and in
time the ravine was named after him.89 Much, if not all of the writing dealing with the
construction of Dodger Stadium in Chavez Ravine cites this brief biography on Julian Chavez
and leaves it at that.

89

J. Loyd, “Chavez Ravine Fact Book which Comprises the Untold Story of the O’Malley-Chavez Ravine Deal that
Mayor Poulson Did Not Tell”, April 9, 1962, Edward Ross Roybal papers, Dept. of Special Collections/UCLA
Library. Accessed via the University of California Calisphere digital archives. This is a report by the Executive
Secretary and Director of Research for the Southwest Chapter, Small Property Owners League of Los Angeles. He
presents a compilation of facts exposing the deal as highly beneficial and lucrative to the baseball club to the
detriment of the city and people of Los Angeles.

42

Yet, extending that narrative farther back into California’s complex local history helps to
broaden an understanding of the institutions and social structures that ultimately influenced
where Dodger Stadium would be built. It might seem odd to suggest that we can learn something
of that process by reading the 1829 diary of Antonio Armijo, the leader of a New Mexico
Territory trading expedition to California in search of mules. On the other hand, I found it odder
still that no one thought to ask, “How did a group of Mexican American migrant workers
manage to secure such a large chunk of real estate two miles north of what would become the
central business district in one of America’s most historically violent and racist cities?” How did
a “laborer” from the New Mexico Territory in 1844 get the city council of Los Angeles to give
him such a prize, in light of Southern California’s rampant real estate speculation and racial
turmoil over the second half of the nineteenth century?
George Lipsitz argues in The Possessive Investment in Whiteness that the violent reality
of California’s racist history “rivals that of any state in the union, including Mississippi.”90 The
consistent reification of what Lipsitz refers to as Anglo Americans’ possessive investment in
whiteness throughout the development of the city has given Los Angeles (and deservedly so) “a
reputation as a city blind to its own history.”91 Scholars studying California and Los Angeles in
particular have shown this historical blindness to be a result of an intentionally fabricated
regional history—the “Spanish fantasy past”—that worked both to romanticize the area’s violent
and racist past and to justify the racial hierarchies created to support Anglo American dominance
after the US–Mexico War.92

90

George Lipsitz, The Possessive Investment in Whiteness: How White People Profit from Identity Politics,
(Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 2006), 231.
91
Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe, 139.
92
Lipsitz, Possessive Investment in Whiteness, 231; Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe, 138.

43

In 1781, a group of colonizing pobladores arrived from Mexico to found a new pueblo
near Yang-Na, the most prominent of forty Gabrieleño Indian villages in the area that would
become Los Angeles. That the Native American tribes living in this region came to be named
after the nearby Spanish San Gabriel Mission demonstrates that the project of racial assimilation,
at least nominally, had already begun in the region. Ironically, the pobladores themselves were
made up of a diverse mix of Spaniards, Native Americans, African Americans, and mestizos
(persons of European and Native American descent),93 though that did little to help the
Gabrieleño Indians whom the conquerors forced into labor. By the time of California’s statehood
in 1850, it became clear that diversity was primarily to be valued insofar as it provided cheap
labor for the conquering Anglo Americans in their ongoing quest to fulfill their “Manifest
Destiny.” Already deemed by Anglo Americans as incapable of assimilation, the Native
American population in California was quickly decimated by white aggression, dropping from an
estimated 300,000 prior to white settlement to “less than 30,000 in the first decades of statehood
through the impressment of Native Americans for labor gangs and outright physical assaults on
them, in the belief that such attacks protected white property.”94
In the decades leading up to the Mexican War, that racist aggression was unleashed
against Mexicans as well, supported, as William Deverell has argued, by “Manifest Destiny’s
darkest assumption that racial and national supremacy went hand in hand.”95 That assumption
shaped the development of Los Angeles for the remainder of the century. Although there was a
brief period during the transition from Mexican to American control when it appeared that the
region’s (primarily Mexican) landed elite might retain their land, thereby also maintaining their

93

Hayden, Power of Place, 85–91.
Lipsitz, Possesive Investment in Whiteness 231–32; Miroslava Chávez-García, Negotiating Conquest: Gender and
Power in California, 1770s to 1880s (Tucson: University of Arizona Press, 2004), 176.
95
Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe, 12.
94

44

economic and social status, by the 1880s many of those once-mighty families found themselves
relegated to a “Spanish fantasy past” as their resources steadily dwindled.96 Ironically, though he
played a sustained role in the development of both Mexican and American Los Angeles, and
though “America’s pastime” finally found a home on the West Coast in the ravine bearing his
name, the one man whose experience may actually have given a bit of credence to that fantasy as
the descendant of Spanish conquistadors has largely been forgotten.
Julian A. Chavez (originally spelled Chaves) was descended from a Spanish family that
had lived in the area of present-day New Mexico since the seventeenth century. Don Fernando
Durán y Chaves rose to prominence serving under Diego de Vargas during the 1692 reconquest
of New Mexico, and by 1696 he was alcalde, mayor of a settlement named Bernalillo, which
was “located several kilometers north of present-day Bernalillo [in northwestern New Mexico],
apparently on the west side of the Rio Grande.”97 Like the majority of his descendants (including
Julian), Don Fernando became a wealthy rancher.98 By the time Julian was born in 1810, his
father, Francisco Antonio Chavez, had settled the family in Abiquiú, New Mexico where he built
a home overlooking the Rio Chama. Abiquiú was an important early outpost that faced frequent
attacks by nearby Apaches, Utes, Navajos, and Comanches.99
The experience of the Chavez family was in some ways similar to that of the early Anglo
American pioneers of the Southwest: they had to fight for everything they had and they had

96

Chávez-García, Negotiating Conquest, 147–150, Karen Clay and Werner Troesken, “Ranchos and the Politics of
Land Claims” in Land of Sunshine: An Environmental History of Metropolitan Los Angeles, ed. William Deverell
and Greg Hise (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2005), 58.
97
Joseph P. Sanchez, Explorers, Traders and Slavers: Forging the Old Spanish Trail 1678–1850 (Salt Lake City:
University of Utah Press, 1997), 107; John L. Kessell, Rick Hendricks, and Meredith D. Dodge, eds., Letters from
the New World: Selected Correspondence of don Diego de Vargas to His Family, 1675–1706 (Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press, 1992), 192–3.
98
Kessell, Hedricks, and Dodge, Letters from the New World, 73–4; 189; 193. Diego de Vargas actually died in
Chaves’s home after succumbing to a fatal illness during an attempt to recover some of Chaves’s cattle from raiding
Apaches in the spring of 1704.
99
Sanchez, Explorers, Traders and Slavers, 107.

45

complex relationships with local Native Americans that at times proved profitable (in trade,
theft, and slavery) and at others came at great cost (in violent conflict and in reciprocal theft and
slavery). Julian’’s older brother, José María Chavez, “took part in at least eleven campaigns
against raiding bands of Comanche, Utes, and Apaches.”100 There is evidence that Julian joined
his brother in various trading and military endeavors prior to his permanent relocation to Los
Angeles, but Julian did not desire to be a lifelong soldier. And while many New Mexicans
“resented control by the Mexican government,” members of the Chavez family were typically
supportive of Mexican appointees (which would later prove very dangerous).101
In many other ways, however, the experiences of the Chavez family were very different
from early Anglo pioneers. The descendants of Don Fernando Durán y Chaves were members of
New Mexico’s landed gentry elite. They used powerful military and political connections both in
the Spanish and Mexican periods to become one of the biggest and wealthiest families in New
Mexico.102 In 1829,when Antonio Armijo and a group of sixty explorer-traders (including Julian
Chavez) opened up the Old Spanish Trail, providing a direct connection between Los Angeles
and New Mexico, the Chavez family were at the center of what had become a transcontinental
trade route used by traders from the United States, New Mexico, Spain, French Canada, and
Mexico.103 According to David J. Webster, “With Spanish power removed from North America
in 1821 (Mexican independence) . . . trade goods from the United States began to flow freely into
100

Ibid., 108.
Ibid., 108.
102
Sánchez, Explorers, Traders, and Slavers, 103–17; Kessell, Hendricks, and Dodge, Letters from the New
World,192–93; Maurilio E. Vigil, Los Patrones: Profiles of Hispanic Political Leaders in New Mexico History
(Washington DC: University Press of America, 1980), 56–61; Lynn I. Perrigo, Hispanos: Historic Leaders in New
Mexico (Santa Fe: Sunstone Press, 1985), 53–55.
103
David J. Webster, Mexican Frontier, 1821–1846: The American Southwest under Mexico (Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press, 1982), 135. Describing the scope of the newly opened trade route, Webster wrote,
“Americans, too, entered the horse trading business in California, driving livestock back to Santa Fe as the New
Mexicans did. Some American traders also pushed California horses and mules beyond Santa Fe to markets in
Missouri. Thus, in the largest sense, the new trails between New Mexico and California became extensions of the
Santa Fe trade.”
101

46

New Mexico.”104 The Chavez family adapted during this transition and gave their support to the
newly formed Mexican government, which in turn did not excessively interfere with pioneers in
the New Mexican territory. Even when that support proved dangerous as “tensions between ricos
and pobres over questions such as taxes and militia service would contribute to bloody
insurrection in 1837,”105 a warning from a powerful family member saved Jose María Chavez
from certain execution, allowing him to escape to his brother Julian in Los Angeles.106 As such,
the trade route opened up by Armijo in 1829 also served as a transnational immigration route for
New Mexican political refugees.
Julian Chavez came from a long line of politically connected ranchos, New Mexico’s
moneyed elite, that owned multiple Indian slaves and consistently supported those in power (first
the Spanish, then Mexico, and finally the United States).107 As Webster and others have
demonstrated, “New Mexico had developed a small moneyed elite by the end of the Spanish era.
. . . In a province where a laborer earned three to six dollars a month, members of the Armijo,
Chavez, Otero, Ortiz, and Perea families dealt in huge sums.”108 Julian Chavez left New Mexico
in the early 1830s to make a name for himself in Los Angeles, and despite being listed as a
“laborer” in the 1836 Los Angeles city census, the historical record clearly demonstrates that
there was much more to him than that.109 And yet, despite all of those advantages and what
appears to have been a long and distinguished career in Los Angeles politics, Chavez too was
ultimately powerless against the Manifest Destiny of the conquering Anglos from the United
States.
104

Ibid., 125.
Ibid., 211.
106
Sánchez, Explorers, Traders, and Slavers, 112; Janet Lecompte, Rebellion in Rio Arriba 1837 (Albuquerque:
University of New Mexico Press, 1985), 70–71.
107
Sánchez, Explorers, Traders, and Slavers, 108.
108
Webster, Mexican Frontier, 210.
109
County of Los Angeles Board of Supervisors, “Supervisor Julian A. Chavez,” Board Member Biographies,
lacounty.gov, PDF file.
105

47

As a member of pre-American Los Angeles’s gentry Californio elite, Chavez served as a
Los Angeles city councilman between 1850 and 1875.110 Californios retained a level of social
prestige and influence after the American takeover of Los Angeles thanks to the “intermarriage
of elite Anglos into the once-elite Californio families,”111 property holdings, and their
accumulated wealth. By around 1880, however, with their gradual but steady disappearance from
political office and dwindling personal resources, those “former Californios found that theirs was
an existence increasingly consigned to the past.”112 By 1912, for example, only the Chavez name
remained in the Ravine, and the property was subdivided and sold as individual lots to Mexican
families formerly living on the bottom of the Los Angeles River.113
The Immigrant Californio: A Member of Early Los Angeles’s Urban Elite
Not long after helping Antonio Armijo forge what would become the Old Spanish Trail
connecting New Mexico and California, Chavez permanently relocated to Los Angeles and by
the mid-1830s began investing in real estate. Chavez apparently did very well for himself, rising
quickly up the social ladder, securing his first public position as suplente alcalde (assistant
mayor) by 1838. Six years later, he successfully petitioned the Ayuntamiento (city council) for 83
acres of land near downtown that would eventually be referred to as Chavez Ravine. During the
final years of Mexican rule, Chavez served as a regidore (councilman) as well as one of the
region’s zanjaneros, or juez de agues (judge of the waters).114 In 1846, in his role as zanjanero,
Chavez ruled against two US immigrants in a water use/irrigation/property dispute that was
typical of the ideological conflicts about land and water use that marked the transition from

110

Parson, Making a Better World, 164; Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe, 17.
Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe, 29.
112
Ibid., 132.
113
Parson, Making a Better World, 164.
114
County of Los Angeles Board of Supervisors, “Supervisor Julian A. Chavez.”
111

48

Mexican rule to American rule.115 Chavez also acted as a mediator during the US–Mexico War
by trying to help secure recompense for illiterate Mexican Californian women who had property
stolen or damaged by American soldiers in 1847.116 Following the end of the war, in an act that
signified his growing social presence in the city, Chavez was elected as a member of American
Los Angeles’s first city council in 1850.117 Two years later, he was also elected as one of the first
members of the Los Angeles County Board of Supervisors, a position that included the role of
juez del campos (judge of the plains), in which Chavez was called upon to settle cattle
disputes.118 Over and over again, throughout his long tenure as a Los Angeles politician, Chavez
served as a mediator as the region changed from Mexican to American rule—a role the Chavez
family had played successfully many times over the years with regime changes in New Mexico.
Despite assurances granted by the 1848 Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo, however, the
violence against the Republic of Mexico did not stop after the war, nor did the US citizenship
promised to Mexicans still living in American California offer them any protections under the
law.119 Whereas the Mexicans made up nearly 80 percent of Los Angeles’s total population in
1850, “that figure had plummeted to something like 20 percent in just a generation, a flip-flop of
stunning magnitude and speed.”120 Furthermore, the production of specifically “Mexican” spaces
within the city, such as Sonoratown, began the process of Americanizing Los Angeles by
segregating those races “destined” to serve the dominant Anglos.121 Located north of the plaza

115

David S. Torres-Rouff, “Water Use, Ethnic Conflict, and Infrastructure in Nineteenth-Century Los Angeles,”
Pacific Historical Review 75, no. 1 (2006):124, n. 11.
116
Chavez-Garcia, Negotiating Conquest, 83.
117
Maymie R. Krythe, “Daily Life in Early Los Angeles: Part IV: Angelenos Took Their Politics Seriously,”
Historical Society of Southern California Quarterly 36, no. 4 (1954), 322; J. M. Guinn, “The Passing of the Old
Pueblo,” Annual Publication of the Historical Society of Southern California and Pioneer Register 5, no. 2 (1901):
115.
118
County of Los Angeles Board of Supervisors, “Supervisor Julian A. Chavez.”
119
Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe, 13; Lipsitz, Possessive Investment in Whiteness, 233.
120
Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe, 26.
121
Ibid., 16.

49

not far from the banks of the Los Angeles River, Mexican (not American) Sonoratown near the
heart of Los Angeles was perceived by Anglo Americans much in the same way that white
residents of the city later perceived Chavez Ravine and its inhabitants nearly a hundred years
later. Both communities represented what was regarded as the region’s primitive, uncivilized
past, and neither had any place in Anglo visions for the future of Los Angeles.
Though the “primitive, uncivilized conditions” of non-Anglo communities can, in some
ways, be fairly attributed to cultural differences,122 the historical record clearly demonstrates that
the blight attributed almost exclusively to non-white areas like Chavez Ravine was the result of
intentional, institutionalized neglect. In an article written for the Pacific Historical Review,
David S. Torres-Rouffe describes the transition from zanjas (open-air ditches and canals) to
underground sewers in the second half of the nineteenth century as Los Angeles transitioned
from Mexican to American rule. During the Spanish and Mexican periods, rulers of the city
understood water to be a communal resource; the guiding principle behind the laws governing
use of the water was that “the pueblo itself held the right to the water, and use of it was granted
in common to all inhabitants.”123
During Los Angeles’s Mexican period, the ayuntamiento appointed zanjaneros who were
the “pueblo’s highest paid government officers,” to settle disputes and report to the ayuntamiento
when improvements or additions were needed.124 Only after recommendations from the
zanjaneros would the ayuntamiento “approve irrigation projects, and it demanded, when
possible, that such projects be community endeavors.”125 As Anglo immigration to Los Angeles
122

If we understand urbanization and infrastructural developments (such as underground plumbing) as signs of
modern and/or “civilized” culture, then the agricultural-centered rural communities might be termed “primitive or
uncivilized.” But as will be discussed shortly, these differences derive primarily from public policy differences
shaped by diametrically opposed understandings of community development and responsibility.
123
Torres-Rouff, “Water Use,” 123.
124
Ibid., 123.
125
Ibid., 123.

50

increased in the middle of the nineteenth century, few Americans had previous experience with
or an understanding of communal rights systems for regulating water use. In addition, the open
air zanjas were likely seen by Anglos as typical of the unsanitary practices leading to the
“scourge of epidemic disease” that were typically blamed on the “poor, the infirm, or members
of nonwhite races” throughout the nineteenth century.126 As Martin V. Melosi has demonstrated,
in American cities “the line between individual and governmental responsibility for responding
to community needs was obscure through the early nineteenth century.”127 Citing Sam Bass
Warner Jr., Melosi argued that “before then, ‘the city was to be an environment for private
money-making, and its government was to encourage private business.’”128 David TorresRouff’s article on ethnic clashes over water use in nineteenth-century Los Angeles also
demonstrated that “increasing clashes between U.S. immigrants and Mexican Californians over
‘water, public land, and ownership rights’ were based on different ideological notions of rights
(communal versus individual), and of ‘nature, progress, and economy.’”129 As Julian Chavez
adapted as a politician from Mexican to American rule, he too would play a part in this
ideological shift, ultimately leaving his own land because of Los Angeles’s plans to modernize
the city’s plumbing.
Drawing on the experience of his family’s long, multi-national history in New Mexico,
Chavez worked to build social and political connections that would secure his place among the
region’s landed elite despite the transition to US control. This involved a delicate balance
between placating Anglo American fears, supporting public works projects that neglected areas

126

Martin V. Melosi, The Sanitary City: Environmental Services in Urban American from Colonial Times to the
Present (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 2008), 41.
127
Ibid., 13.
128
Ibid., 13; Sam Bass Warner Jr., The Private City, rev. ed. (Philadelphia: University of Pennsylvania Press, 1987),
99.
129
Torres-Rouff., “Water Use,” 124.

51

with high concentrations of (increasingly poor) Mexicans, and building alliances with the
region’s most powerful and longstanding families. During the smallpox epidemics of 1850 and
1880, for example, Chavez’s land was used as the county “pest farm” to care for a number of
afflicted Chinese and Mexicans. “Chavez Canyon,” as it was then called, was home to the
isolation hospital that effectively served to quarantine the diseased “foreigners,” thereby
protecting the Anglo American population.130 And in 1865, Chavez had seemingly taken
significant other steps towards securing his future in American Los Angeles.
In 1865 Julian Chavez was once again elected to serve on the city council, where he
served on the Finance Committee, the Water Committee, and the Police Committee and also
became a member of the Board of Equalization. He was also appointed to the Los Angeles River
Improvement Committee, where he led efforts to fortify the river and straighten it to prevent
flooding. Perhaps more significant to his local standing, though, the widower Chavez also
married very influential Californio Augustin Machado’s niece, Maria Luisa Machado, which
connected him directly to one of Los Angeles’s largest ranching families.131
Chavez served two additional terms on the city council, from 1870–1871 and again in
1873, which proved to be a very significant final term for the future of Chavez Ravine. In 1873,
this former zanjanero and his colleagues on the council used eminent domain to secure land for
Los Angeles’s first sewer system. The council also issued special assessments (where the land
owner pays the costs) for two subsequent sewer projects.132 Though Chavez’s own land was

130

County of Los Angeles Board of Supervisors, “Supervisor Julian A. Chavez.” For another example of “ethnic
quarantine” in Los Angeles, see chap. 5 of Deverell, Whitewashed Adobe. Deverell discusses the ethnic quarantine
that took place during the 1924 plague outbreak. According to Deverell, “Ninety percent of those killed by the
disease were of Mexican descent.” (182)
131
County of Los Angeles Board of Supervisors, “Supervisor Julian A. Chavez.”
132
Torres-Rouff, “Water Use,” 127–31.

52

excluded,133 it is significant to note that Los Angeles’s first sewers did include land owned by the
Machado family. Another interesting connection is that Francisco Machado, the brother of
Chavez’s new wife, was also serving as a county supervisor from 1872–1876 while his family’s
land was receiving underground plumbing.134 Despite his powerful newfound alliances and long
political career, however, things were rapidly about to change for the worse for Chavez.
A combination of natural disasters “that decimated crops and cattle between 1857 and the
mid-1860s” and rising costs stemming from “time-consuming and costly legal proceedings to
confirm . . . land titles” negatively impacted many once proud Californio elites like Julian
Chavez.135 In 1878, Chavez sought permission to break a trust reserving 57 acres for his wife and
children so he could subdivide and sell the land. According to Chavez, “the land ‘gave them
nothing’ and the ‘onerous’ overdue city taxes compelled him to sell the property.”136 Though his
wife’s extended family, the Machados, seemed to retain at least 25,000 square acres in Southern
California, Chavez and his family were ultimately left landless.137 Drought and legal expenses
pertaining to establishing land ownership under the California Land Act of 1851ultimately
undermined this once thriving New Mexi-Californio. On July 25, 1879, Julian A. Chavez died of
a heart attack at the age of seventy.
Between 1848 and 1900, many of the region’s Californio elite saw their lands seized by
the conquering Anglo Americans who showed little regard for the protections guaranteed
Mexicans living in California under the Treaty of Guadalupe Hidalgo. These were prominent
members of society, many of whom served politically to ease the transition from Mexican to
133

This is significant because the lack of modern infrastructure and plumbing was one of the reasons Chavez Ravine
was deemed a blighted area in need of redevelopment prior to the construction of Dodger Stadium in the middle of
the next century. I found no evidence to suggest why Chavez’s property was excluded from the sewer projects.
134
County of Los Angeles Board of Supervisors, “Supervisor Francisco Machado,” Board Member Biographies,
lacounty.gov, PDF file.
135
Chávez-García, Negotiating Conquest, 150.
136
Ibid., 148–49.
137
Clay and Troesken, “Ranchos and the Politics of Land Claims,” 60; Chávez-García, Negotiating Conquest, 149.

53

American rule, much like Julian Chavez. This process of racial discrimination and
marginalization continued to plague Mexicans and Mexican Americans who were simply trying
to play by the rules set for them by the dominant Anglo Americans in an effort to realize the
American Dream of home ownership and self-determination. Subsequent examples include “the
‘repatriation’ drive of the 1930s, the police attack on the zoot-suiters in June 1943, ‘Operation
Wetback,’ [and] the evictions at Chavez Ravine which ultimately brought Walter O’Malley’s
Dodgers to Los Angeles.”138 The parallels between the seizure of Californio lands in 1848–1900
and the seizure of the homes of residents living in Chavez Ravine in the 1950s prior to the
construction of Dodger Stadium are striking. Despite their efforts to work hard and realize the
American Dream of home ownership; despite the fact that many of the young men of Chavez
Ravine had fought and died for their country in World War II; and despite the fact that it was
generally recognized that theirs was a happy existence with strong communal ties; much like the
Californios nearly a century before, they were powerless against racial discrimination as the
determining factor in Los Angeles’s future development.139 That same power of racial
discrimination would ultimately apply to the development of professional baseball in California
as well.

We Already Have Baseball in California
Baseball had already taken root and flourished in California by the time Albert Goodwill
Spalding brought his World Tour of “All-Stars” through the state in 1888, so much so, in fact,
that Spalding’s All-Stars were beaten (handily) by the California League’s San Francisco and

138

Charlotte Rebecca Negrete White, “Power vs. The People of Chavez Ravine: A Study of Their Determination and
Fortitude” (PhD diss., Claremont Graduate University, 2008), 16.
139
Ibid., 16; Ronald W. Lopez II, “Community Resistance and Conditional Patriotism in Cold War Los Angeles:
The Battle for Chavez Ravine,” Latino Studies 7, no. 4 (2009), 458.

54

Oakland teams.140 Indeed, perhaps nowhere in the world was a there a greater collection of
diverse peoples and cultures taking to the game of baseball, through which, as Joel Franks has
stated, they “might find . . . the ability to connect their pasts, gain wider social acceptance, link to
other communities, achieve control of their lives, show pride in their communities, and just have
fun.”141 Baseball played a big role in the lives of the immigrants daily flooding into California
from all over the world, particularly from Asia and Mexico. While European immigrants, like the
Irish and Italians, were slowly assimilated as “whites” and thereby granted access to professional
organized baseball, whether it be in the Pacific Coast League or the major leagues, African
Americans in the East and Latino and Asian immigrants were forced to form their own
segregated teams and leagues.
In California, racially-defined teams appeared as private company-sponsored teams, in
youth leagues formed out of “the progressive era impulse to reform misdirected and potentially
misdirected youth,” in Depression era church leagues, in semi-pro “bush leagues” around the
state, and in fully organized leagues segregated by race, such as the ten-team Nisei League in
Fresno formed by Japanese American baseball pioneer, Kenishi Zenimura.142 Chinese Americans
living in Oakland during the 1930s were represented by “a tough semiprofessional nine called
the Wa Sungs,” and Filipino leagues flourished during the 1920s and 1930s in San Francisco and
Los Angeles.143 And as would prove to be true in Japan during the American occupation
following World War II, war also fed the transborder flow of baseball between Mexico and the
140

Mark Lamster, Spalding’s World Tour: The Epic Adventure that Took Baseball around the Globe—And Made It
America’s Game (New York: Public Affairs, 2006.), 85–87. This was during the first attempt to organize and
maintain a legitimate league, which lasted from 1887–1889. The current California League (Class A Advanced
minor league) was not formed until 1941.
141
Joel Franks, “California Baseball’s Mixed Multitude,” in Baseball and the American Dream: Race, Class,
Gender and the National Pastime, ed. Robert Elias (New York: M. E. Sharpe, 2001), 102.
142
Ibid., 105–20. Nisei refers to second-generation Japanese immigrants. As Franks states on p. 108, the first
Japanese American baseball team was the Fuji club, which was formed in San Francisco in 1903 by Issei, or firstgeneration Japanese Americans.
143
Ibid., 108–9.

55

United States following the US–Mexico War.144 As the national pastime of the Western
Hemisphere’s most dominant emerging imperial nation during the late nineteenth and early
twentieth centuries, baseball had already “gained a top spot in the aspirations of young men in
Mexico, Cuba, Puerto Rico, the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and Nicaragua—almost all
places where American economic and military presence has been very intense.”145 According to
Douglas Monroy, baseball “arrived in Mexico in the 1870s and 1880s via American sailors in
Guaymas and mine employees in Cananea, and via Cuban players on tour,” and “north of the
border, Mexicans were playing baseball in Arizona and New Mexico in the 1880s.”146 By the
twentieth century, baseball was a common part of community life for Mexican Americans living
in Los Angeles, and by the middle of the century, the Mexican League would prove to be a
legitimate threat to the interests of Major League Baseball in the United States.
Prior to the turn of the twentieth century and the waves of immigration that would follow,
the game of baseball had become inextricably linked to the ideal of an American identity that
was being shaped by the cultural leaders of the American Renaissance. In 1846, Walt Whitman
wrote, “I see great things in baseball. It’s our game—the American game.”147 At a dinner
celebrating the return of Spalding’s World Tour, Mark Twain told a star-studded crowd (which
included a young Theodore Roosevelt) that baseball was the “very symbol, the outward and
visible expression of the drive, and push, and rush, and struggle of the raging, tearing, booming
nineteenth century.” He added that “Spalding and his men had carried the American name to the

144

For a comprehensive look at baseball and US/Japanese relations see, Sayuri Guthrie-Shimizu, Transpacific Field
of Dreams: How Baseball Linked the United States and Japan in Peace and War (Chapel Hill: The University of
North Carolina Press, 2012).
145
Douglas Monroy, Rebirth: Mexican Los Angeles from the Great Migration to the Great Depression (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 1999), 45–46; see also Rob Ruck, Raceball: How the Major Leagues Colonized the
Black and Latin Game (Boston: Beacon Press, 2011).
146
Monroy, Rebirth, 46.
147
Quoted in Lamster, Spalding’s World Tour, 30; also quoted in Ruck, Raceball, 1.

56

outermost parts of the earth, and covered it with glory every time.”148 By the early twentieth
century, encouraged by progressive reformers, immigrants would increasingly see baseball as a
way to keep their children active and out of trouble, as a way to instill confidence and a sense of
community, and perhaps most importantly, they hoped baseball would teach “immigrant children
about being American.”149 On the West Coast, Mexican and Asian immigrants hoped that the
game of baseball might afford them access to the American Dream, just as it did for Irish, Italian,
and eventually Jewish immigrants in the East. But ethnicity and race were becoming different
signifiers for foreign immigrants, and it became increasingly apparent that unlike European
immigrants, Mexicans, Asians, and black Latinos—the brown and yellow races—could not be so
easily whitewashed and thereby assimilated.
In the first decades of the twentieth century, “recently arrived Mexican elites” and
“remnants of Californio society” were playing baseball games in the “lawn tennis patio” of Club
Anahuac, “where the principle families of . . . reputable society always meet.”150 Just as
working-class Irish immigrants had forced their way onto teams in the Eastern leagues in the
nineteenth century, by the 1920s, working-class Mexican teams “sponsored usually by local
Mexican businesses regularly competed with one another, with other ethnically identified teams,
with local Anglo clubs, and with touring professionals from the United States and Mexico.”151
Baseball became central to the experience of Mexican and Mexican American migrant
communities living in Los Angeles. During the 1920s and 1930s, baseball in Los Angeles “was
one way the various people from south of the border forged an identity as Mexicans, a way for
148

Quoted in Lamster, xv-xvi; Ruck, Raceball, 1.
Peter Levine, Ellis Island to Ebbets Field: Sport and the American Jewish Experience (New York: Oxford
University Press, 1992), 87; Franks, “California Baseball’s Mixed Multitude,” 102. For an understanding of how
American identity was also exported to places in the Caribbean, such as Cuba, during the early 1900s, see Ruck,
Raceball; and Adrian Burgos Jr., Playing America’s Game: Baseball, Latinos, and the Color Line (Berkeley:
University of California Press, 2007).
150
Monroy, Rebirth, 46.
151
Ibid., 46.
149

57

Mexicans to garner respect in the eyes of the americanos, and a public reinforcement of the
traditional manly family values of forceful, dynamic activities.”152 During the Jim Crow years,
Douglas Monroy writes that “the crowds cheered for ‘their team,’ and their teams were often
organized by ethnic group.” These games simultaneously demonstrated the players’ Americanness while reinforcing—and making a competitive statement—about the superiority of their
collective ethnic identities.
Following the great migration north stemming from the fallout of the Mexican
Revolution in 1910, an estimated 1.5 to 2 million Mexicans were living in the United States,
according to the 1930 census and Mexican records.153 For a rapidly growing population seeking
permanence, acceptance, and a way to overcome decades of racial stereotyping, “baseball
simultaneously created cohesion and identity in ‘the Mexican colony,’ provided recreation, and
displayed Mexicans’ (at least the men’s) desire for the validation of the broader Los Angeles
populace, for, in other words, the acknowledgment of various mexicanos as dwellers, Mexican
ones, of the place.”154 But as the experience of Julian Chavez and other Californios confirmed,
their claims to place were ultimately denied by the lasting effects of the Mexican American War.
They were a conquered people with no claim to the land and certainly no rights of ownership. As
Monroy has articulated, “The legacy of the US–Mexico War awaited Mexican immigrants as
they arrived in the north. The inheritance of history denoted them as a defeated and inferior
people for whom unskilled labor was their only fitting role, a notion that distinguished
Mexicans’ experience from that of other immigrants to the United States.”155 And when the

152

Ibid., 47.
Ibid., 93–94.
154
Ibid., 48.
155
Ibid.,106.
153

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game of professional baseball began a process of desegregation in 1947, Mexicans would
continue to be excluded from the major leagues, thanks to the legacy of a different war.
In the early 1940s, Major League Baseball faced its biggest threat since the Federal
League tried to compete with the American and National Leagues in the 1914 and 1915 baseball
seasons. A wealthy Mexican oil tycoon named Jorge Pasquel bought a team in the Mexican
League in 1940 and began raiding the rosters of Negro League teams with the promise of higher
pay and a life outside the reach of Jim Crow. Other Mexican League teams had been doing that
since 1937, but beginning in 1943, Pasquel successfully used the same tactics to go after major
league players. While the Mexican League raids pushed major league owners towards further
towards integration and secured a number of concessions for players, including a modification of
the ten-day release clause, their resolution also forced a non-compete agreement between Major
League Baseball and the Mexican League.156 While Jackie Robinson’s integration of
professional baseball ultimately led to a flood of Latin players into the game, noticeably absent
were Mexican players, who had to be purchased from the Mexican League team they played for.
The bottleneck created by this policy undoubtedly contributed to the heightened hysteria of
“Fernando-mania” when former Mexican League pitcher, Fernando Venezuela, joined the Los
Angeles Dodgers and took the league by storm starting in the 1981 season. Despite their love for
playing the game of baseball, Mexicans living in America found they had no more claim to a
place in the American game than they had to space in American cities.
The Battle of Chavez Ravine: It Was Over Before the Century Began
When Los Angeles was a young city, the rolling hills of Chavez Ravine were left
undeveloped as the town spread out in the flatlands below. Without sewers, water
facilities or improved streets, Chavez Ravine became a haven principally for
Mexican-American and Mexican nationals, many of whom grazed sheep and
cattle on the green hills as early as 1900. A minority group with no political
156

Burgos, Playing America’s Game, 167–70; Ruck, Raceball, 118–42.

59

power, they were unable to get municipal services that would make the area a
normal residential district. As the years went on, jerry-built shacks dotted the
area. This naturally choice location, with hills looking down on Elysian Park on
two sides and a view of the expanding city on another, became a blighted area.157
The previous paragraph was taken from the Frontier Special Report, published in June
1957, which dealt with the illegality of constructing a ballpark on land designated for public use.
The language from this report is filled with the whitewashed language of Los Angeles’s “Spanish
fantasy past.” The “rolling hills of Chavez Ravine” were left undeveloped, intentionally, by
Julian Chavez because he was a rancher. The area was intentionally left without sewers, at least
partially under the watch of the very man who owned the land. The area was intentionally used
by Anglo residents as a “haven” for Mexican American and Mexican nationals in an effort to
segregate and quarantine fatal disease, on multiple occasions. Likewise, when finally given the
opportunity to own land when the ravine was subdivided by Marshall Stimson (“a veteran Los
Angeles politician as well as an activist in reform movements in state and local governments,”
who around 1913 sold parcels in the ravine to house roughly two hundred Mexican families
living by the Los Angeles River as a result of being displaced by the 1910 Mexican Revolution),
those new landowners intentionally and proudly built those “jerry-built shacks” they called
homes.158 It’s true that that “blighted area” became that way intentionally, but not by the
intentions of the people who would see their homes ultimately replaced by a baseball stadium.
Compounding the problem of perception of the area as blighted was the major housing
shortage facing Californians during and after the Second World War, as the state experienced a
massive influx of people migrating west to take jobs in the emerging aviation industry and the

157

“Public housing and the Brooklyn Dodgers: Los Angeles, double play by City Hall in the Ravine,” A Frontier
Special Report, June 1957, Edward Ross Roybal papers, Dept. of Special Collections/UCLA Library. Accessed via
the University of California Calisphere digital archives.
<http://content.cdlib.org/ark:/13030/hb1b69n98s/?query=Ravine&brand=calisphere>
158
White, “Power vs. The People of Chavez Ravine,” 42; Parson, Making a Better World, 164.

60

developing military industrial complex.159 The tremendous housing shortage resulted in
Congress passing the public housing acts of 1937, as well as the Taft-Wagner-Ellender bill in
1949, which provided large sums of additional money for housing. In August 1949, Mayor
Fletcher Bowron and the Los Angeles City Council “by unanimous action authorized the City
Housing Authority to build 10,000 low-rent slum clearance units on sites to be selected by the
CHA.” Chavez Ravine was immediately selected as one of the prime locations to begin slum
clearance, with the CHA’s plans calling for 3,360 of the 10,000 total housing units to be built on
that site. Toward the end of July 1950 the residents of Chavez Ravine, whose homes had
occupied just 40 percent of the land, received a letter from the Housing Authority of the City of
Los Angeles informing them that surveyors employed by the city would be by shortly to estimate
the value that the city would pay them for their homes.
Many residents refused eviction, and few, if any, received “fair value” for their homes
and property. What came to be called “The Battle of Chavez Ravine” raged for the next decade
in courtrooms, the local media, and over the rubble of homes bulldozed in front of weeping, and
now quite literally homeless, Mexican American families. Adding insult to injury, the public
housing program planned for Chavez Ravine was later voted down amid McCarthy Era Red
Scare tactics that labeled the program as “creeping socialism,” clearing the way for Mayor
Bowron’s successor, Norris Poulson’s courtship of the Dodgers.160 By the time Poulson
contacted Walter O’Malley in 1954 about the city’s sincere interest in bringing the Dodgers to
the West Coast, O’Malley had already been told by New York Commissioner Robert Moses, in
no uncertain terms, that he had no intention of using federally funded slum clearance for the
purpose of building a ballpark in Brooklyn.
159

Hise, Magnetic Los Angeles, 119; Parson, Making a Better World, 76–78.
Parson, Making a Better World; Avila, Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight; Lopez, “Community
Resistance and Conditional Patriotism”; White, “Power vs. The People of Chavez Ravine.”
160

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Walter O’Malley: “An heir to both the Wigwam political tradition and the Irish-American
practice of blarney and charm.”161
Walter O’Malley was one of the most influential owners in the history of Major League
Baseball. He has been credited with turning around a floundering franchise and making the
Brooklyn Dodgers one of the most profitable teams in the league.162 Then, at the height of the
Dodger’s success and national popularity, O’Malley uprooted the team and brought Major
League Baseball to the West Coast. But the story of this Irish-American conqueror of the West
carries little of the romance that we typically find in tales of immigrants struggling to attain the
American Dream. That might very well apply to O’Malley’s father, but by the time Walter was
old enough to attend high school, his family was unquestionably counted among New York
City’s elite. The story of Walter O’Malley is but another chapter in the long history of the
conquest of North America by powerful, Anglo elites.
Walter’s father, Edwin O’Malley, was a Tammany Hall pol who used his extensive
political connections to ensure that his son was given every opportunity to succeed. While facing
political pressures stemming from corruption hearings regarding his role in the Tammany regime,
Edwin sent Walter west to Culver Military Academy in Indiana, “an isolated and expensive
haven for the elite.”163 Walter thrived at Culver, where he was identified by faculty early as a
leader and strong communicator, as evidenced by his success writing for the school’s paper.
Upon Walter’s graduation, senior faculty members suggested to his parents that he pursue a
career in journalism or politics rather than the military. O’Malley’s habit of developing and
maintaining an extensive network of contacts began at Culver; as Michael D’Antonio suggested
161

D’Antonio, Forever Blue, 19.
Ibid., 51. When O’Malley began working with the Dodgers at the behest of George McLaughlin from the
Brooklyn Trust Company in the late 1930s, the team was indebted to the lender (which also served as executor of
the Ebbets’s estate) for $500,000.
163
Ibid., 9.
162

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in his biography of O’Malley, “In a time long before the term was used, he was ‘networking’ his
way to people who would help him throughout his life.”164
Relying on his newfound connections at Culver and those of his father in Tammany Hall,
Walter was able to get into the University of Pennsylvania (Class of 1926) at a time when only
“10 percent of Americans . . . got any education after high school”; furthermore, as an Ivy
League school, Penn graduates “made up a tiny percentage of those who earned college degrees,
making them an elite among the elite.”165 As at Culver Academy, O’Malley thrived at Penn
where he was elected class president for both his junior and senior year; upon graduation, his
classmates declared him Spoon Man, “an honor reserved for the most respected fellow in
class.”166 After returning to New York, O’Malley’s father used his contacts to help Walter get
into Columbia for law school, though he finished at Fordham. Even as many in the country were
beginning to feel the devastating effects of the Great Depression, O’Malley finished his law
degree by taking night classes at Fordham while working during the day with a contractor in the
drilling and survey business. In 1931, he married his longtime sweetheart and family friend Kay
Hanson, the daughter of a prominent Brooklyn judge.167 The following year Walter started his
own legal practice focusing on “civil cases, contracts, and real estate,” which (given the financial
ruin wreaked by the Depression) turned out to be a very lucrative and timely decision.168
By 1943 O’Malley had developed powerful civic and corporate connections, and in that
year, he left his successful New York law practice to take the position of vice president and
general counsel with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Prior to taking his first “official” position with the

164

Ibid., 13–15.
Ibid., 15, 20.
166
Ibid., 21.
167
Ibid., 26–7.
168
Ibid. 29–35. O’Malley was making over $100,000 a year from his law practice by 1938, which according to
D’Antonio, equaled $1.3 million in 2009.
165

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team in 1943, O’Malley’s former mentor, George V. McLaughlin, who was the president of the
Brooklyn Trust Company, asked Walter to keep an eye on the financially troubled ball club.169
At the time he took the position, the nearly bankrupt team was in arrears in paying its mortgage
to the Brooklyn Trust Company. Over the next seven years O’Malley managed to accumulate 50
percent of the ball club’s stock, and on October 26, 1950, he officially became the majority
owner and president of the team.170 Though the stories of Larry McPhail, Branch Rickey, and of
course, Jackie Robinson are central to the history of the Brooklyn Dodgers, they are beyond the
scope of this chapter. It is worth noting, however, that each played significant roles in turning the
Dodgers franchise around. Rickey in particular bears mentioning as the mastermind behind
rebuilding the organization’s farm system, developing quality players that would contribute to
the team’s great success following World War II, and of course, integrating the game with the
signing of Robinson.171 Without their contributions it is fair to suggest that the team may never
have recovered financially, let alone moved to Los Angeles.
By 1946, the Dodgers had already become the most profitable club in the National
League, and as the team entered into a ten-year period of unprecedented competitive success
from 1946 to 1956, with five National League pennants, O’Malley attempted to capitalize on that
success with repeated efforts to secure enough land for a new stadium until, ultimately, he
resorted to the threat of relocation if public officials were unwilling to cooperate with him
towards that end. Today this is a common tactic employed by major league teams which proves
successful more often than not as demonstrated by the new ballparks built for the New York
Yankees, the Chicago White Sox, the Minnesota Twins (who actually threatened to fold

169

D’Antonio, Forever Blue, 51; Sullivan, Dodgers Move West, 29.
Sullivan, Dodgers Move West, 30.
171
O’Malley also brought Rickey on as an ownership partner when he bought out the McKeever family’s share of
the team in 1944. Six years later, Rickey was bought out, and O’Malley obtained sole control of the franchise.
170

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altogether by way of contraction), and more. The emotional trauma experienced not only in
Brooklyn but throughout Major League Baseball due to the Dodgers’ relocation to Los Angeles
in 1958 set a lasting precedent that made those present-day threats effective.
In just under twenty years, Walter O’Malley’s elite upbringing and education had
prepared and enabled him to create a vast network of powerful connections that ultimately led to
his position as the sole owner of the Brooklyn Dodgers. When those connections proved unable
to help him secure the land he desired for a new ballpark in Brooklyn, another collection of
urban elites would reach out to O’Malley and offer him an opportunity to realize his ambitions in
Los Angeles. O’Malley’s story demonstrates that stadium construction is a process controlled by
and for the urban elite, much like most other forms of city building. And as was the case with the
construction of Dodger Stadium in Chavez Ravine, stadium construction can most certainly be
promoted as city building, particularly in a nation (no less a city) that has increasingly placed a
cultural premium on professional sports and entertainment.

Postwar Urban Development: Cities/Suburbs, Transportation Infrastructure, and Land
Use
The story of the Dodgers’ move to Los Angeles has often been articulated within the
context of changing patterns in postwar urban development and the rapid expansion brought on
by mass suburbanization. If one endorses the dichotomy that pits the effects of suburban sprawl
against urban development, then Brooklyn Dodger fans and the families living in Chavez Ravine
were merely casualties of the inevitable historical processes that led to white flight, capital flight,
industrial decentralization, and liberal growth policies initiated in part by the federal government.
As the old industrial spaces of northeastern cities were abandoned or absorbed into growing

65

inner-city “black belts” with their own forms of “business and entertainment” (what came be to
called “vice districts”), white middle-class Americans began to fear those postindustrial urban
spaces as dark,172 dangerous areas scarred by neglect and rising crime. Postwar urban renewal
legislation (and the federal funding that came with it) armed downtown business elites with the
power to reclaim and rebuild some of those spaces in a manner designed to attract white middleclass residents/customers and to act as a buffer between their investments in the central business
district and the dark areas on the fringe.
Prior to the 1950s, scholars from the Chicago school of urban sociology, such as Robert
Park, Andrew Lees, and Louis Wirth identified the built environment of the city as the source of
America’s social ills.173 But as Becky Nicolaides points out, postwar urban scholars and critics
such as Lewis Mumford, Jane Jacobs, and William Whyte began to argue that “the suburbs had
elbowed their way into that maligned position—the site of social dysfunction and pathology.
Hell, it seemed, was moving from the city to the suburbs—like everyone else.”174 The result was
the widespread acceptance of an oppositional discourse that linked urban decline with suburban
growth. Nicolaides suggests that although these city-based, postwar critics “maintained a faith in
the superiority of urban life and even some optimism about the urban future, they approached
their social analysis of cities and suburbs from within this oppositional framework... They
maintained a hope for the city, a passionate faith that cities—not suburbs—held the greatest
potential for progress and human civilization itself.”175 But despite the prevalence of this
oppositional view point among postwar scholars, as Greg Hise states in Magnetic Los Angeles,
172

Dark is used here to signify both the racial euphemism and what whites saw as cultural inferiority, as in “dark
ages.”
173
Becky Nicolaides, “How Hell Moved from the City to the Suburbs: Urban Scholars and Changing Perceptions of
Authentic Community,” in The New Suburban History, ed. Kevin M. Kruse and Thomas J. Sugrue (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 2005), 82–84.
174
Ibid., 80–81.
175
Ibid,. 82.

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“in practice, these boundaries were, and continue to be, far more porous than the simple
city/suburb dichotomy suggests.”176 As the historical narrative develops over the course of the
twentieth century, that claim becomes more evident as postwar stadium-driven urban renewal
policies changed in an effort to form a symbiotic, rather than competitive, economic relationship
between city and suburb.177 Nevertheless, when the Dodgers moved to Los Angeles in 1957,
however, the dichotomous view of city and suburb was still evident in the renewal policies
developed by city officials and downtown business elites.178
The first generation of suburban historians generally argued that “early suburbanization
was shaped by the rise of a culture of domesticity that emphasized the separation of work and
home, made possible by transportation innovations beginning with commuter railways and street
cars and, later, the automobile.”179 Those scholars further suggested that the “middle-class
movement out of central cities was also spurred by perceptions of urban disorder and fears of
immigration.”180 The stereotype of suburbia as exclusively privileged, white middle-class
enclaves developed out of this school of thought. In the postwar central cities of the Northeast,
this proved to be an extremely persuasive stereotype that not only influenced public policies
designed to combat decentralization, but it also began to take hold in the executive offices of
Major League Baseball franchises. Some owners, including Walter O’Malley, attributed the
steady decline in paying customers at the ballpark to the exodus of white middle-class fans who
176

Hise, Magnetic Los Angeles, 5.
This will be particularly evident in the chap. 3 on Detroit, where city leaders and developers have embraced a
strategy heavily dependent on importing suburban dollars in the city’s rising tourist economy centered around
sports, gaming, and live entertainment.
178
As the following chapter will articulate more fully, the construction of th new US Cellular Field on the South
Side of Chicago presents an extreme example of the influence of the city/suburb dichotomy on urban development.
There, when efforts to get away from the South Side and build in the northwest suburbs failed, the White Sox built a
stadium surrounded by parking lots that effectively serves an imported suburban clientele while isolating them from
the surrounding (primarily poor, African American) neighborhoods.
179
Kevin M. Kruse and Thomas J. Sugrue, “Introduction: The New Suburban History,” in The New Suburban
History, ed. Kevin M. Kruse and Thomas J. Sugrue (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2005), 2.
180
Ibid., 2.
177

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had moved out to the suburbs. Ballparks surrounded by growing numbers of minorities and the
working poor, with limited access and parking for automobiles, were not appealing to the
expanding postwar white middle class. From a structural standpoint, then, changes to urban
transit infrastructure and land uses once again coincided with the beginning of a new era of
stadium construction.
Second only to the availability of large parcels of often costly urban real estate, the layout
of a city’s transportation infrastructure heavily influences the selection of potential stadium
development sites. As far back as the late nineteenth century when baseball was still played in
semi-permanent wooden ballparks, location was dependent on accessibility to mass transit.181
Steven Riess detailed in City Games how deeply connected transit companies were to ball clubs,
as demonstrated by their financial involvement with the game in 78 cities.182 The Brooklyn
National League Club was owned by traction magnates at the end of the nineteenth century
before being sold to Charles Ebbets in 1898, who then moved the team to Washington Park III, a
relatively small wooden ballpark in the centrally located, yet industrial, Red Hook section of
Brooklyn near the Gowanus Canal. To help cover the costs of relocation and a new ballpark,
Ebbets received financial backing from two trolley companies which were hoping to increase
ridership on their nearby lines.183 With the increased professional organization and stability of
the game at the turn of the century, the game’s popularity and profitability began to grow
tremendously, and it became clear that the overcrowded and unsafe wooden ballparks could
profitably be replaced by more expensive, and permanent, steel and concrete structures.184 It was
181

Riess, City Games, 214.
Ibid., 214.
183
Riess, City Games, 214; Ronald M. Selter, Ballparks of the Deadball Era: A Comprehensive Study of Their
Dimensions, Configurations and Effects on Batting, 1901–1919 (Jefferson, NC: McFarland, 2008), 38; G. Edward
White, Creating the National Pastime: Baseball Transforms Itself, 1903–1953 (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1996), 16–17.
184
Riess, City Games, 214.
182

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during this transitional first decade of the twentieth century that Charles Ebbets began to take
notice of “an area of Brooklyn at the southeast corner of Prospect Park between the Bedford and
Flatbush sections colloquially known as ‘Pigtown.’”185
As will be more fully explained in chapter 2 (about Chicago), one of the most coveted
land uses in urban development, particularly with the acceleration of “white flight” after World
War II, has been middle- to upper-class residential areas. Downtown businesses have long
favored such development due to fears of declining profits and property values associated with
locations near heavy industry and the racially segregated urban poor.186 With the National
Agreement in 1903 that brought the competing American and National Leagues together under
the banner of Major League Baseball, the game was on its way to becoming one of urban
America’s big businesses as well. Like his eventual successor as owner of the Dodgers, Walter
O’Malley, Charles Ebbets anticipated the changes coming to the game and acted decisively to
get ahead of the curve by secretly acquiring individual parcels of land located between what he
saw as two emerging upscale residential communities in Bedford and Flatbush.
Brooklyn’s growing population and Pigtown’s close proximity to Prospect Park, and
more importantly, to nine distinct trolley lines, led Ebbets to believe that the squatter-filled
former dumping ground would likewise see a “boom in land values.”187 Moreover, the team’s
home at Washington Park was beginning to suffer from increased industrial pollution emitting
from a nearby can factory and coal field, as well as the resulting stench rising from the Gowanus

185

White, Creating the National Pastime, 17.
Biles, Richard J. Daley; Lois Wille, At Home in the Loop: How Clout and Community Built Chicago’s Dearborn
Park (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University Press, 1997); Joel Rast, Remaking Chicago: The Political Origins of
Urban Industrial Change (DeKalb: Northern Illinois University Press, 1999); Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto;
Bachin, Building the South Side; Von Hoffman, House by House, Block by Block; Robert M. Fogelson, Downtown:
Its Rise and Fall, 1880–1950 (New Haven: Yale University Press, 2001); Sugrue, Origins of the Urban Crisis;
Squires et al., Race, Class and the Response to Urban Decline.
187
White, Creating the National Pastime, 17; Riess, City Games, 220; Selter, Ballparks of the Deadball Era, 42.
186

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Canal.188 Ebbets had to secretly buy the tracts of land making up the five-and-a-half-acre site he
targeted for his stadium to avoid jumpstarting that boom and creating a seller’s market.
Completely oblivious to Ebbets’s intentions for the property (much like the property owners
living in Chavez Ravine prior to the Dodgers move nearly fifty years later), the previous owners
had no idea that the value of their property was about to increase dramatically. While the cost for
the construction of Ebbets Field would eventually reach $750,000, forcing him to take on his
contractors as partial owners,189 Ebbets secured all of the individual parcels that made up the site
for just $100,000.190 As would prove true later when the Dodgers moved west to Los Angeles,
and for future stadium projects around the country as well, transportation infrastructure and land
use changes directly influenced the location of Ebbets Field at 55 Sullivan Place.
When Walter O’Malley began looking for a location for his new stadium during the
1950s, he was determined to have maximum parking and direct highway access.191 The primary
forms of urban transportation infrastructure were changing from streetcars and rails to roads,
particularly following the passage of postwar legislation calling for extensive highway
construction at both the state and federal levels. With the support of a growing military industrial
complex, the automobile industry (at times one and the same during the buildup for war), and the
Los Angeles Times, the region began to take shape as an intentionally “metropolitan mosaic” of
planned communities connected by a web of carefully and intentionally placed highways. This,
in conjunction with federally funded interstate highway construction, facilitated and accelerated
the westward migration of Americans seeking work in California’s growing military industrial

188

White, Creating the National Pastime, 16.
The McKeever brothers, Stephen and Edward, owned half of the ball club.
190
White, Creating the National Pastime,17; Riess, City Games, 220.
191
Riess, City Games, 236; Avila, Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight, 152–54; D’Antonio, Forever Blue,
179; Sullivan, The Dodgers Move West, 38–40.
189

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complex.192 For a baseball owner like Walter O’Malley, who was looking to build a new stadium
suited to the rise of suburbia and the age of the automobile, Los Angeles offered an opportunity
to get in on the ground floor.
Along with transportation infrastructure, land use played a significant role in the
development of cities and their ballparks. Following the passage of the 1954 Housing Act, the
majority of the decision making regarding the use of federal funding for urban renewal and
highway construction (often inseparable tools towards the same ends) was left to local and state
governments respectively.193 The passage of the Interstate Highways Act of 1956, Eric Avila and
others have argued, “struck many of the nation’s leading planners as an opportunity to remedy
the deteriorating condition if America’s cities.”194 In Los Angeles, the “freeways encircling . . .
the central business district are linked by four major interchanges, each of which stands on what
used to be residential areas once identified as ‘slums.’”195 As postwar urban development
increasingly prioritized building up the central business district and constructing highways to
provide wealthier, white suburbanites direct access to downtown, newly constructed baseball
stadiums became both a tool for reshaping the urban core and an immensely popular cultural

192

Avila, Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight, 192-3. Avila points out that LATimes owner/publisher, Harry
Chandler, “maintained early ties to the automobile industry. . . . By the early 1920s, the Chandler family had an
economic interest in almost every aspect of automobile production.” Regarding highway construction, the military
industrial complex, planned communities and westward migration see also, Hise, Magnetic Los Angeles, 118–20;
Nicolaides, My Blue Heaven; Brian D. Taylor, “When Finance Leads Planning: Urban Planning, Highway Planning,
and Metropolitan Freeways in California,” Journal of Planning Education and Research 20, no. 2 (2000):196–214.
193
Mollenkopf, The Contested City, 117; Avila, Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight, 206–7; Taylor, “When
Finance Leads Planning,” 204.
194
Avila, Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight, 206; Mollenkopf, The Contested City, 17, 121; Raymond A.
Mohl, “Planned Destruction: The Interstates and Central City Housing,” in From Tenements to the Robert Taylor
Homes: In Search of an Urban Housing Policy in Twentieth Century America, ed. John F. Bauman, Roger Biles, and
Kristin M. Szylvian (University Park: Pennsylvania State University Press, 2000), 227; Biles, Richard J. Daley, 90;
Von Hoffman, House by House, Block by Block, 116.
195
Avila, Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight, 207; Charles C. Euchner, Playing the Field: Why Sports
Teams Move and Cities Fight to Keep Them (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 1993), 152. In Chicago,
the Dan Ryan highway effectively cut off the city’s expanding Black Belt from the central business district and
destroyed what was once a vibrant African American commercial strip along Wentworth Avenue, just south of
where the new US Cellular Field (formerly the new Comiskey Park) now stands.

71

attraction that city leaders (and baseball team owners) hoped would reel in those suburban
dollars. Urban power brokers have long argued that the displacement of thousands of poor racial
minorities by stadiums and highways in cities across the country was solely motivated, even
necessitated, by the pursuit of those dollars. While that might be fairly argued against regarding
O’Malley’s pursuit of a new stadium in Brooklyn, if only because no one was uprooted for a new
stadium, the decision to build in Los Angeles, on the other hand, had everything to do with race;
this is a story that reaches far deeper into the past than “The Battle of Chavez Ravine.”
Just as scholarship in urban and suburban history has convincingly demonstrated the
significance of race in postwar urban (re)development, 196 sports historians have recognized the
central importance of this issue. Following the 1956 season, Walter O’Malley expressed
concerns about the “long, long line of poor Puerto Rican people getting their welfare checks”
directly across the street from his office in Ebbets Field. According to Neil Sullivan, such
concerns demonstrate “the relationship between race and class in America.” Sullivan argued that
“bigotry is irrational because it means that people willing to part with their money are rejected
for a reason that is arbitrary and self-defeating.”197 But the historical record clearly demonstrates
that the fear of African Americans as threats to both personal and commercial property values
directly led to the flight of capital and white residents which ultimately led to greater urban
disinvestment. And if Ebbets Field was unable to accommodate a white suburban clientele
driving in from the suburbs, long lines of locals receiving welfare checks, Puerto Rican or
otherwise, did not bode well for O’Malley’s economic future. As O’Malley’s concerns mounted
about how the changing demographics in the neighborhoods surrounding Ebbets Field were
196

Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto; Biles, Richard J. Daley; Wille, At Home in the Loop; Rast, Remaking
Chicago; Sides, L.A. City Limits; Hunt and Ramón, Black Los Angeles; Fogelson, Downtown; Sugrue, Origins of the
Urban Crisis; Nicolaides, My Blue Heaven; Hise, Magnetic Los Angeles.
197
Neil J. Sullivan, The Diamond in the Bronx: Yankee Stadium and the Politics of New York (New York: Oxford
University Press, 2001), 111. Conversation between O’Malley and general manager Bill Bavasi.

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affecting his take at the gate, he realized that he needed to build his new stadium in a location
easily accessible for white, middle-class suburbanites. In short, O’Malley had to convince city
officials that the Dodgers were a necessary part of New York City’s postwar plans for urban
renewal and the city’s ongoing fight against the blight-inducing effects of decentralization.
While O’Malley deserves credit for anticipating many of the technological and
geographical developments that would drastically alter the landscape of Major League Baseball,
the solution he sought to counter the effects of mass migration from Brooklyn to the suburbs was
heavily influenced by postwar efforts to slow, if not reverse, the growing threat that
decentralization posed to the monocentric city model.198 O’Malley believed that if he could build
his stadium in a location that allowed immediate access to major highways and mass-transit, on a
parcel of land large enough to accommodate both the stadium and parking for a minimum of
4,000 cars, suburban Dodgers fans would be more likely to drive into the city to catch a game.
By the 1950s, however, the prospects for acquiring that much land in a single transaction within
the city limits of Brooklyn were very bleak. There was a way to pull it off, but it would require
cooperation from city politicians, and a willingness to classify the Dodgers as a public good,
which warranted enacting one of the most powerful tools for urban redevelopment.
In Search of the Taj O’Malley
In late 1956, the Dodgers toured Japan. Walter O’Malley liked the ground-level
suites—“dugout boxes”—between each dugout. They became part of Dodger
Stadium. Too: five tiers of seating, red infield and warning track clay, and palm

198

William T. Bogart, Don’t Call It Sprawl: Metropolitan Structure in the Twenty-First Century (Cambridge:
Cambridge University Press, 2006), 9. Bogart states that “the dominant intellectual approach to describing cities in
the twentieth century was the monocentric city model. In a moncentric city, all commercial and industrial activity
tales place in the central business district, while the rest of the city consists of residential areas.” Although New
York City had experienced a level of commercial and industrial decentralization by that time, one could argue that
the infrastructural development plans of Robert Moses were focused on revitalizing downtown Manhattan and
providing improved access to the central business district for residents of the surrounding neighborhood boroughs by
investing heavily in the construction of highways, bridges, and tunnels.

73

trees beyond the outfield. “I want to build the perfect park,” he pledged.
Designers still heap praise on baseball’s Taj Mahal.199
Ebbets Field was the Dodgers’ home in Brooklyn since it first opened on April 9,
1913.200 O’Malley began his crusade for a new ballpark just three years after taking his first
official position with the team in 1943. In a letter dated October 14, 1946, addressed to Emil
Praeger, an engineer working out of New York City, O’Malley sent the following cryptic
message:
Dear Emil,
They say that everything happens in Brooklyn but here is something that didn’t.
Your fertile imagination should have some ideas about enlarging or replacing our
present stadium.
Sincerely,
Walter F. O’Malley201
As early as 1948, O’Malley publicly issued a statement in the New York Herald-Tribune
regarding the Dodgers’ decision to decline plans drafted by theatrical designer Norman Bel
Geddes for an 80,000 seat concrete and stainless steel stadium which was drawn to fit the
existing acreage containing Ebbets Field, which at the time, had a maximum capacity of 35,000.
He cited the exorbitant projected cost of $6 million as the primary reason for rejecting the plans.
O’Malley suggested that while “we appreciate that the Brooklyn fans are entitled to more seats in
a modern stadium . . . it just does not seem possible in the near future.”202 And yet, beginning
with the letter to Praeger in 1946, the historical records clearly demonstrate that O’Malley was
199

Curt Smith, Storied Stadiums: Baseball’s History through Its Ballparks (Cambridge, MA: Da Capo Press, 2003),
293.
200
Zimbalist, Baseball and Billions, 125.
201
“October 14, 1956: Letter from Walter O’Malley to Emil Praeger,” Historic Documents: October 14, 1946 – June
26, 1953, accessed April 20, 2009, walteromalley.com.
<http://www.walteromalley.com/docu_detail.php?gallery=1&set=1&docuID=9&pageNum=1>
202
“March 16, 1948: Statement by Walter O’Malley in New York Herald-Tribune,” Historic Documents: October
14, 1946 - June 26, 1953. Accessed April 20, 2009. walteromalley.com. The documents on O’Malley’s biographical
website also contain correspondence (May – June, 1956) with Buckminster Fuller, whose geodesic dome design was
beginning to make waves in the world of architecture, regarding the possibility of a “clearspan enclosure” for his
new ballpark design.

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concerned not so much with construction costs, but rather the location of his new ballpark.
O’Malley’s primary concerns not only included additional seating and modern amenities, but
also parking space and more direct access to the park via mass transit and/or more immediate
proximity to highways.
Between 1946 and 1953, O’Malley began to float information about his intentions to
build a multipurpose, retractable roof stadium to the local newspapers and magazines such as
Colliers, suggesting that the development of such a venue, in combination with the immense
popularity of the Dodgers, would push Brooklyn into the international spotlight. Furthermore, in
one such letter written to Frank D. Schroth, publisher of The Brooklyn Eagle, O’Malley
suggested that by building such a stadium, “we would become so important in Brooklyn that
once again we would long to be a separate city with an individual identity.”203 On June 18, 1953,
O’Malley sent a letter that included perhaps the first official threat of relocation to Robert Moses,
commissioner of the Triborough Bridge and Tunnel Authority. That letter began a long and bitter
fight between one of baseball’s most beloved organizations and the cold, hard realities of
Moses’s “monocentric city model” 204 of urban (re)development.
O’Malley was more than willing to pay the city for one large property, but the only way
to put such a package together was if Robert Moses, chairman of the mayor’s Committee on
Slum Clearance at the time, was willing to invoke the powers of eminent domain extended to
governments under Title I of the Housing Act of 1949 for the creation of public housing.205 As
John Mollenkopf has demonstrated, with the subsequent Housing Act of 1954, control of the
program was ceded to local authorities, “which allowed downtown businesses, developers, and

203

“September 15, 1952: Letter from Walter O’Malley to Frank Schroth,” Historic Documents: October 14, 1946 –
June 26, 1953, accessed April 21, 2009, walteromalley.com.
204
Bogart, Don’t Call it Sprawl, 9.
205
Sullivan, Dodgers Move West, 44, 57.

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their political allies, who had little interest in housing, to use federal power to advance their own
ends.”206 But as O’Malley would soon discover, Moses had a different vision for the future of
metropolitan New York. In response to a letter sent by O’Malley on August 10, 1955, which
attempted once again to convince Moses to help him secure the necessary land at the AtlanticFlatbush site, “Moses replied sharply that ‘I can only repeat what we have told you verbally and
in writing, namely, that a new ball field for the Dodgers cannot be dressed up as a Title I
project.’”207 If there was to be no way for O’Malley to counter the exodus of Brooklyn baseball
fans to the suburbs, then perhaps it was time for O’Malley to consider the possibility of bringing
the Dodgers out to the middle class. And he would do just that, following their exodus all the
way out to the West Coast. In what can only be described as tragically ironic, on July 24, 1950,
just three years prior to O’Malley’s first letter to Moses, the very same urban renewal policy of
federally authorized and subsidized slum clearance that would eventually prove fatal to
O’Malley’s efforts in Brooklyn was formally introduced (also by letter) three thousand miles
away to a small community of migrant workers living just north of downtown Los Angeles.
The Battle of Chavez Ravine and the Significance of Dodger Stadium
Walter O’Malley was able to build his modern stadium because the public officials of
Los Angeles developed a freer interpretation of Title I of the Housing Act of 1949. The land
surrounding Chavez Ravine was originally confiscated by the city under the power of eminent
domain for the construction of blight-clearing public housing units; however, by the time that
construction was voted down, the land had already been confiscated and the land legally
restricted exclusively for public-use development. The result was a problem of much greater
significance than what appears on the surface. The contract between the city and the Dodgers
206
207

Mollenkopf, The Contested City, 117.
Robert Moses, quoted in Sullivan, Dodgers Move West, 48–49.

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was hotly contested in court, and one of the primary objections raised by those opposed to the
contract was the gross discrepancy between the original appraisal of the lands, which set the
value for the compensation owed by the city to the original residents of Chavez Ravine, and the
projected value of the land once it was graded for development. As Neil Sullivan points out,
“Grading, however, required significant investments and could be undertaken only for a project
promising substantial commercial returns. As [mayor] Poulson’s memoirs suggest, no firm had
been willing to risk such a venture until the Dodgers arrived.”208
If Poulson’s account is accurate, the city was then doubly motivated to complete the
Chavez Ravine deal with the Dodgers. Not only was the team necessary for elevating the status
of Los Angeles as a nationally competitive metropolis, or “Major League City,” but building a
stadium appeared to be the only option available in city efforts to replace the blighted shacks of
Chavez Ravine’s migrant community. The stakes in the Battle of Chavez Ravine were not just
about raising the cultural status of the city. Just like cities in the East, Los Angeles had to deal
with issues of urban renewal, and the intimate proximity of Chavez Ravine to downtown Los
Angeles made that site a primary concern in those efforts. The reason the Dodgers succeeded in
Los Angeles where they had failed in New York was, in part, due to the powerful influence of
two men. In New York, Robert Moses wielded absolute control over the implementation of plans
for urban renewal, which of course included the manner in which he invoked the power of
eminent domain. Moses had very specific ideas about how the city should be rebuilt, and
providing land for the construction of a baseball stadium was not one of them. In Los Angeles,
Mayor Poulson did not wield the same level of autonomous control, but he had a very strong
cluster of coalitions—including civic leaders, businessmen, Hollywood stars, and the Los
Angeles press—that he masterfully guided, demonstrating savvy political skill. If not for the
208

Sullivan, Dodgers Move West, 159.

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tireless efforts by these clusters of varying influence and power to overcome the many obstacles
to securing the Chavez Ravine site—the same obstacles that influenced Robert Moses’s decision
against invoking Title I— the configuration of Major League Baseball might look very different
today. Furthermore, it goes without saying that while Los Angeles was sure to be granted a
baseball team eventually, the city would be very different today without Dodger Stadium.
When Dodger Stadium was completed, it became the first modern stadium funded
primarily by private capital. The last privately funded ballpark had been Yankee Stadium, which
was constructed in 1923. After Dodger Stadium opened in 1962, there has never been another
major league ballpark constructed solely with private funds. But Walter O’Malley set a powerful
and lasting precedent that demonstrated the immense cultural power wielded by Major League
Baseball. Today it is common practice for owners to leverage cities for the construction of new,
publicly funded ballparks under the threat of relocation. None of that would have been possible
had O’Malley stayed in Brooklyn. The echoing cries of Brooklyn residents, stripped not only of
their team but also their community identity, continue to haunt civic leaders whenever a sports
team threatens to leave their city.

Conclusions
The construction of Dodger Stadium in Chavez Ravine was the culmination of more than
a hundred years of territorial and racial conquest in Los Angeles. The dominant group—whether
it was the Spanish, Mexicans, New Mexicans, or Anglo Americans—displaced, disenfranchised,
or coopted (rather than assimilated) the conquered residents of the city and identified its own
interests with those of the city as a whole. A pueblo became a mission; the mission became a
trading outpost; and the trading outpost became first a Mexican and finally an American city.
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With each conquest, some aspects of the conquered people’s culture were eradicated; cultural
aspects that were lost include communal water rights, the Californio landed gentry elite, and
close-knit rural communities, like Chavez Ravine, where sheep and goats grazed on the hillside.
At other times and in other ways, the dominant group coopted the culture of the conquered for
their own profit; the creation of the “Spanish fantasy past” is perhaps the best example of this
process, not only in Los Angeles, but in Southern California as a whole.
The creation of the entertainment industry as exemplified by Hollywood, Disneyland, and
the Los Angeles Dodgers signified the finality of the Anglo American cultural conquest of the
West Coast. The arrival of Major League Baseball in California highlighted many of the
important changes taking place in postwar America. It highlighted the viability of crosscontinental flight and the new private airline industry that had grown out of California’s aircraft
production for World War II; it highlighted the dramatic impact of the 1956 National Interstate
and Defense Highways Act that forever changed the urban and suburban landscape and the
centrifugal movement of American political and economic power; and certainly it exposed the
ruthless side of the “business of baseball” and the power private corporations wield in the
shaping of postwar American cities, even to the point of acquiring private land for entertainment
purposes.
A 1982 article from Forbes magazine describes the secrets to the Dodgers’ tremendous
financial success:
Compare Dodger Stadium, for example, to another entertainment success of the
West Coast—Disneyland. Dodger Stadium is squeaky clean, beautifully
landscaped and rests in a striking setting. As at Disneyland, Dodger Stadium
attendants—even in the parking lot—are civil. The bathrooms are clean and
safe.209

209

Ibid., 192.

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In Dodger Stadium, we see a physically tangible metaphor for the history of American urban
development. The stadium was constructed as a result of slum clearance legislation enacted as a
defense against decentralization, in a location that was ideally situated near the hub of major
highways connecting downtown to the rest of the metropolitan area. The attention given to order,
cleanliness, open spaces, and natural beauty refer back to the ideals that carried over from
Ebenezer Howard’s garden city and the progressive City Beautiful movement, which both had a
profound impact on suburban development in the postwar period. The influence of Disneyland in
urban stadium construction also foreshadowed later efforts to revive cities with import,
destination-based tourist economies. And perhaps most importantly, Dodger Stadium represents
Anglo American efforts to whitewash the history of the development of Los Angeles.
That Major League Baseball would be played in Chavez Ravine signified even more for
our understanding of urban development patterns in the United States. Neither wealth nor public
standing had the power to overcome the history of racial conquest in the United States. The
parallels between the lives of Julian A. Chavez and Walter O’Malley are striking and provide an
illuminating perspective on race, migration, and Anglo dominance in the development of
American Los Angeles. Walter O’Malley, who has universally been recognized as a pioneer in
Los Angeles developmental history, used his elite connections, influence, and understanding of
how he could use post–WWII national and local legislation to drive a particular type of urban
development to bring a symbol of America’s glorious past into Los Angeles’s ever-changing, yet
predominantly white future. The legacy of Chavez Ravine’s tightly-knit community of Mexican
American migrants was ultimately “whitewashed” out of existence with the construction of
Dodger Stadium. On the other hand, despite his true legacy as a man who also deftly used his
own elite connections, influence, and understanding of the region to play major roles in the first

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two decades of American Los Angeles’s development, Julian Chavez has largely been coopted
and relegated to the region’s “Spanish fantasy past.” Neither the tremendous wealth and power
the Californios had accumulated, nor the legal assurances and protections granted by the Treaty
of Hidalgo, could secure a place for Mexican elites in the Anglo-dominant vision of American
Los Angeles.
Chavez’s role as an Angelino is recalled largely by an empty ravine that now holds a
ballpark, remembered primarily in his whitewashed biography as a Los Angles politician and
proprietor of the blighted, poor agricultural past that the land bearing his name has come to
signify in the story of Los Angeles’s urban development. But the blight and plight of Chavez
Ravine were largely intentionally created conditions to suit the developmental desires of the
city’s white, urban elite, despite concerted efforts by Mexican and Mexican American residents
to maintain a sense of home and community with the little resources they had. The stadium that
now sits in Chavez Ravine symbolically represents Los Angeles’s ongoing attempt to
marginalize the present racial other while simultaneously glorifying a “Spanish fantasy past.” It
symbolizes the Americanization of that space by tapping into the national pastime’s glorified
past. Chavez Ravine is a space that has represented Mexican American prestige and wealth; it
was a space that served as an arena where Anglo American fears were played out in the form of
racially designated “pest farms” and Red Scare politics. Now it is a place known as the home of
one of the most beautiful stadiums ever built for an American professional baseball team.
Ultimately the space and place of Chavez Ravine needs to be understood for its
representation of these significant aspects of urban American history: migration and racial
conquest, postwar highway development and effects of white flight; the increasing power of
Major League Baseball owners to shape the processes of urban development; and the shift from

81

urban manufacturing economies to entertainment-based tourist import economies. The violently
racist impulses of Manifest Destiny in the US West morphed into a more benign racism that has
characterized cities across the country. In cities like Chicago and Detroit, racial minorities were
segregated and largely cut off from the emerging post-manufacturing urban economies, leaving
them isolated in overcrowded, deteriorating pockets of poverty and crime. The scars of Anglo
America’s violently racist past remain largely unaddressed in all of these elements, and thus, we
come full circle to the quote that began this chapter: The history of urban America is inseparable
from the history of race in America.210

210

Sides, L.A. City Limits, 8.

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CHAPTER 2
Building Community: Bringing the Suburbs to Chicago’s South Side
The territory surrounding Comiskey Park would be devoted to a single purpose:
moving fans into and out of the ballpark as expeditiously as possible. It was as if
the franchise were saying, “Please attend our contests and support the Sox. But
there will be no dillydallying or frivolity along the way!”211
Cities that pursue Major League Baseball teams in an effort to attain “major league”
status might fairly argue that they are engaging in “city building” enterprise. Such was the case
when Los Angeles lured the Dodgers from Brooklyn in 1957. The construction of the new
Comiskey Park on Chicago’s near South Side, on the other hand, was reactionary urban
development undertaken by a city afraid of losing that status. During the 1980s, Chicago
politicians were confronted by all of the city’s major professional sports teams seeking new
stadiums. Chicago was home to some of the oldest stadiums in the nation, so there was some
legitimate cause for concern over the deteriorating structures. Though there were two real
opportunities to incorporate the new baseball stadium more organically as part of a larger,
mixed-use neighborhood development, the construction of the new Comiskey Park never
developed into a purposeful attempt to improve the city through careful urban planning.212 The
result was the erection of a large suburban-style stadium in the middle of a poor South Side
neighborhood, surrounded by a sea of parking lots to serve a suburbanite fan base.
A number of factors contributed to this unfortunate development. First, the precedent set
by the Dodgers’ move to Los Angeles, which gave teeth to teams’ threats of relocation,
211

Spirou and Bennett, It’s Hardly Sportin’, 79.
As will be seen in more detail later in the chapter, there were two opportunities where the city could have
considered including the stadium in a broader neighborhood development plan. The first came during discussions
about building on the vacant rail yards in the South Loop and would have involved expanding Tax Increment
Funding for development in Chinatown (just to the southeast of the proposed site) to include the stadium. The
second opportunity came in the form of an alternative stadium plan developed by Philip Bess which featured a
smaller traditional urban ballpark designed to organically blend into the neighborhood’s existing urban form.
212

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suggested that the possibility of losing the team altogether was a very real possibility. The White
Sox used this leverage to gain control of the entire process, from the timing of the deal, to the
design of the stadium, and even with regard to further commercial development surrounding the
park. Second, political pressures unique to Chicago infused that threat with very real and
immediate political consequences. Harold Washington’s election as mayor in 1983 was a shock
to the traditional power structures long cultivated by the Cook County Democratic regime. As he
sought to fill city positions with individuals from the coalition that got him elected, entrenched
opponents in City Hall fought back, leading to Chicago’s infamous “Council Wars.” As the
threat of losing the White Sox to the suburbs (or worse to St. Petersburg, Florida) escalated,
Washington’s political rivals sought to use the loss of one of the city’s cultural icons against him
in the upcoming election cycle.213 Losing the team, then, was politically unfeasible. Under such
pressure, there was simply no time to entertain broader, more urban-minded forms of stadium
development. A third contributing factor was Chicago’s long history of what might be termed
“go big or go home” urban development. As far back as the aftermath of the great fire of 1871,
Chicago’s political and business leaders believed that a great metropolis was defined by great
civic monuments, a thriving commercial sector, and increasing property values in and around the
city’s core. Powerful civic leaders and politicians shaped, institutionalized, and later reified
downtown development policies which prioritized commerce rather than community in the city’s
physical development.214 The decision to build the new Comiskey Park in South Armour Square

213

Euchner, Playing the Field, 139. For more on Washington and race in Chicago politics also see: Dempsey Travis,
Harold: The People’s Mayor: An Authorized Biography of Mayor Harold Washington (Chicago: Urban Research
Press, 1989); William J. Grimshaw, Bitter Fruit: Black Politics and the Chicago Machine, 1931–1991 (Chicago:
University of Chicago Press, 1992); Dianne M. Pinderhughes, Race and Ethnicity in Chicago Politics: A
Reexamination of Pluralist Theory (Champaign: University of Illinois Press, 1987); Paul M. Green and Melvin G.
Holli, eds., The Mayors: The Chicago Political Tradition (Carbondale: Southern Illinois University, 2005).
214
Carl Smith, The Plan of Chicago: Daniel Burnham and the Remaking of the American City (Chicago: University
of Chicago Press, 2006); Flanagan, Seeing with Their Hearts; Lois Wille, At Home in the Loop; Biles, Richard J.

84

was determined as much as, if not more, by those developmental precedents than it was by the
powerful negotiating position of the White Sox ownership.

Baseball and Building Community
The construction of the new Comiskey Park in Chicago provides an excellent study on
the different ways in which the notion of “community” is understood in urban development.
Baseball teams (and their stadiums) have historically been defended by stadium boosters and
fans as community building enterprises, and when the Dodgers played in Brooklyn, there was
certainly a good deal of truth to that claim. But that community was developed in a completely
different time and urban context than what currently exists in “Major League Cities.” The
intimate relationship that developed between the team and the residents of the borough was a
product of a number of factors that simply do not exist today.
First, Ebbets Field was designed in a manner that physically forced a level of intimacy
between the spectators and ballplayers.215 Much of this was due to the inherent limitations of
space that governed the first wave of urban ballparks built during the early decades of the
twentieth century. They were confined to the size of a city block, and as such, the seats were of
necessity constructed so that the fans were almost literally on top of the field of play. Second,
that was prior to the nationalization of the game that occurred with broadcast television and
westward expansion. Baseball was very much a local institution, and as such, the players on the
Dodgers were regarded as integral parts of the local community.216 This was also before the

Daley, 47–50; Von Hoffman, House by House, Block by Block, 132, 139; Rast, Remaking Chicago; Hunt, Blueprint
for Disaster.
215
The largest seating capacity at Ebbets Field was 35,000 (between 1937 and 1945).
216
Sullivan, Dodgers Move West; Euchner, Playing the Field; Avila, Popular Culture in the Age of White Flight;
D’Antonio, Forever Blue.

85

introduction of free agency which led to the eventual skyrocketing of player salaries and the
development of the “superstar” system enabling players like the New York Yankees’ Alex
Rodriguez to earn more per plate appearance than many Americans make in a year.217 Back then,
players were viewed as “working stiffs” much like the rest of us. But as Charles C. Euchner has
demonstrated in Playing the Field, much has changed in both the physical and cultural constructs
of what community means in the context of professional sports and their host cities in the latter
half of the twentieth century:
Sports franchises are difficult for local politicians to confront because the
symbolism and ritual of sports are so powerful. Sports is vivid; it provides intense
bursts of action that most other activities lack. The sports event has the potential
to hold the rapt attention of spectators because of the intensity of competition. . . .
The “star system” that dominates the sports industry and other entertainment
industries creates unreal and even mythic figures. Sports is also a vehicle through
which cities develop what Alan Ingham and his associates have called “contrived
community.” 218
Urban communities, as envisioned by, and made up of, local residents and small
businesses, however, have much more pressing needs than winning ballgames. Despite the
repeated claims by boosters that stadiums bring real economic benefits to their host cities, the
vast majority of modern stadiums have in fact proven to be economically neutral at best.219
Moreover, as this chapter will demonstrate, residents directly affected by stadium construction
typically oppose the projects for reasons other than economics, such as the increased traffic,
217

Over the first four years of his contract with the Yankees (2008–2011), Rodriguez averaged $59,492 per at bat.
“Highest Paid Players,” Cot’s Baseball Contracts, BaseballProspectus.com, accessed May 23, 2012.
218
Euchner, Playing the Field, 12, emphasis added.
219
Zimbalist, Baseball and Billions; Baade and Dye, “Impact of Stadiums and Professional Sports”; Rosentraub,
Major League Losers; Cagan and DeMause, Field of Schemes; Noll, Government and the Sports Business; Okner,
“Subsidies of Stadiums and Arenas”; Steven A. Riess, “Historical Perspectives on Sports and Public Policy,” in The
Economics and Politics of Sports Facilities, edited by Wilbur C. Rich (Westport: Quorum Books, 2000); James P.
Quirk and Rodney D. Fort, Hard Ball: The Abuse of Power in Pro Team Sport (Princeton: Princeton University
Press, 1999); Quirk and Fort, Pay Dirt; Mark Rosentraub et al., “Sports and Downtown Development Strategy: If
You Build It, Will Jobs Come?” Journal of Urban Affairs 16:3 (October 1994): 221–39; John Siegfried and Andrew
Zimbalist, “The Economics of Sports Facilities and Their Communities,” Journal of Economic Perspectives 14, no.
3 (Summer 2000): 93–114.

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noise, litter, and crime that often surround urban stadiums. The two downtown locations most
seriously considered in the development of the new stadium for the White Sox were inhabited by
two very different urban communities, but both emphasized the importance of relative safety,
quality housing, schools, and local shopping and businesses to successful community
development. Despite rhetoric from stadium boosters that would suggest otherwise, stadium
construction has nothing to do with community development.
The construction of the new Comiskey Park in South Armour Square also demonstrated
that the communities courted by professional baseball teams tend to be far removed from the
locality of the urban spaces in which they play, making them just as contrived as the notion of a
common community of baseball fans. From the very beginning of the planning process, the
White Sox made it clear that they wanted a suburban location and fan base. When that location
was denied by public referendum in suburban Addison, the team designed an urban space to
serve suburban fans that were imported via the expressways as customers of an urban tourist
economy. The problem for local residents and the city was that the stadium had no positive effect
on the urban space around it, and was in fact, purposely designed that way. The team marketed
itself regionally as a cultural icon for the greater Chicago-land area, with focused efforts directed
towards the northwest suburbs. They presented the team as a cultural institution for communities
on the South Side of Chicago while simultaneously developing a contrived community of
suburban tourists to fill their publicly-funded revenue enhancer.
The city, for its part, was working defensively from the start. The pace of stadium
construction planning is controlled by the baseball team, giving even the most communityminded politicians little time to properly develop a plan capable of successfully integrating a
stadium into an existing neighborhood in a manner that mutually benefits both the team and the

87

surrounding area. Even in a best case scenario involving low land-acquisition costs and little to
no residential displacement (as in the South Loop option to be discussed shortly), city officials
can only placate the interests of so many; so the path chosen is often the path of least resistance.
And yet, throughout the process, local politicians tout the great cultural value the team adds to
the city, invoking the great myth of the imagined community created by professional sports
teams.220
Of course, not all urban communities are equal in the minds of urban developers, who at
times seek to enforce their own visions of community by manipulating the physical space of
certain areas of the city. John H. Mollenkopf describes one particularly suitable example of this
within the context of Chicago’s post–World War II development: “From the late 1950s, for
example, freeway construction and urban renewal directly threatened central-city neighborhoods,
particularly black communities.”221 South Armour Square, where the new Comiskey Park was
built, houses a “tiny, racial minority-occupied neighborhood with limited political, economic, or
organizational resources,” and is bordered by one of those freeways (the Dan Ryan Expressway)
on the east, a railroad viaduct on the west, and the ballpark on the north.222 When the city ran out
of other options for site location, the path of least resistance was through this politically underrepresented public housing community that, despite years of grassroots organizing attempts to
make their community more livable, was ultimately no match against the power brokers behind
Chicago’s new South Side stadium.

220

Benedict Anderson, Imagined Communities: Reflections on the Origin and Spread of Nationalism (New York:
Verso, 1983). The “contrived community” of sports fans shares some of the characteristics that describe Anderson’s
“imagined communities.”
221
Mollenkopf, The Contested City, 17.
222
Spirou and Bennett, It’s Hardly Sportin’, 84, 104.

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Mechanisms of Entrenchment: Public/Private Partnership in the Development of Chicago
In his study of the political origins of modern communications in the United States, Paul
Starr argued that the development of our modern system of communications was shaped largely
by political, constitutive choices—“those [choices] that create the material and
institutional framework of fields of human activity.” 223 Starr argues that constitutive choices are
cumulative and branching in their effects on institutional development, creating institutional
precedents and biases, which in turn become what he calls mechanisms of entrenchment that are
purposely designed to be perpetual standards.224 This line of reasoning can also inform an
understanding of how constitutive choices made early in Chicago’s development, and reified
over the course of the twentieth century, affected the outcome of the White Sox stadium project
on the city’s South Side. Factors that affected the planning process for the new White Sox
stadium arguably stretch back as far as Chicago’s 1893 World’s Columbian Exhibition.
Beginning with Daniel Burnham’s 1909 Plan of Chicago, and later reified with Richard J.
Daley’s 1958 Development Plan for the Central Area of Chicago, Chicago’s civic leaders made
a number of constitutive choices about the material and institutional framework for the city’s
development policies, forming institutional precedents and biases that served as mechanisms of
entrenchment which ultimately affected the decision-making process behind the construction of
the new Comiskey Park.
In Building the South Side: Urban Space and Civic Culture in Chicago, 1890–1919,
Robin F. Bachin discusses the emergence of “three different, and often competing, models of
civic culture,” elements of which continued to fuel contestation over Chicago’s physical

223
224

The term “mechanisms of entrenchment” is borrowed from Starr, Creation of the Media.
Starr, Creation of the Media, 1–2.

89

development throughout the remainder of the twentieth century.225 The first model represented
the “culture of centralization and consolidation that defined both the corporate world and the
world of technocratic expertise.” This model was championed by civic leaders such as University
of Chicago president William Rainey Harper and architect and planner Daniel Burnham who
“exemplified a belief in elite cultural uplift, in which reform came from above and was
disseminated by trained experts who could be the best stewards of cultural refinement.”226
Burnham’s 1909 Plan for Chicago was influenced by the City Beautiful movement, which was
first initiated primarily by local women-led urban beautification municipal reform groups, and
iconically exemplified in the “White City” that Burnham designed for the 1893 World’s
Columbian Exposition.227 Despite the Plan’s emphasis on beauty and cultural uplift, Burnham
also “recognized the central role of commercial growth in shaping civic life.”228 Bachin’s
description of that relationship is illuminating for the purposes of demonstrating how that
constitutive choice impacted future downtown development:
This relation between civic design and commercialism would be inscribed on the
city through the planning of the City Beautiful. The commodification of art and
aesthetics promoted capitalist growth and linked beauty to financial development.
According to M. Christine Boyer, planners sought to impose “disciplinary order
and ceremonial harmony” on urban growth in order to enhance commercial
productivity. The “rational city” of efficiency and technical expertise became a
means of expanding the role of the state in order to control land use, and stimulate
economic development, and shape urban growth.229
The partnership between the city officials and business leaders which utilized state control of
land use to stimulate economic development and shape patterns of urban growth became a

225

Bachin, Building the South Side, 8–9.
Ibid.
227
Ibid., 196. See also Flanagan, Seeing with Their Hearts.
228
Bachin, Building the South Side, 171.
229
Ibid.
226

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mechanism of entrenchment, purposely designed as a perpetual standard for downtown
development policy.
Following the presentation of Burnham’s Plan, the mayor-appointed Chicago Plan
Commission “strengthened the role of government, which became the new locus of plans for city
growth and economic development,”230 fusing “the goals of commercial leaders with the
professional skills of architects, landscape designers, engineers, and urban planners.”231 The
constitutive choice to centralize the role of “experts” in the urban planning process ultimately
undermined the authority of women-led grassroots initiatives “as the Commission sought to
consolidate all phases of planning under its control.”232 With the rise of professional urban
planners and the incredible monuments they constructed symbolizing the dominance of
corporatism and privatism in American urban development, “women’s influence on the shape of
cities took backstage to the great names of the architectural and planning professions.”233
At the same time, activist women in Chicago were pushing for an alternative model of
civic culture. Beginning with the Fire of 1871, women reformers developed a vision for a livable
city—a city that valued and took responsibility for education and the welfare of women and
children—in response to their unique experiences in the private sphere. They saw the city as a
community of homes, a vision that sharply conflicted with men’s vision of a minimalist
municipal structure that prioritized the interests of private business. While the men turned to
bureaucratic experts and planners for urban development policy, the women believed that “civic
sense came from the people, not from the experts.”234 Furthermore, social reformers like Jane
Addams sought to “overcome social distance among urban residents” by forging alliances in
230

Ibid., 192.
Ibid., 196.
232
Ibid.
233
Spain, How Women Saved the City, 60.
234
Flanagan, Seeing with Their Hearts, 120.
231

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“spaces like settlement houses and public parks.” The public parks, in particular, were intended
to serve as “a shared leisure space around which to structure a vision of urban order and
harmony,” urban spaces where the working classes might “learn proper deportment from their
social superiors.”235 But in reality, “the planning of the large pleasure grounds showed little
concern for the recreational and leisure patterns of the urban working class.”236 As such, rather
than overcoming the social distance among urban residents, public parks often served to
reinforce those differences, leaving the working classes made up primarily of racial and ethnic
minorities forced to pursue other avenues of leisure. Much to the consternation of reformers, that
pursuit often ended in the city’s “vice district.” Like the more formal public/private
developmental policies of downtown construction, the segregation of public parks became
entrenched in Chicago, and this too would have an impact on the construction of the new
Comiskey Park.237
Both of these civic models contained a “strain of anti-commercialism.”238 One of the
primary reasons that civic leaders and reformers disapproved of commercial culture is that many
associated it with “gambling, prostitution, petty theft, the sale of alcohol from unlicensed
distributors, ‘lewd’ dancing, and racial mixing” increasingly located in the “vice districts” of
poorer working-class neighborhoods in the South Side’s “Black Belt.”239 Vice districts offended
the moral sensibilities of urban reformers and worried civic elites about their potential to drive
away respectable customers and negatively affect property values. But commercial culture was
going through dramatic changes at the turn of the twentieth century, and public entertainment
235

Bachin, Building the South Side, 135.
Ibid., 138.
237
One point of contention in the stadium planning was the refusal to build on Armour Square Park, which had long
served as a buffer between the white Bridgeport neighborhood to the north and the African Americans living in the
Wentworth Gardens public housing development to the south. There is a long history of violent racial intimidation
by whites who sought to keep blacks out of “their park.”
238
Bachin, Building the South Side, 8–9.
239
Ibid., 255.
236

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became more ordered as the “participatory and interactive” popular culture of the nineteenth
century receded in the face of a growing mass culture that “induced passivity and the
privatization of culture.”240 And as baseball entrepreneurs like Charles Comiskey sought to
legitimize Major League Baseball as a respectable and profitable industry, they built grand
stadiums that were as architecturally stunning as any civic monument.
Both social reformers and civic elites found reason to celebrate these great monuments to
commercial culture. With the rise of the play movement, baseball began to be touted by
politicians and reformers alike as a wholesome activity that both assimilated newcomers to
American culture and taught children such values as hard work, individual achievement, and
team play.241 Graduated seat pricing in the stadiums also reinforced existing norms regarding
social class. Thus, baseball stadiums such as the South Side of Chicago’s Comiskey Park, which
opened in 1910, appeared to serve the interests of civic leaders, reformers, and the rising
entrepreneurs of commercial culture alike. Despite the century-long struggle between these
competing visions over the development of the city, for the most part, the stadium stood as an
urban space that transcended those traditional differences; it was a cultural icon that succeeded in
securing the allegiance of civic elites, politicians, and reformers.
It was a tenuous relationship that was strained at times (the 1919 “Black Sox” scandal for
example), and the segregation of the game “suggested that as much as blacks might enjoy
attending games, they were not a part of the complete civic experience embodied in the
stadium.”242 At the same time, Comiskey Park also served as a point of pride for largely
disenfranchised, predominantly poor African American residents of Chicago’s South Side. While

240

Michael Kammen, American Culture, American Tastes: Social Change in the 20th Century (New York: Knopf,
1999), 22.
241
Bachin, Building the South Side, 209.
242
Ibid., 236.

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they were barred from playing in Major League Baseball games, “for many African Americans
in Chicago, going to a baseball game was an experience of liberation and a celebration of taking
part in the shared culture of Chicago civic life.”243 And that pride grew for a time when Andrew
“Rube” Foster formed the National Negro League and leased Comiskey Park for his Chicago
American Giants team.
In the first years of its existence, then, Comiskey Park did serve in many ways to bring
people of diverse social standing together and provided a source of pride for the surrounding
South Side communities, even if just for nine innings. As Bachin demonstrates in Building the
South Side, the efforts by promoters of commercial culture (particularly those of Charles
Comiskey), in effect, set a longstanding cultural precedent linking Comiskey Park, and
particularly the business of baseball, with Americanism and civic pride:
Promoters of commercial amusement like Chicago White Sox owner Charles
Comiskey, black baseball entrepreneur Andrew “Rube” Foster, and black theater
owner Robert Motts helped legitimized mass culture by infusing it with the
rhetoric of Americanism, urban reform, and civic pride. . . . [T]hese spaces
illustrated the multiple dimensions of urban citizenship, whereby city residents
shaped their sense of civic identity based on participation in an emerging culture
of leisure that ultimately helped forge broader access to the political arena.244
This early history set many precedents that would influence the decision-making process behind
the construction of a new stadium for the White Sox; in particular, the strength of the
“community building” and “civic identity” arguments employed by baseball owners and
politicians seeking publicly funded stadiums over the second half of the twentieth century gained
much of its cultural power during the first wave of stadium construction. Furthermore, the
constitutive choice to expand the role of the state in partnership with downtown business leaders

243
244

Ibid., 235.
Ibid., 8–9.

94

in an effort to “control land use, stimulate economic development, and shape urban growth”245
developed into an institutional precedent that became entrenched as the standard model for urban
redevelopment in Chicago. Despite dramatic changes to urban economies and residential patterns
following World War II, Chicago’s postwar redevelopment followed that precedent in ways that
further affected the decision-making process behind the construction of the new Comiskey Park
during Harold Washington’s term as mayor from 1983 through 1987.
The Corporate-Center Strategy
The most serious deliberation about where to build a new White Sox stadium downtown
centered around two locations, both south of Chicago’s central business district, the Loop. Many
of the factors that influenced the planning process, including the White Sox organization’s
courtship of the suburbs, can be tied to the post–World War II redevelopment of Chicago’s Loop.
Shortly after Richard J. Daley was elected mayor, the Department of City Planning released its
1958 Development Plan for the Central Area of Chicago. Just as the Commercial Club of
Chicago had sponsored Daniel Burnham’s ambitious Plan for Chicago in 1909, the Chicago
Central Area Committee, a collection of the city’s commercial elite, likewise influenced Daley’s
Development Plan.246 The Central Area Committee was created by downtown corporations in
1956 to “enhance the area’s physical and cultural environment,”247 and they had a significant
role in the crafting of Daley’s Development Plan. In his study of Chicago’s response to postwar
industrial decline, Remaking Chicago: The Political Origins of Urban Industrial Change, Joel
Rast demonstrated that Daley’s downtown redevelopment goals focused on changing land-use
plans for the central area:

245

Ibid., 171.
Ibid., 171; Lois Wille, At Home in the Loop, 19.
247
Wille, At Home in the Loop, 5.
246

95

When Richard J. Daley became mayor of Chicago in 1955, the city’s economy
was in decline. Under pressure to act, Daley soon forged an alliance with key
representatives from the downtown business community focused around
rearranging land use in central Chicago in accordance with the corporate-center
strategy for downtown redevelopment. In 1958, the administration announced
plans for a major restructuring of the central area, featuring a new university
campus, a convention center, several new government office buildings, and a
network of expressways designed to link the central business district with
outlying portions of the metropolitan area. During the next several decades, the
city would use its powers over land use, infrastructure provision, the distribution
of federal urban development funds, and other policy tools to help make these
plans a reality.248
One significant issue the Development Plan hoped to address was the increasing “blight”
surrounding the central business district, particularly to the north and south of the Loop.
Declining manufacturing districts and the abandoned rail yards that once served them suffered
from the neglect and disinvestment brought on by the changing economic realities of the
postindustrial city. Those realities were reinforced by constitutive choices made by city officials
and downtown business elites to change land use patterns to suit a corporate-center strategy that
emphasized a “best use” approach to downtown development which linked increasing property
values to economic growth. Thus, “downtown redevelopment ultimately required that industry
and lower-income residents be relocated outside the central area so that near-downtown property
could be reused for new commercial and middle- to upper-income housing developments that
would reinforce the growth of corporate and financial activities in the Loop.”249
The rail yards running south from Roosevelt Road between State Street to the east and
the Chicago River on the west had long been a growing eyesore to the south of the city’s
financial core in the Loop. In the late 1800s the rail yards were a sign of the rapid growth of
industrial Chicago. In an effort to keep the rail lines from disrupting business downtown, the
248

Rast, Remaking Chicago, 12–13.

249

Ibid., 26.

96

depots, such as Dearborn Station (built in 1885) were built on the outskirts. The “cluster of
stations brought thousands of jobs to the area,” but with the increased passenger traffic arriving
daily, the area quickly became a “vice district” home to prostitution, gambling, and saloons.250
By 1913, the vice district had spread south of the depots, and the city’s business leaders had
grown frustrated by their inability to expand the Loop past the vast stretch of rail yards.251 Over
the next 50 years, various government and civic groups were repeatedly rebuffed by the railroad
companies in their efforts to consolidate and redevelop the yards.
When the city began looking for a suitable extension campus for the University of Illinois
downtown towards the end of the 1950s, in an effort to “protect the downtown Loop” Mayor
Richard J. Daley, local developers, and business leaders initially “favored reclamation of the
seedy railroad terminal area, south of downtown,” but the high prices demanded by the railroads
repeatedly soured negotiations.252 As the rail industry steadily declined over the next decade, the
South Side rail depots began to close down, beginning with the Grand Central and LaSalle
stations in 1969. While the loss of railroad traffic and the closing of stations appeared to clear the
way for the eventual southward expansion of the Loop, it also contributed to the collapse of
Chicago’s once thriving printing industry concentrated in Printers Row around Dearborn Station,
which, as Lois Wille suggests, only added to the area’s perceived blight:
The collapse of the rail industry during the 1950s and 1960s coincided with the
introduction of technologies that made the printing establishments obsolete. They
moved to new plants elsewhere, and the great Dearborn Street buildings emptied
out. So, in addition to vast stretches of abandoned rail yards and the porn-andsleaze strip slithering toward the financial district, the South Loop by 1970 was
burdened with blocks of vacant and vandalized buildings.253

250

Wille, At Home in the Loop, 9.
Ibid., 9.
252
Biles, Richard J. Daley, 75; Wille, At Home in the Loop, 9.
253
Wille, At Home in the Loop, 10.
251

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In the spring of 1970, Thomas G. Ayers, Gordon M. Metcalf, and Donald M. Graham, three of
the most respected members of Chicago’s business community, looked out from Ayers’s thirtyseventh floor window in the newly constructed First National Bank building and decided that
they had to do something about the threat posed by the acres of abandoned rail yards and
buildings.254 Drawing on the historical precedent set by previous generations of Chicago’s
business elite, they sought to take the matter of developing the Loop into their own hands.
Ironically, the first man they turned to when it came time to approach Mayor Daley about the
idea was James C. Downs Jr., the same man who served as Daley’s Housing and Redevelopment
Coordinator. Downs oversaw the Chicago Housing Authority (CHA) and the housing policies
that effectively institutionalized the segregation of public housing in Chicago.255
In the 1958 Development Plan, planners had already recommended the
“construction of middle-income housing for up to 50,000 families in areas immediately
north and south of the Loop.” In the spirit of the public-private partnership that
influenced the development of the Plan, housing “was to be privately developed on land
assembled and cleared by the city under powers of the 1949 U.S. Housing and
Redevelopment Act.”256 By the mid-1960s, there had been some promising residential
development north of the Loop, such as architect Bertrand Goldberg’s Marina City, “a
tightly packed riverfront complex with twin 60-story towers resembling giant corncobs, a
16-story office building, an ice rink, bowling alleys, a food store, restaurants, a marina,

254

Ibid., 1, 19. Ayers was “president-on-the-path-to-chairman of Commonwealth Edison, the biggest power
company in the Midwest.” Metcalf was “chairman of the board and chief executive of Sears, Roebuck and
Company.” Graham was “chairman of the board and chief executive of Continental Illinois National Bank and Trust
Company of Chicago, the biggest bank in the Midwest, the biggest employer in downtown Chicago, and City Hall’s
biggest single creditor.” (2)
255
Wille, At Home in the Loop, 12; Biles Richard J. Daley, 88–89; Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto, 231.
256
Rast, Remaking Chicago, 29.

98

spiraled parking garages, a health club, and movie theater.”257 But more than a decade
after the release of Daley’s Development Plan, the rail yards south of the Loop still lay
barren, and leaders of the Chicago Central Area Committee decided it was time the
business community did something about it. The first order of business was securing the
land, but multiple failed efforts to do so in the past had suggested that that would be no
simple task.
City officials and private developers had repeatedly been rebuffed by the railroad
companies that owned the land, whose asking prices were prohibitively high. Ironically, it took
the influential cultural capital of professional sports to secure an acquisition price that made
development feasible. Long-time Chicago Bears owner/coach, George Halas, had secured an
option on a 51-acre portion of the land between State and Clark Streets that extended about a
mile south from Dearborn Station at Polk Street at the price of $3.25 per square foot, “less than
half of the lowest price the South Loop group had heard in any of its many meetings with rail
executives.”258 When Mayor Daley refused to use city-backed bonds to help pay for it, Halas’s
attempts to build a new stadium on the property failed, though he still held the option to the
land.259 Recognizing the impossibility of building his stadium without financial assistance from
the city, Halas reluctantly agreed to transfer his option for the land to the tight collection of
central area business leaders who formed the Chicago 21 Corporation in 1972 to buy the land
and secure the funding to privately develop the area for middle- to upper-income residents. The
trick was getting the mayor to spend public money to develop the streets, sewers, and water
connections, and other capital improvements.260 While Daley was initially hesitant to commit to

257

Ibid., 4–5.
Ibid., 26–27, 36.
259
Ibid., 54, 58.
260
Ibid., 59.
258

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a deal that appeared like a public handout for private profit, his record of working with members
of the Central Area Committee to change downtown land use and provide capital improvements
suggested that he would eventually come around.
Once Chicago 21 Corporation had raised enough private investment to seed the
development of what would eventually become Dearborn Park, the city slowly but surely began
to make good on its commitments to infrastructural improvements. As this was happening, other
developers began to buy up the old industrial loft buildings located in Printers Row. As with the
Dearborn Park project, the city provided favorable land use conditions through changes to zoning
restrictions in the area as well as capital improvements at the street level, while private investors
funded the redevelopment of the buildings.261 Both of these projects were guided by the long
institutionalized corporate-center strategy which favored the mixed-used commercial and
residential development as the best means to increase property values. Development in both
areas ultimately proved successful towards those ends. With assistance from city officials,
Chicago 21 Corporation and other private developers finally created a middle- to upper-class
residential enclave that buffered their downtown commercial interests from the South Side’s
“Black Belt.” But as of 1985, when Harold Washington’s administration began looking for a
suitable location for the White Sox stadium, a tough economy and the lack of sufficient capital
had stalled efforts to complete the second phase of the Dearborn Park development, leaving a
fairly sizeable piece of open real estate just south of Roosevelt Road, between the first phase of
Dearborn Park and Chinatown.

261

Ibid., 113–36.

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Exploring the Options: Finding a Politically Feasible and Mutually Agreeable Site
Washington reminded the audience that his campaign a year ago was based on
the idea that people at the grassroots level should make decisions that affect their
lives and that the “people’s” decisions should govern the conduct of public
officials.262
Mayor Washington’s 1986 “Neighborhood Forums Work Plan” listed as its objectives,
among other things, to report on accomplishments directly affecting a given community area,
and to outline policy, programs, and development projects.263 While there is evidence that such
transparency existed in early phases of stadium planning,264 toward the end of 1986, residents
living in Wentworth Gardens learned about the demolition of homes and businesses in the
northern part of their community by seeing a map in the newspaper showing plans for a new
stadium.265
In July 1985, the city began an analysis of eight different stadium development options
presented by the Minneapolis-based accounting firm Coopers & Lybrand. The report confirmed
that the city was “assessing the viability of various options to develop one or two stadia within
the City which could house the White Sox, Cubs, and/or Bears professional teams” and that the
accounting firm’s initial review was designed to “assess the net cash flows from operations
resulting from a number of different scenarios and sets of assumptions.”266 Of the eight stadium
proposals, six featured domed stadiums, and five of them were based on multi-teams scenarios.

262

Chicago Housing Authority Papers, 1948–1992, Box 20, Folder 3, Immediate Release and Speeches, CHA News,
March 26, 1984, “Mayor Visits CHA Residents,” Chicago Historical Museum, Chicago, IL 60614. This was the first
time in the history of the CHA that a mayor of Chicago met with tenant councils.
263
Harold Washington Archival Collection (HWAC), General Subject Files, Neighborhood Forum (memos) 1986–
1987, Box 6, Folder 14, “Neighborhood Forums Work Plan – 1986,” Harold Washington Library Center, Chicago,
IL, 60605.
264
Spirou and Bennett, It’s Hardly Sportin’, 75.
265
Roberta M. Feldman and Susan Stall, The Dignity of Resistance: Women’s Residents’ Activism in Chicago Public
Housing (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press, 2004), 213.
266
HWAC, Stadium Development 1985, Box 50, Folder 3, Letter to Mr. Donald Franklin, Fiscal Policy Economist,
City of Chicago, July 17, 1985.

101

The various proposals had projected seating capacities of either 65,000 or 82,000 seats.267 Of the
many alternatives offered, city officials initially favored a West Side location as it offered the
potential to meet the stadium demands of multiple teams, either by constructing two stadiums or
by getting the teams to agree to share a multi-purpose stadium, which was the most cost-effective
option.
In a follow-up letter based on additional feedback from city officials, the accounting firm
eliminated consideration of two sites west of the Loop (due to the high cost of land development)
and limited the seating capacity for all scenarios to 65,000. Throughout this process, both the
consultants and city officials favored a domed stadium. In their final analysis, then, the firm
recommended the following scenarios in preferential order:
1. West Side with two stadiums and the Bears, White Sox, and Cubs as tenants:
This option would allow the best configuration for each sport. This location
would also be the most likely to attract both the White Sox and Cubs as tenants.
2. West Side with one stadium and the Bears, White Sox, and Cubs as tenants:
This option would require one of the lowest operating subsidies. Again, this
location would be most likely to attract both the White Sox and Cubs as tenants.
Because of utilizing a single, multi-purpose stadium, some sacrifices in sight line
and configuration will be required.
3. South Loop with one stadium and only the Bears and White Sox as tenants:
This location has the lowest land acquisition and off-site improvement cost and
the best parking plan. This option also would require one of the lowest operating
subsidies. It should be considered that this option would not resolve the locational
problems of the Cubs.268

Despite the Mayor’s desire to pursue transparent development policies in cooperation with
affected communities, many of the documents discussing stadium development were noted as
“confidential.” Furthermore, in one such confidential memo to various officials in the

267

HWAC, Stadium Development 1985, Box 50, Folder 3, Coopers & Lybrand Chicago Sports Stadium Project
Evaluation of Alternative Scenarios, August 6, 1985.
268
HWAC, Stadium Development 1985, Box 50, Folder 3, Letter to Mr. Donald Franklin, Fiscal Policy Economist,
City of Chicago, August 19, 1985.

102

Washington administration which intended to “lay out the next steps in [the] Stadium
Development Evaluation Processes,” not one of the twelve tasks outlined in the memo involved
interaction with the affected community on any level.269
In early October, members of the mayor’s Stadium Development Task force received a
memo outlining concerns and suggestions regarding the ongoing stadium analyses. Robert Mier,
the Commissioner of Economic Development, worried that despite all the numbers indicating
that the stadium would be a financial loser, the mayor was publicly projecting the plan as a
winning investment that the city wanted to be in as a financial partner. After demonstrating that
the already bleak financial forecasts were still underestimated in terms of cost, Mier suggested
the following two options:
1. Roll up our sleeves with the Sox and see if they are willing to be the
owner/operator of a combined stadium/arena complex on the West Side. (From
the information they sent us, we know that’s their interest.)
2. Take a “statesman” role, and announce that any developer who signs up two
teams will get our full cooperation, short of money. Then play the role of bringing
actors together.
Neither of the options assumes site control, which we neither have nor probably
can afford.270
Despite these early efforts to take control of the process and, if possible, avoid using public
money to fund the project, the owners of the White Sox deftly used the threat of moving the team
to another city as leverage to control much of the timing and substance of the negotiations.

269

HWAC, Chief of Staff’s Office, 1981–1988, Management Plan, 1983–1988, Earnest G. Barefield, OS-Box 106,
Folder 8, Stadium Development, 1985–1987, Confidential Memo from Donald B. Franklin, Fiscal Policy
Economist, City of Chicago, August 6, 1985.
270
HWAC, Chief of Staff’s Office, 1981–1988, Management Plan, 1983–1988, Earnest G. Barefield, OS-Box 106,
Folder 8, Stadium Development, 1985–1987, Memorandum from Robert Mier, Department of Economic
Development Commissioner, City of Chicago, “Domed Stadium,” October 9, 1985.

103

Urban Planning by Concession: The Tempo and Tone of Negotiations Driven by the Team
Key to the success of any proposed stadium development project was, of course, finding
the means to fund such a large public investment. This involved a delicate partnership between
municipal, state, and federal government. In early November 1985, members of the Stadium
Development Task Force advised the mayor that “tax legislation [was] the key to carrying the
stadium project forward.” The problem the city faced was that current tax laws left no room
under the bond volume cap due to the more than $415 million already allocated for General
Aviation Revenue Bonds (GARBs). As of November 5, 1985, even after combining $100 million
in carryover cap space from 1984 with the $450 million allowed for Industrial Development
Bond (IDB) allocation in 1985, the city was left with just $10 million of unallocated IDBs with
which they could fund the stadium development. With a projected total cost of nearly $180
million to build a new stadium, the city was clearly in a financial bind. The Stadium
Development Task Force offered the mayor two options for securing the necessary cap space to
permit the city to finance the stadium’s construction: “keeping our bond cap unused (by
exempting GARB’s from the cap) and available for a stadium project”; or, “grandfathering a
stadium under proposed tax laws.” Both options required the mayor to approach US
Representative Daniel Rostenkowski, chairman of the House Ways and Means Committee, with
requests to amend the transition rules in proposed tax reform legislation in favor of financing the
new stadium.271
While city officials were earnestly looking for a way to keep the team in Chicago, the
White Sox ownership was aggressively pursuing an alternative plan that would bring the stadium

271

HWAC, Chief of Staff’s Office, 1981–1988, Management Plan, 1983–1988, Earnest G. Barefield, OS-Box 106,
Folder 8, Stadium Development, 1985–1987, Confidential Memorandum to Mayor Harold Washington, November
7, 1985.

104

out to suburban Addison. They originally wanted to build in a location more representative of the
contrived community from which they hoped to draw their revenues. As early as June 1985,
White Sox owner, Jerry Reinsdorf, had already bought a 100-acre tract of land near the
Eisenhower Expressway and Illinois Highway 53 in Addison as a potential site for a new sports
complex. He had also commissioned a “demographic review of people who buy White Sox
tickets” to shore up his case for targeting a middle- to upper-class suburban fan base.272 This
created a problem for Chicago officials who were increasingly forced into a reactive position
during negotiations. As Charles C. Euchner demonstrated in his own work on Chicago sports
stadium development, “sports franchises exert great leverage over public officials because they
can control the timing and the tempo of negotiations, because supply is restricted, and because
expansion or movable teams can always attract multiple bidders.”273 While Reinsdorf continued
to suggest publicly that Addison was but one of many options being explored for a suitable
location for the new stadium and as the negotiations continued over the course of the following
year, it became evident that a Chicago site was the team’s backup plan.
By November, six groups of developers had submitted proposals to the city to build a
domed sports stadium. Ira J. Edelson, special counsel to the mayor, released only the names and
the general locations of their proposed developments. The Chicago Tribune reported that city
officials “refused to share details of the six proposals with reporters, claiming the stadium effort
does not amount to a formal bidding process and, therefore, does not need to comply with state
laws governing disclosure of public information.”274 As all of this was happening, the mayor’s

272

John Schmeltzer, “Reinsdorf, Du Page Are Talking Stadium,” Chicago Tribune (1963–Current File), June 21,
1985.
273
Charles C. Euchner, “Tourism and Sports: The Serious Competition for Play,” in The Tourist City, ed. Dennis R.
Judd and Susan S. Fainstein (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 218.
274
John McCarron, “6 Vie to Build Domed Sports Stadium,” Chicago Tribune (1963–Current File), November 19,
1985.

105

Stadium Task Force was still working out how they were going to fund a losing proposition.
Even as Representative Rostenkowski succeeded in securing “an exemption permitting taxexempt financing for a Chicago-area sports complex” in the House’s Ways and Means
Committee’s tax reform package, the threat of a move to the suburbs gained traction.275
At that point in the planning process it became fairly evident that, while there were still at
least six different proposals submitted by developers for the construction of the new stadium,
sites on the city’s West and Near West Side had been ruled out. That was due to greater
infrastructure costs associated with developing the land there and because the various teams’
support for a multi-purpose stadium waned as the process drew on. Representative
Rostenkowski’s efforts to secure an exemption for tax-exempt financing demonstrated as much.
When the tax reform package was released in the final weeks of November, the Chicago Tribune
reported that Rostenkowski had “permitted just two potential Chicago-area sites—in suburban
Addison and just south of the Loop—to qualify for the exemption.” Perhaps more revealing, it
was further reported that the “Chicago White Sox [were] interested in both sites on
Rostenkowski’s agenda.”276 This marked the beginnings of the power play between state and city
government officials that pitted the mayor and his preferred site south of the Loop against
Governor Jim Thompson and DuPage County Republicans and their preference for a suburban
locale. The entire process was playing into the White Sox’s hands as they continued to build
leverage for extracting the best stadium deal possible.
Mayor Washington received a confidential memo from his Stadium Task Force in
December 1985 with the following recommendations:
As the Stadium Task Force, we recommend that the City select the Chicago
Sports Complex Development Corporation and the Chicago Riverdome
275
276

Bill Barnhart, “Ways, Means Need Work,” Chicago Tribune (1963–Current File), November 29, 1985.
Ibid.

106

Corporation, as developers, and the Chicago White Sox, Ltd., as initial tenant to
negotiate an agreement for the design, development, construction, management,
operation, and occupancy of a new stadium to be located on the South Loop site at
Roosevelt Road and the Chicago River. . . .
This site was preferred by the City for its potential and because the land was
vacant, and that a project could be achieved there without the level of disruption
associated with other sites.277
Just two days later an article in the Chicago Tribune reported that Howard Pizer, executive vice
president of the White Sox, had confirmed that the “Sox [controlled] almost 150 acres’ in
Addison and an adjacent area where the organization has proposed building a $130 million
retractable-dome stadium.” However, Pizer later added: “Although we continue to work with the
mayor of Addison and people in DuPage, we are also talking to people in Chicago. . . . We are
moving in both directions—exploring everything with Chicago and Addison.”278
On December 21, Mayor Washington released his own plan for a $125 million stadium to
be built on the South Loop site. City officials acknowledged that the tempo of the negotiations
and the suburban threat, both controlled by the White Sox, had forced their hand at times during
the planning process, most notably their decision to build an open-air, baseball-only stadium
rather than the all-purpose domes they had initially favored. The two developers chosen to work
together on the project, Daniel Shannon and Robert Winslow, had a combination of political
influence (Shannon was a friend and advisor to Rostenkowski) and relatively large-scale
development success near the city’s core (Winslow). They were offered the freedom to “tailor
the physical and financial offer” as they saw fit, and the city asked that they “secure a ‘letter of
commitment’ from the White Sox no later than February 15.”279 Barely a month had passed
277

HWAC, Chief of Staff’s Office, 1981–1988, Management Plan, 1983–1988, Earnest G. Barefield, OS-Box 106,
Folder 8, Stadium Development, 1985–1987, Confidential Memorandum to The Honorable Harold Washington,
Mayor of Chicago, Stadium Task Force Recommendation, December 16, 1985.
278
Neil H. Mehler and Susan Lewis, “Sox Sock Away Suburban Land,” Chicago Tribune (1963–Current
File), December 18, 1985.
279
John McCarron, “Mayor Gives Nod to Sox-Only Stadium Plan,” Chicago Tribune (1963–Current
File), December 21, 1985.

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before the White Sox responded to the developers’ package in a manner that demonstrated how
“sweet” the city’s stadium deal would have to be to prevent them from leaving.
In late January 1986, the White Sox sent a letter to the city-appointed development team
with a list of “12 ‘minimum’ requirements so favorable to the team that developers [said] the
project [might] die unless the Sox relent.” Those requirements included: an open-air, baseballonly stadium; team control of stadium design and day-to-day operations; all public-works and
infrastructure costs (estimated at $55 million) “arranged” by the developers; game day traffic
police, also “arranged” by the developers; a ban on all stadium events that might interfere with
the team’s 81 home games; surface parking for 8,000 cars; a waiver by the city of all amusement,
parking, and real estate taxes, along with a ban on new city taxes once the stadium was built; all
stadium construction, improvement, maintenance, insurance, and utility costs absorbed by the
developer-owner; and finally, the White Sox would retain 100 percent of all concession, parking,
and advertising revenue related to baseball games.280 The developers were quick to suggest that
the team’s demands only amounted to a strong opening bargaining position. And yet, team coowner, Eddie Einhorn, offered a strong rebuttal to such claims, saying only that “I can’t tell you
there’s any ‘give’ in the Sox position.”281 Such onerous terms completely undermined the
viability of the city’s economic justification for funding the stadium with public financing.
Earlier, when the mayor’s stadium plan was released, city officials suggested that “the bond issue
would cost Chicago taxpayers nothing . . . because the $10 million annual debt service would be
nearly covered by the sum of the White Sox rent payments, skybox and loge seat revenues and
myriad other sources ranging from parking fees to concession sales.”282 Of all of these sources of
revenue that the city might have utilized to recoup their investment, only the skybox and loge
280

John McCarron, “Sox Throw Developers Knuckleball,” Chicago Tribune (1963–Current File), January 19, 1986.
Ibid.
282
McCarron, “Mayor Gives Nod to Sox-Only Stadium Plan.”
281

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seat revenues remained on the table, and the developers made it clear that those rent payments
would not nearly be sufficient to cover the annual debt service on construction bonds.283
As the White Sox pushed the city for a nearly unworkable economic package amidst
continued efforts to develop a stadium in suburban Addison, city officials began to receive a
flood of correspondence from residents surrounding the proposed stadium site south of the Loop.
Residents of the South Loop, particularly homeowners in the now thriving Dearborn Park
neighborhood, feared that a new stadium would undermine the years of localized residential and
small commercial development that many in the area felt were vital to the sustainability of what
had been, up to that point, successful community-minded urban development. While the city did
receive some letters that voiced support for the project, albeit with noted reservations, the vast
majority of the correspondence confronted city officials with the growing reality that their longfought efforts to retain the White Sox in the city had ultimately been rejected by the people who,
according to the conventional economic logic of stadium boosters, should have had the most to
gain from the project. The central issue surrounding the stadium project, then, revolved around
different notions of what makes up a sustainable, vibrant urban community. As stated earlier,
however, there were many different understandings as to what constituted the desired
“community” that the various groups involved in the stadium development process were seeking
to build.
Building Community in the South Loop
In late January 1986, the mayor’s office received a memo from the Department of
Planning regarding “Near South Issues” in which a number of questions were asked regarding
the development of what was then being called the “South Loop Riveredge Stadium”
283

McCarron, “Sox Throw Developers Knuckleball.”

109

development project. One of the questions asked, “Should Chinatown [Tax Increment Financing
(TIF)] be expanded to include [the] stadium site?”284 Tax Increment Financing involves using
anticipated future increases in property taxes to pay off bonds used to fund development.
Chinatown was located just two blocks south of the proposed stadium site: “80 acres [of] vacant
railyard property from Roosevelt, Clark, 18th Street, [and the] Chicago River.”285 From the
vantage point of city officials, this was an ideal site for the new stadium for a number of reasons.
By building on 80 acres of vacant land, the city could avoid residential displacement while
simultaneously improving a tremendous gap of disinvestment. TIF redevelopment initiatives in
Chinatown had proved successful, so there was some thought of including the stadium in a
broader, interrelated development strategy. But the Chinatown program was “on a faster track”
than the stadium project, and city officials ultimately decided that Chinatown’s TIF might not
“be an appropriate financing vehicle for the stadium.”286 To the north of the proposed site, the
apparent success of Dearborn Park’s first phase of development provided further impetus to
consider the stadium as part of a larger regional development effort. Ultimately, this turned out
to be a missed opportunity to consider a broader development plan that could incorporate the
stadium into existing patterns of urban development.
Another question posed in the memo to the administration demonstrated first, that the city
was still trying to find a way to solve two stadium issues with one large project, and second, that
city officials were at least discussing how the proposed stadium plan would affect the future
development of Dearborn Park. Commissioner Elizabeth Holland framed the issues as follows:

284

HWAC, Mayoral Records, Development Files, Box 8, Folder 19, General Subject Files, South Loop, “City of
Chicago Department of Planning Memorandum,” January 30, 1986.
285
HWAC, Mayoral Records, Development Files, Box 8, Folder 19, General Subject Files, South Loop, “Riveredge
Stadium,” November 1985.
286
HWAC, Mayoral Records, Development Files, Box 8, Folder 19, General Subject Files, South Loop, “City of
Chicago Department of Planning Memorandum,” January 30, 1986.

110

Protecting the area for the second stage of Dearborn Park Phase II requires careful
stadium planning. If both a baseball field and a covered football stadium are to be
developed, the ball field should be moved south on the site to reduce noise
impacts on surrounding residents. Full development of stadium facilities could
jeopardize further residential development in Dearborn Park Phase II area because
of parking needs and overall impact. Is this ok?287
Behind closed doors, city officials were very cognizant of the potential conflicts that
could develop from trying to combine two radically different models of development. They were
still trying to find a way to accommodate both the White Sox and the Bears, and though neither
team was interested in sharing a multi-purpose stadium (which would have been the best
economic scenario for the city), there was some hope that the teams might agree to two stadiums
located within the same “stadium complex.”288 From the perspective of the Washington
administration, the vast stretch of vacant land available at the South Loop site provided them an
opportunity to avoid the residential displacement and extensive infrastructure improvements that
typically aroused community opposition to stadium projects. The residents of Dearborn Park
knew very little, if anything at all, about the city’s stadium complex deliberations. And in their
minds, there were other pressing issues tied to the proposed stadium that could potentially harm
their growing community. The city’s lack of transparency about the stadium plan increased their
suspicions and fears.
As early as November 1985, the Mayor’s office began receiving letters from a diverse
mix of South Loop residents expressing their opposition to the proposed stadium project. Many
worried about how game day traffic disruptions, noise, and littering would affect their lives on a
daily basis. Some expressed concerns that the stadium would lower property values and scare

287

Ibid.
One example that influenced Chicago planning was Kansas City’s Truman Sports Complex, constructed for the
Royals and the NFL’s Chiefs at the end of the 1960s. Early in 1986, Charles Deaton, the Colorado architect who
designed the Truman Sports Complex was brought in by the city’s development team to design a multi-purpose
stadium to be shared by the Bears and White Sox for the proposed South Loop site.
288

111

away would-be residents. But the central theme that stands out when the correspondence is
considered on the whole is that residents had a very different understanding of what community
development should look like. In letter after letter, residents emphasized the importance of mixed
residential and small commercial development that focused on creating relatively safe, quiet
neighborhoods with good schools and convenient local shopping. One resident, Nancy M. Martin,
described the area as a “good mix of young and old, singles and families, blue collar and white
and many shades of skin color.”289 The bulk of the correspondence overwhelmingly described
the stadium project as an inevitable destructive force that would, by its very design, eliminate
many of the developmental gains the area had realized up to that point. Martin even suggested
that the stadium would make the area less appealing to “young families and refugees from the
suburbs,”290 who were precisely the type of residents Rust Belt cities like Chicago had been
trying so hard to retain and attract in the postindustrial urban era. Though the pressure to find a
feasible location and the opportunity to avoid residential displacement temporarily caused city
officials to downplay these concerns, such correspondence should not be taken lightly, for these
were precisely the type of residents that city and downtown business leaders hoped to attract and
retain. Some of the letters stand out, carefully articulating what successful community-led
development in Chicago looked like.
One such letter was written by Robert L. Schmidt, a professional urban planner and
registered architect in the state, who had moved to Dearborn Park in the early 1980s.
Commenting on the successful efforts by the city and business community to build a thriving
residential neighborhood in the South Loop, Schmidt wrote, “I have walked past empty
storefronts that now house fine restaurants and shops on South Dearborn Street, and through mud
289

Nancy M. Martin to Mayor Harold Washington, March 18, 1986, HWAC, Chief of Staff’s Office, 1981–1988,
Management Plan, 1983–1988, Earnest G. Barefield, OS-Box 106, Folder 8, Stadium Development, 1985–1987.
290
Ibid., emphasis added.

112

fields that have been redeveloped into residential properties. The South Loop area is very much
alive and continuing to grow. Most importantly, it can truly be called a neighborhood in the best
Chicago tradition.” He then remarked that his occupation as a professional planner had also
given him “the opportunity to ‘share’ our South Loop experience with clients and peers across
the country.” In Schmidt’s experience, the “imaginative planning” which was working to create a
“very special and unique renaissance” in the city of Chicago had excited other urban planners
who were “impressed with the built results—the implementation of the plans -, and anxious to
explore similar opportunities for their cities.” Schmidt closed his letter encouraging the mayor to
“visit our community and very carefully consider the future of the South Loop neighborhood”
before moving forward with the proposed stadium project.291
The emphasis on community and the administration’s failure to publicly seek feedback
from area residents was evident in much of the anti-stadium correspondence received by Mayor
Washington’s administration. A form letter sent by many condominium owners living on South
Plymouth Court, just north of the proposed stadium site, criticized city officials’ handling of the
issue arguing, “This site has been poorly chosen and hastily endorsed by your office without due
consideration of the consequences to adjacent residential areas.”292 A letter from the president of
1169 South Plymouth Court Condominium Association argued that “the city has neither sought
nor been interested in the opinions of South Loop residents in judging the desirability of the
stadium project.”293 Stated more directly, one letter closed with, “We smell a good deal of
vacillation and confusion, which only underscores our feeling that something is being foisted
291

Robert L. Schmidt to Mayor Harold Washington, November 20, 1985, HWAC, Chief of Staff’s Office, 1981–
1988, Management Plan, 1983–1988, Earnest G. Barefield, OS-Box 106, Folder 8, Stadium Development, 1985–
1987.
292
Calvin Jones and Dan C. Langan to Mayor Harold Washington, February 23, 1986, HWAC, Chief of Staff’s
Office, 1981–1988, Management Plan, 1983–1988, Earnest G. Barefield, OS-Box 106, Folder 8, Stadium
Development, 1985–1987.
293
Ivan R. Dee to Mayor Washington, January 10, 1986, HWAC, Chief of Staff’s Office, 1981–1988, Management
Plan, 1983–1988, Earnest G. Barefield, OS-Box 106, Folder 8, Stadium Development, 1985–1987.

113

upon us.”294 There was much truth in that sentiment as the details of the proposal were in
constant flux while the city, the state, and the project’s developers waited on the White Sox who
were skillfully driving the negotiations. All city officials could do was to reply to residents with
their own form letters that attempted to be compassionate in tone, while offering vague rhetoric
promising a complementary development plan with the surrounding neighborhoods.295
In March 1986, a group of South Loop residents from Dearborn Park, River City, and
Printers Row, organized as Citizens Against the Stadium (CATS), sponsored a neighborhood
meeting at which they presented Alderman Fred Roti (First Ward) with a petition containing 884
signatures in opposition to the stadium. Roti assured those in attendance that “the signatures
would be a ‘top priority’ in his decision on whether to support the stadium.” Speaking as a
member of the Chicago City Council’s Zoning Committee, Roti also told the crowd that “the
project’s developers should disclose their plans and ‘present them to the community.’”296 At the
time of the meeting, no such transparency existed. But not all South Loop residents opposed the
stadium project. Days after the meeting, Alderman Roti received a letter from one such resident
who had lived in Dearborn Park since the end of 1980 and saw the proposed stadium project as
no threat at all:
First of all, I am so weary of special interest groups who put the needs and wants
of 800 or so people over those of the millions of residents of Chicago. Let’s face
it, the proposed South Loop location is central to all expressways, all CTA
transportation, and all neighborhoods. It doesn’t favor Northsiders, Southsiders,
or suburbanites. The land itself is virtually empty, causing no displacement of
residents or businesses. How ideal can a proposal get?297

294

Nancy M. Martin to Mayor Harold Washington, March 18, 1986.
Earnest G. Barefield to Steven D. Marcus, Chief of Staff, April 17, 1986, HWAC, Chief of Staff’s Office, 1981–
1988, Management Plan, 1983–1988, Earnest G. Barefield, OS-Box 106, Folder 8, Stadium Development, 1985–
1987.
296
Cheryl Devall and Joseph Sjostrom, “S. Loop Group Opposes Stadium,” Chicago Tribune (1963–Current
File), March 4, 1986.
297
To Alderman Fred Roti, HWAC, Chief of Staff’s Office, 1981–1988, Management Plan, 1983–1988, Earnest G.
Barefield, OS-Box 106, Folder 8, Stadium Development, 1985–1987.
295

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After reading this letter, it is not hard to imagine officials in the Washington administration
exclaiming, “Finally! Someone gets it!” From the position of city officials attempting to find an
economically and politically feasible location to build a structure as (potentially) massive as a
multi-purpose dome, there could not be a better site. Each of the other locations seriously
considered by city officials would have involved huge expenditures in infrastructural
development and the displacement of area residents and small businesses.
Given the final decision to build the park in South Armour Square on the northern tip of
the Wentworth Gardens public housing development, it is interesting to note that the resident
supporting the stadium project ended his letter begging Alderman Roti to remember one thing:
“Please don’t ever let them build public housing on that property. If all these ‘CATS’ would give
a second thought to what will happen to the land if the stadium fails, they might worry a little
about something really important. Like those idiot gangs catching us in their crossfire.”298 The
owners of the White Sox wanted to move out of Comiskey Park for those very reasons. Spirou
and Bennett termed it the team’s “South Side problem”:
In a pattern of neighborhood racial transition that dated to the 1950s, most of the
South Side residential areas near Armour Square and Bridgeport were now home
to majority African American populations. Moreover, as Chicago had
deindustrialized since the 1960s these same areas had become increasingly poor.
In the view of the White Sox owners, due to neighborhood conditions, bringing
free-spending fans into Comiskey Park was an increasingly daunting challenge.299
As was demonstrated earlier, the Dearborn Park, Printers Row, and River City residential
neighborhoods were intentionally developed to attract middle- to upper-class residents.
Regardless of the facts that the stadium itself had little to do with the poor conditions
surrounding it, and that city officials had no intention of building additional public housing that
close to the Loop, residents in these communities feared such possibilities and fought to defend
298
299

Ibid.
Spirou and Bennett, It’s Hardly Sportin’, 65.

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their communities from encroachment by “undesirables” that might negatively affect the value of
their respective neighborhoods. The White Sox ownership had already experienced the problems
associated with operating in a location surrounded by poor African Americans. As far as they
were concerned, the best scenario for the construction of their new stadium involved relocating
to suburban Addison where the problems of race and poverty could be avoided altogether.
Community Makeover: The White Sox Begin Courting the Suburbs
The suburban model for stadium construction is perpetuated because professional
baseball derives economic benefit from it. But this model has high costs, and
these costs are disproportionately borne by others outside the community of
professional baseball.300
The White Sox were committed to their own vision of a desirable community whose
primary function was to serve their commercial interests, and they treated that community very
differently throughout the planning process. Their first step was to conduct marketing and
demographic studies to determine precisely who their fans were, where they were located, and
how much they were able and willing to spend on White Sox baseball. One of the first things
they discovered was that “middle-class fans, particularly white suburbanites, were afraid of
crime in the Comiskey Park area.”301 The White Sox had relatively few black fans, despite the
fact that most of the residents living around the stadium were African Americans, which
compounded the problem.302 The South Loop location, with its “burgeoning community of
apartments, condominiums, and town houses,”303 offered the potential for a local base of middleclass fans. Unfortunately for the team (and for the city), the residents were making it clear that
they did not want the team there. Moreover, the research clearly suggested that the vast majority
300

Philip H. Bess, City Baseball Magic: Plain Talk and Uncommon Sense about Cities and Baseball Parks (St. Paul:
Knothole Press, 1999), 2.
301
Euchner, Playing the Field, 136.
302
Spirou and Bennett, It’s Hardly Sportin’, 65.
303
Cheryl Devall and Joseph Sjostrom, “S. Loop Group Opposes Stadium.”

116

of the team’s fans were located in the suburbs, which prompted Sox owner, Jerry Reinsdorf, to
remark, “The fans moved away from the South Side. Why can’t we?”304 And so the team’s
attempt to build their new stadium in suburban Addison was much more than a bargaining chip
to secure a better deal with the city of Chicago. The suburban option, moreover, was a direct
result of the earlier constitutive choices made in Chicago’s downtown development. First was the
decision to connect the city and the suburbs via the construction of the expressways; second, the
decision to contain public housing in African American neighborhoods located in the southern
Black Belt and on the West Side determined the poor conditions that surrounded Comiskey Park
and influenced team owners to look elsewhere for a new site.
Commenting on the positive results of a survey given to residents of Addison regarding
the proposed construction of a new suburban stadium, White Sox executive vice president,
Howard C. Pizer, “emphasized that a decision on a new stadium location for the White Sox has
not yet been made. ‘We are keeping our options open,’ he said, ‘but it just makes good sense to
explore the attitudes of the people living in the area where we might decide to build a
stadium.’”305 They were also considering building their stadium in the South Loop at the time,
but residents there received no such consideration from the team, nor would the residents of
South Armour Square once the suburban option had been thoroughly exhausted. One obvious
explanation for the differences in how the White Sox courted would-be stadium communities
was succinctly summarized by “urbanologist” Pierre DeVise: “Given the dichotomy of black
inner city, white suburbs found in many metro areas, the anti-urban bias of stadium relocation

304

Phil Hersh, “Comiskey Park Bears Skid Mark of White Flight,” Chicago Tribune (1963–Current File), July 13,
1986.
305
Steve Kerch, “Land Broker: Matchmaker in Real Estate,” Chicago Tribune (1963–Current File), March 23,
1986.

117

often projects an anti-black bias. The anti-urban, anti-black bias is no doubt related to the fact
that white middle-class suburbanites make up bulk of . . . stadium patrons.”306
There is no evidence to suggest that the owners of the White Sox were motivated to leave
Chicago for explicitly racial reasons. Citing Judge Wayne R. Anderson’s concluding remarks
from Laramore v. Illinois Sports Facilities Authority (ISFA), a case in which South Armour
Square activists sued the city, state, and ISFA for racially discriminatory actions in the stadium
development process, Costas Spirou and Larry Bennett suggest that the evidence clearly shows
that the White Sox had “purely economic reasons” for building their new park.307 Through the
process of new stadium construction, Major League Baseball was making a concerted effort to
change their economic base by marketing and pricing their product to wealthier clientele. The
northwest suburban-targeted marketing and stadium planning by the White Sox over the summer
of 1986 are evidence of that aim. Race entered the equation due to segregated urban development
policies of Chicago’s racially troubled past.308 In cities like Los Angeles and Chicago, the
question of race is ever present. In both cities, the residents that were forced out to make room
for a new stadium lived in communities of poor racial minorities. For as long as the suburban
Addison site was viable, however, the owners of the White Sox had intended to follow the lead
of other major league teams from large, older, postindustrial cities, such as the Dodgers, leaving
their rapidly decaying surroundings for greener pastures and fatter wallets.
Suburbs and Suburban Stadiums
All but two of the fourteen stadiums built between 1962 and 1977 were suburban model,
multi-use facilities. The two exceptions were Dodger Stadium and Royals Stadium, which were
306

“Changing Sports Addresses?,” Chicago Tribune (1963–Current File), April 3, 1986.
Spirou and Bennett, It’s Hardly Sportin’, 104.
308
The impact Chicago’s long history of racially discriminatory housing policies had on the decision to build in
South Armour Square will be discussed in more detail later in the chapter.
307

118

baseball-only versions of the suburban model.309 The suburban model for stadiums emphasizes
the use of what are called “superblocks,” giant parcels of land that would normally hold multiple
city blocks. Following the example set by Dodger Stadium, the suburban model stadium is
surrounded by acres of surface parking to accommodate automobile access. The demand for
multiple rows of luxury suites, ramps on the stadium’s exterior for more efficient vertical
pedestrian flow, and obstruction-free seating throughout the park created stadium designs that
dwarfed the grand old parks like Comiskey Park, Tiger Stadium, and Yankee Stadium. The vast
majority of the multi-use stadiums built between 1962 and 1967 were sterile, symmetrical,
concrete behemoths of nearly identical design. Architect and stadium critic, Philip H. Bess, cites
former Major League Baseball Commissioner A. Bartlett Giamatti who said of the suburban
model: “Modern ballparks are the most conventional architecture since Mussolini’s social
realism.”310 The owners of the White Sox preferred Kansas City’s baseball-only model, and they
likely had something like that in mind for their Addison site. But as Chicago’s stadium boosters
scrambled to find an economically viable solution to keep the Sox in the city, they came to the
conclusion that building a suburban multi-use stadium in the South Loop for both the White Sox
and the Bears was their only hope.
At the end of April 1986, Mayor Washington held a press conference announcing plans
for a $255 million multi-use stadium that would be contingent on having the Bears as co-tenants
with the White Sox. The stadium would seat 70,000 for football and 50,000 for baseball. The
Mayor was adamant that the package would only work if both teams agreed to share the facilities.
In addition the White Sox had to agree to pay a minimum of $1.5 million annually for rent as

309
310

Bess, City Baseball Magic, 8.
Ibid., 4.

119

well as surrendering 45 percent of parking and 12 percent of concessions revenues.311 But there
were three problems with this scenario, holdovers that had plagued the process all along. First,
the White Sox did not want to surrender any revenues other the luxury suite rentals and had no
intention of agreeing to pay rent as long as the Addison option was viable. Second, they had their
minds set on a baseball-only stadium in the Kansas City mold.312 Finally, the Bears were never
interested in sharing a facility with another team, and at that time, they were looking into
building a privately owned stadium in the suburbs.
On May 1, 1986, the city reached a tentative agreement with the White Sox, contingent
on the Bears as co-tenants. Bears President, Michael McCaskey, promised to review the stadium
proposal but maintained that the Bears’ preference was for a privately owned stadium.313 While
the city waited on a decision from the Bears, White Sox owner, Reinsdorf, told reporters,
“Within a couple of weeks we should know where we stand. . . . [W]e will have to tell the city
either it’s a go or no. I suspect that it will be no. And if we leave Chicago, it won’t be because
we want to leave, or because Mayor Washington hasn’t done everything possible to keep us.”314
It was true that the mayor had done everything possible, but Reinsdorf’s own negative suspicions
betrayed his desire to move to the suburbs. Furthermore, at a meeting with “250 executives from
northwestern Cook and Du Page Counties” held to rally governmental support for the Addison
stadium proposal, Reinsdorf laid his cards on the table: “There is no question I would prefer the
Addison site. . . . If it were a case of just what we preferred, we would have blown . . . [Chicago]

311

John McCarron, “Mayor Tosses Sox a Last Pitch,” Chicago Tribune (1963–Current File), April 24, 1986.
Euchner, Playing the Field, 158.
313
John McCarron, “Stadium Developer Win Over Sox,” Chicago Tribune (1963–Current File), May 1, 1986.
314
Bob Verdi, “Hearing Isn’t Always Believing,” Chicago Tribune (1963–Current File), May 29, 1986.
312

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off a long time ago. Ownership of a team does involve a semi-public trust, and that’s why we’ve
got to give Chicago every chance.”315
When the Bears finally backed out in mid-June, claiming that the mayor’s South Loop
stadium plan was “too costly and too late,”316 the city made one last attempt to get the state to
chip in through the formation of a “city-state stadium authority.” The legislature’s failure to act
on it prior to breaking for summer, however, left the city without the funding commitment
necessary to make a deal with the White Sox.317 With the funding stalled indefinitely, the White
Sox decided they had waited long enough on Chicago, lest “any further delay . . . jeopardize
[their] ability to develop the Addison site, which could result in a need to leave Illinois.”318 The
team had already floated rumors about other cities such as Phoenix, Tampa Bay, and Washington,
DC. For all of Reinsdorf’s talk of the team being a “semi-public trust,” the owner of the White
Sox would soon find that the people of Addison were wary of building that trust with a
professional sports franchise.
White-Collar Communities
The proposed stadium development in Addison was estimated to cost $105 million plus
$15 million in surrounding public works. That was significantly less than the South Loop
proposal, but the White Sox were still looking for financial backing from the Illinois
legislature.319 Some Chicago Democrats in the legislature made it known that they would make
any suburban funding initiative for a stadium very difficult. The mayor’s floor leader in the

315

William Presecky, “White Sox Pressing for Addison, Aid,” Chicago Tribune (1963–Current File), June 12, 1986.
John McCarron, “Bears Sack Mayor’s Stadium,” Chicago Tribune (1963–Current File), June 16, 1986.
317
John McCarron and Manuel Galvan, “White Sox Forced to Leave Chicago,” Chicago Tribune (1963–Current
File), July 8, 1986.
318
Ibid.
319
John McCarron and David Young, “White Sox Owners: It’s Addison or Adios,” Chicago Tribune (1963–Current
File), July 9, 1986.
316

121

house, Rep. Carol Moseley Braun, told reporters, “I wouldn’t give them ice water in winter.”320
Furthermore, opposition was forming in Addison as environmental protesters (looking to protect
wetlands) and local residents (worried about traffic) started organizing their efforts. If stadium
building is indeed a community-building effort as its proponents suggest, it was ironic that a
growing number of Addison residents were wary of bringing the White Sox to the suburbs even
as many Chicago South Siders hated to see them go. One local Chicago fan went so far as to
compare the team’s suburban efforts to the Dodgers leaving Brooklyn in 1957.321
Support from Addison residents was “not crucial to financing of the stadium,” but due to
building and zoning ordinances, the village of 30,000 had to approve the project.322 The press
coverage often referred to the village as a “blue-collar suburb,”323 but residents took issue with
how they were being represented on the stadium issue. An earlier village survey had shown that
“more than half” of the residents did not want the stadium built in Addison.324 In an effort to set
the record straight, one resident who had lived in Addison for twenty-five years remarked:
The traffic is already impossible in our community at rush hour—we certainly
don’t need any more. We also do not need the riff-raff who will be hanging
around the stadium. I know if they build the stadium, I will be the first to put a
“For Sale” sign on my home. By the way, the facts are also wrong on another
point—this is a white-collar community.325
The suburbanites of Addison saw a clear distinction between their “white-collar” community and
those “communities” which surround stadiums like Comiskey Park. Furthermore, given the
racial profile of Addison (87.9 percent white according to 1990 Illinois census data), residents’

320

Ibid.
Ibid.
322
William Presecky, “With White Sox on Menu, Addison Luncheon Big Draw,” Chicago Tribune (1963–Current
File), July 10, 1986.
323
Ibid.
324
G. Anderson, “Addison and Sox,” Chicago Tribune (1963–Current File), April 17, 1986.
325
Ibid.
321

122

use of the “white-collar” distinction likely had as much to do with racial demographics as it did
economics.326
As was the case with the South Loop proposal, homeowners associations were the first to
voice their opposition to the perceived negative impact of building a stadium in their backyards.
Tom Zver, president of the Presidential Estates-King’s Point West Homeowners Association,
told reporters that “the only positive benefit is for the owners of the White Sox and, I might add,
at the expense of the families in our community.”327 Zyer was not buying the pitch Addison
stadium boosters were pushing:
It makes little difference to Tom Zver how often his new neighbors mow their
grass, how nice their fence is or how many millionaires they invite over. As far as
he’s concerned, if the White Sox move into Addison, there goes the
neighborhood.328
A member of the homeowners association for nearby Medinah Estates further remarked, “We’re
[Addison’s] neighbors, and they’ve never said anything to us. How would you like to have a
beautiful home with a pool on an acre estate and hear you’re going to have a baseball stadium
behind you? It devastates us.”329 The residents of South Armour Square in South Chicago could
have only dreamed of such a problem. In nearby Bloomingdale one public official feared that if
the Addison stadium was publicly financed, “the Bloomingdale elementary school district and

326

US Department of Commerce. Bureau of the Census. 1990. 1990 Census of Population, General Population
Characteristics, Illinois. Prepared by the Decennial Planning Division in cooperation with the Decennial Operations
Division, the Housing and Household Economics Statistics Division, the Population Division, the Data User
Services Division, the Geography Division, the Statistical Support Division, the 1990 Census Redistricting Data
Office, the Administrative and Publications Services Division, the Data Preparation Division, the Field Division, the
Personnel Division, and the Technical Services Division, Bureau of the Census. Washington, DC: Government
Printing Office.
327
George Papajohn, “Addison Area Homeowners Aim a Bean Ball at White Sox Owners,” Chicago Tribune
(1963–Current File), July 13, 1986.
328
Ibid.
329
Ibid.

123

fire protection district [would] lose valuable property off their tax rolls.”330 Added to the growing
opposition by wealthy home owners, “local naturalists” enlisted the US Army Corps of
Engineers to block the stadium should the land be determined “valuable wildlife habitat.”331 No
corps of any kind made an attempt to block the demolition of the northern portion of the
Wentworth Gardens public housing development a few short years later.
He’s No O’Malley
White Sox owner, Jerry Reinsdorf, grew up in Brooklyn, New York, rooting for Walter
O’Malley’s Dodgers. He thought it was wrong for O’Malley to take the Dodgers away from the
borough in 1957. According to Reinsdorf, “O’Malley wanted to move the Dodgers out of
Brooklyn because he saw the promised land. He was right about that, but to this day I think he
was wrong to take the Dodgers out of Brooklyn.” Reinsdorf cited the support of the fans and
claimed (erroneously) that the “city was committed to a new building,” before suggesting “that
wasn’t good enough for Walter O’Malley.”332
He had a better deal, and he passed up a good deal for a better one. I don’t think
that was right, because ownership of a ballclub is at least a semi-public trust. If
O’Malley wanted to go to Los Angeles, the league should have given him a
franchise and left the Dodgers in Brooklyn, because they were an integral part of
Brooklyn. . . . We tried to keep the team in the city because we felt an obligation
to Chicago. . . . That’s why we gave it our best shot. But my conscience is clear.
We didn’t cause it to fail.333
Reinsdorf was no fool. He knew full well that O’Malley could not have succeeded so
well in Los Angeles without the Dodgers brand name. As a powerful owner in the game,
Reinsdorf also knew that O’Malley used his clout with baseball’s commissioner to secure
330

Ibid.; George Papajohn, “Wetlands May Dampen White Sox Plans,” Chicago Tribune (1963–Current File), July
15, 1986; Euchner, Playing the Field, 146.
331
Ibid., 146.
332
Sam Smith, “My Conscience Is Clear, Reinsdorf Says of Plans,” Chicago Tribune (1963–Current File), July 15,
1986.
333
Ibid.

124

approval from the other owners for the move to the West Coast. O’Malley followed the
television money and his automobile-driving target customers to Los Angeles, prizes he was not
about to concede to a new owner. Reisndorf was after the same revenue enhancers and employed
the same tactics as the man who took his boyhood team out of Brooklyn. His own target location
of suburban Addison, however, was just outside of the city. They would still be Chicago’s White
Sox in his mind, playing for the greater Chicago-land region. Why should he have any regrets?
Reinsdorf’s experience differed in one other unfortunate manner from that of O’Malley
thirty years earlier. The outcome of both owners’ stadium relocation plans hinged on referendum
votes. In O’Malley’s case, he was the benefactor of 300 acres of land in Chavez Ravine as a
result of a referendum passed on June 3, 1958, to overturn the use of the land for public housing.
In Reinsdorf’s case, the unfavorable results from a stadium referendum in Addison took the land
for his stadium away. In a November 1986 election, a slim majority of Addison voters (50.3
percent) “voted ‘no’ on an advisory proposal that asked whether a stadium should be constructed
in their village.”334 While the vote was not binding, the clear display of public opposition caused
the team’s most powerful political allies behind the suburban proposal (like Governor James
Thompson and Senate Republican leader, James “Pate” Philip) to back away from the suburban
option.335 By December 1986, the White Sox were back at the negotiating table with the city of
Chicago. But if Reinsdorf’s only remaining option was in the city, he would do everything in his
power to build a stadium that brought the suburban market to him.

334

Robert Blau and Barbara Mahany, “Election 86,” Chicago Tribune (1963–Current File), November 5, 1986.
Daniel Egler and John Schmeltzer, “Thompson Tells Sox: Switch Site,” Chicago Tribune (1963–Current
File), November 22, 1986.
335

125

Mayor Washington Gets His Team?
We have a written agreement signed, sealed, and delivered, and the Sox are
committed to stay in Chicago pursuant to finalization of that [agreement].336
We’re here. We’re here to stay. And we’re here to stay in the City of Chicago.337
Immediately following the Addison outcome, Al Johnson, the mayor’s lead on the
Stadium Task Force, contacted the White Sox about resuming negotiations to keep the team
within the city limits. The city’s offer contained one significant change from the previous
proposal that fell apart when the Illinois state legislature refused to act prior to adjourning over
the summer of 1986: the mayor wanted to build a baseball-only stadium on or near the property
where the original stadium existed at 35th Street and Shields Avenue in South Armour Square.338
The city and the team now had to hope that Governor Thompson and the legislature would pass
the legislation calling for the creation of a seven-member stadium authority to fund and own the
ballpark. Reinsdorf had to hope that the funding expected from legislators for his Addison
stadium plan would still be on the table. But aside from questioning a few of the details in the
city/team agreement, White Sox owners had little reason to doubt that the governor would go to
bat for them. For Thompson himself had agreed with Reinsdorf and Einhorn that the team
needed a new stadium as he sat with them on Opening Day in 1985. He was even reported to
have suggested to the owners that the team would need to threaten to leave the state before
getting a new stadium.339 Thompson, like Mayor Washington, saw the opportunity to “Save the
Sox” too tantalizing for his political legacy to pass up.

336

Mayor Harold Washington quoted in Daniel Egler and John McCarron, “Sox, City Pitch Stadium Plan to
Governor,” Chicago Tribune (1963–Current File), December 3, 1986.
337
White Sox President, Eddie Einhorn, quoted in John McCarron and Daniel Egler, “Mayor Covered All Bases to
Swing Sox Deal,” Chicago Tribune (1963–Current File), December 7, 1986.
338
Ibid.
339
Edward I. Sidlow and Beth M. Henschen, “Building Ballparks: The Public-Policy Dimensions of Keeping the
Game in Town,” in The Economics and Politics of Sports Facilities, ed. Wilbur C. Rich (Westport, CT: Quorum
Books, 2000), 156–57.

126

The final deal struck between the White Sox, city officials, and the governor included the
creation of a city-state authority led by a seven-member governing board, with “three members
each . . . appointed by the governor and the mayor, with a chairman appointed by both.”340 The
authority had the power to sell $120 million worth of tax-exempt municipal bonds to fund the
construction of a 50,000 seat, open-air stadium. The White Sox agreed to pay the authority up to
$4 million annually in rent, and the authority was also “empowered to levy a 2 percent tax on the
rental of hotel rooms within the city, with at least $1 million a year in proceeds going to pay for
improvements near the stadium.”341 Finally, should the authority fall short on meeting its bond
obligations, the city and the state each agreed to cover up to $5 million of the shortfall.
As had been expected, when the Addison scenario went before the state legislature, there
was an initial tug of war between city Democrats and suburban Republicans, though the sides
had switched. It was now the Democrats who wanted to approve the stadium legislation, while
Republicans wanted funding for a new suburban racetrack and off-site betting parlors. Governor
Thompson, who “strongly supported both projects,” did his part working the floor to get
Republicans behind the stadium plan. Speaking to reporters after both measures passed, though
only by a slim margin for the stadium, Thompson crowed, “I simply reminded some of the
members . . . that it would be very difficult to defend a vote against the White Sox and yet ask
for Democratic votes for racing and Arlington Park.”342 As the stadium deal appeared to be
finally falling into place, both the governor and the mayor wanted the credit for the stadium and
control of the Illinois Sports Facilities Authority that would implement the plan. Over the next
ten months, the mayor and the governor fought over nominations to the seven-member ISFA as

340

Egler and McCarron, “Sox, City Pitch Stadium Plan to Governor.”
Ibid.
342
Daniel Egler and John MCCarron, “Sox Stadium Is Safe at Home,” Chicago Tribune (1963–Current
File), December 6, 1986.
341

127

they sought various political concessions in exchange for consent. In particular, Mayor
Washington was committed to securing broader guarantees for minorities in the awarding of
stadium construction contracts.343 By the time the members of the ISFA finally met together for
the first time since its creation fifteen months earlier, the White Sox had found a new suitor in St.
Petersburg, Florida—and that city was already building them a stadium.344 The sudden death of
Mayor Washington in November 1987caused further delays and ultimately reduced the city’s
role in the process.345
With the threat of relocation to St. Petersburg, the White Sox once again had the
advantage of leverage. Unlike the Addison scenario, in which the residents had rejected the team
after the White Sox had already spent a considerable amount of money on their attempt to
relocate there, St. Petersburg was actively seeking to land the team and offered a much more
attractive financial package. The construction of the Sun Dome was nearly finished, at no cost to
the White Sox. Furthermore, as Los Angeles had done for the Dodgers in 1957, Florida offered
the White Sox a large untapped market with the promise of huge media contracts that extended
into multiple Spanish-speaking markets as well.346 This was a very real threat with teeth, thanks
to the Dodgers’ precedent, and the White Sox used it to force city and state officials to
renegotiate the terms of the 1986 agreement to include additional subsidies and dramatically
reduced rent obligations. Perhaps more importantly, the new arrangement also granted the ISFA
“quick take” powers with regard to land acquisition and $10 million to compensate property
owners and cover moving expenses.347 Just as the construction of the Dan Ryan Expressway had
destroyed a once vibrant African American commercial strip, the construction of the new
343

Euchner, Playing the Field, 140–41; Spirou and Bennett, It’s Hardly Sportin’, 74.
Euchner, Playing the Field, 141.
345
Spirou and Bennett, It’s Hardly Sportin’, 75
346
Euchner, Playing the Field, 148.
347
Spirou and Bennet, It’s Hardly Sportin’, 70.
344

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Comiskey Park would ultimately claim a number of African American homes and the few
remaining small businesses left in South Armour Square.
The Dignity of Resistance: The Battle for South Armour Square
The residents of Wentworth Gardens . . . are not interested in organizing around
issues; they want to save their homes and neighborhood. Organizing in this
community is a lopsided struggle for a place at the decision-makers’ table, a
place that is rightfully theirs because the residents share a vision of what their
community should be.348
The most comprehensive account of the “Battle for South Armour Square,” particularly
from the vantage point of the communities directly impacted by the new stadium, is found in part
4 of Roberta M. Feldman and Susan Stall’s The Dignity of Resistance: Women Residents’
Activism in Chicago Public Housing, titled “Transgressive Resistance in the Public Sphere.”
The contrast between the experiences of the women activists in the Wentworth Gardens public
housing community (owned by the CHA) and those of the middle- to upper-class residents of the
privately developed Dearborn Park neighborhood are striking.349 But as Feldman and Stall
demonstrate, the first years of Wentworth Gardens’ history also offered many similarities to the
early experiences of Dearborn Park residents. The demand for housing in the first phase of
Dearborn Park was overwhelming. Even before the buildings were finished, Chicago 21
Corporation had sold out of units, creating a long waiting list of people hoping to secure a spot in
residential units that had yet to be built.350 Buyers were attracted by the intentionally selfcontained design of the community which emphasized green spaces, minimal traffic, and a safe
tight-knit community just minutes south of the Loop, where the majority of them worked.351

348

Feldman and Stall, Dignity of Resistance, xii.
Lois Wille’s At Home in the Loop is an excellent account of the development of Dearborn Park as well as the
redevelopment of Printers Row.
350
Wille, At Home in the Loop, 101.
351
Ibid., 157–58.
349

129

There were some initial problems with poor workmanship due to the rushed pace of construction,
but the leaders of Chicago 21 Corporation were quick to respond to calls for needed repairs.352
When Wentworth Gardens opened, it was likewise a beautifully constructed community. But
when their buildings began to show signs of deterioration and disinvestment, the residents’ calls
for repairs increasingly fell on deaf ears.353
The significance of this negligence cannot be understated for city officials’ have long
focused urban renewal efforts towards the reclamation and redevelopment of “blighted” areas,
those sections of the city most visibly suffering deterioration due to disinvestment.354 Since the
Blighted Areas Redevelopment Act and the Relocation Act were adopted by the Illinois General
Assembly in 1947, the practice of using the power of eminent domain to clear and redevelop
areas of disinvestment in Chicago, particularly in low-income African American neighborhoods,
has been justified by the city, state, and federal governments as a necessary means by which to
“sustain the city’s fiscal stability.”355 A combination of sustained disinvestment in Chicago
public housing and urban renewal policies designed to physically isolate and concentrate public
housing into black “ghettos” throughout the second half of the twentieth century created an
environment that left the residents of Wentworth Gardens particularly vulnerable as a target for
stadium-driven urban renewal after the alternative locations for a new White Sox stadium had

352

Ibid., 132.
Feldman and Stall, Dignity of Resistance, 64.
354
Biles, Richard J. Daley; Von Hoffman, House by House, Block by Block; Rast, Remaking Chicago; Hunt,
Blueprint for Disaster; Feldman and Stall, Dignity of Resistance; Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto; Wille, At Home
in the Loop; John F. Bauman, Roger Biles, and Kristin M. Szylvian, eds., From Tenements to the Robert Taylor
Homes: In Search of an Urban Housing Policy in Twentieth Century America (University Park: Pennsylvania State
University Press, 2000); Fogelson, Downtown; Sugrue, Origins of the Urban Crisis; Squires et al., Race, Class and
the Response to Urban Decline.
355
Feldman and Stall, Dignity of Resistance, 39; see also Hirsch, The Making of the Second Ghetto and Biles,
Richard J. Daley. As each of these books demonstrates, Chicago’s urban renewal legislation from the 1940s
provided a framework for future post–World War II federal urban renewal and housing legislation.
353

130

been ruled out.356 Following a lasting precedent in Chicago’s developmental history, it would be
a collection of women activists that would mobilize against city officials and powerful
commercial interests to defend their homes and fight for better living conditions in their
community.
Mechanisms of Entrenchment: Disinvestment and Isolation
Wentworth Gardens was originally intended to serve as housing for black employees
working in jobs to support the war effort, but it was converted to low-rent housing when it was
completed in 1947. The low-rise housing development was constructed on a superblock on the
southern edge of Armour Square, just to the northwest of Chicago’s Black Belt. In stark contrast
to the high-rise Robert Taylor homes (a public housing project) built later on the eastern side of
the Dan Ryan Expressway, Wentworth Gardens was intended to be a “discrete,” residential
development whose goal was to restore small “community sociability” and “moral character,”357
sharing many of the design characteristics first introduced by the British Garden City model and
that later influenced the City Beautiful movement and the lakefront designs in Daniel Burnham’s
1909 Plan for Chicago.358 In the first years of its existence, Wentworth Gardens was viewed as
the “best housing in the [predominantly black occupied, public housing] community,” 359 much
in the way Dearborn Park would later viewed by its predominantly white, middle- to upper-class
residents.
Many African Americans in search of housing during Wentworth’s first years preferred it
over other public housing developments because “it was attractive, well maintained, and
beautifully landscaped and in a convenient location . . . accessible to mass transit, schools, and
356

Euchner, Playing the Field, 141.
Feldman and Stall, Dignity of Resistance, 35–36.
358
Ibid., 36; Bachin, Building the South Side, 169.
359
Feldman and Stall, Dignity of Resistance, 72.
357

131

medical facilities.”360 Similar to the experiences of the first residents of Dearborn Park, older
activists at Wentworth Gardens generally agreed “that in the past, Wentworth was a well
maintained development with well cared for buildings and grounds, attentive management, strict
policies regarding acceptable tenant behavior, friendly and helpful neighbors, and little crime.”361
Wentworth residents also benefited from a thriving shopping district until it was destroyed, first
by the construction of the Dan Ryan Expressway in 1967, and later when remaining stores were
demolished to make room for a senior citizen center.362 In cities all over the country during the
late 1950s and 1960s, “massive amounts of urban housing were destroyed” to make room for
federally funded expressways that highway builders used as a “means of clearing ‘blighted’
urban areas.”363 The loss of the shopping district added to the problems of growing
unemployment due to the loss of manufacturing jobs as many manufacturers chose, or were
forced by city-directed zoning changes, to leave the central area of the city.364
Joel Rast writes, “In the decades following World War II . . . advances in transportation
and communications encouraged certain Chicago manufacturers to relocate to outlying portions
of the metropolitan area. . . . By 1970 . . . the central area contained just 15 percent of the
Chicago metropolitan area’s total manufacturing employment.”365 Bad management by the CHA
also led to increasingly poor responses to residents’ needs as well as a failure to properly screen
new residents. Compounded by the steady withdrawal of funding for subsidized housing by both

360

Ibid., 74–75.
Feldman and Stall, Dignity of Resistance, 75.
362
Euchner, Playing the Field, 152.
363
Mohl, “Planned Destruction,” 227; Von Hoffman, House by House, Block by Block, 116; Biles, Richard J. Daley,
90.
364
Rast, Remaking Chicago.
365
Ibid., 50.
361

132

the federal and local governments, these factors led to the steady deterioration of the city’s public
housing developments located throughout Chicago’s “second ghetto.”366
Chicago’s sprawling ghettos on the South and West Sides were given institutional
permanence due to constitutive choices made primarily during the 1950s by city, state, and
federal government officials. Beginning with Mayor Martin Kennelly’s administration (1947–
1955), the public housing policy was centralized and controlled by the city council. Kennelly and
the city council then used postwar federal funding “to tear down slums and to erect public
housing within the black ghetto.”367 Public housing was later used by Mayor Richard J. Daley to
form a second isolated ghetto on the West Side as a means for containing (and controlling) the
thousands of African Americans who fled there when their homes were destroyed by slum
clearance in the Black Belt.368 Constitutive choices made at all levels of government, then,
created a mechanism of entrenchment that institutionalized the racialized segregation and
physical isolation of Chicago’s public housing. All of these things—racialized public housing,
the loss of employment and shopping districts, the construction of physical barriers like the
expressways to isolate the segregated poor—were due to those decisions and formed lasting
institutional precedents that directly impacted the decision to build the new Comiskey Park in
South Armour Square.
Wentworth did not experience the dramatic rise in violent crime often associated with the
high-rise developments such as the Robert Taylor Homes, but there was an increase in drug
activity and steady physical deterioration despite the best efforts of the women activists in these
366

Feldman and Stall, Dignity of Resistance, 49; Roger Biles, “Public Housing and the Postwar Urban Renaissance,
1949–1973,” in From Tenements to the Robert Taylor Homes: In Search of an Urban Housing Policy in Twentieth
Century America, ed. John F. Bauman, Roger Biles, and Kristin M. Szylvian (University Park: Pennsylvania State
University Press, 2000), 159. See also D. Bradford Hunt, Blueprint for Disaster; Hirsch, The Making of the Second
Ghetto; Biles, Richard J. Daley.
367
Biles, Richard J. Daley, 87. See also, Hirsch, The Making of the Second Ghetto; Hunt.
368
Ibid., 91. See also, Hirsch, The Making of the Second Ghetto; Hunt, Blueprint for Disaster.

133

tight-knit “community households.”369 Wentworth activists have “established a network of social
exchange through the people they assist, who, in turn, provide assistance to them in times of
need.”370 The foundation of this reciprocal trust was based on the efforts of women activists who
“extend[ed] the boundaries of their immediate families to include the community household and
the residents of the larger Wentworth development.”371 Moreover, these activists had won some
significant battles, including the establishment of the Local Advisory Council in 1971, the
necessary space and funds to open and operate an onsite laundromat (1968) and convenience
store (1973), and funding for a new roof for their field house (1986).372 But women-centered
activism built on the strength of community households proved insufficient against the White
Sox and the coercive powers of the state.
But by the time of the stadium issue in 1986, Wentworth Gardens had been reduced to an
impoverished African American community headed predominantly by single mothers. The
construction of the Dan Ryan Expressway and postwar deindustrialization had eliminated local
commerce and employment. Public housing income regulations also made it difficult to sustain
two-parent households.373 To make matters worse, there had been a long history of racial
violence between blacks in South Armour Square and their white neighbors to the north of the

369

Chap. 4 of Feldman and Stall’s Dignity of Resistance contains a fuller examination of the “community
households” that characterize lower income African American communities. The basic premise is that over time, the
women living in these communities expanded “traditional roles in the work of kinship and, when focused on
children, mothering” to develop a broader sense of “community kinship.” Feldman and Stall argue that the work of
community “othermothering,” embracing the maternal responsibility to care for other children in the community,
and the work of community kinship “are grounded in an ethic of care and provide an important foundation for
Wentworth women’s community activism. (95)
370
Feldman and Stall, Dignity of Resistance, 103.
371
Ibid., 100.
372
Ibid., 119, 182–83.
373
Ibid., 39.

134

stadium.374 Feldman and Stall identified the central reasons for the neighborhood’s postwar
decline:
The unequal distribution of economic prosperity has produced increased
economic isolation and social distress among poor people in poor communities.
Economic deprivation, toxic political representation, exploitative institutions, and
austere social conditions are the forces that work against decent housing and
sustainable development for the residents of Chicago’s public housing.375
When the White Sox had finally run out of other options and announced that they were going to
demolish the northern portion of the development to make room for their stadium, Wentworth
Gardens residents had no leverage whatsoever in the fight.
Despite the fact that building the stadium in the South Loop would have required no
residential displacement, the residents living in Dearborn Park, Printers Row, and River City,
with help from the Chicago Bears, successfully killed that proposal. They were able to do this
first, because they represented the type of resident taxpayer that both city officials and downtown
commercial leaders coveted, and second, because the stadium threatened further development,
particularly Dearborn Park’s as yet to be built second phase. Conversely, even after putting
together a broader base of resistance in the form of the South Armour Square Neighborhood
Coalition (SASNC), residents of Wentworth Gardens had homes and small businesses destroyed
while receiving little in the form of compensation. Constitutive choices made years before—the
prioritization of commerce over community in downtown development, land use changes that
contributed to the loss of manufacturing jobs, and the intentional segregation and physical
separation of minority public housing—all played significant roles in determining where the new
Comiskey Park would be built. As had been the case so often in Chicago’s downtown
development history, the efforts of Wentworth’s women activists to protect their community fell
374

Hunt, Blueprint for Disaster; Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto; Biles, Richard J. Daley; Feldman and Stall,
Dignity of Resistance.
375
Feldman and Stall, Dignity of Resistance, xiii.

135

short when the ISFA succeeded in breaking their coalition by offering sweeter compensation and
relocation deals to South Armour Square homeowners.376 Some have suggested that had the
women activists of Wentworth Gardens been able to maintain that coalition, they might have
succeeded in defeating the stadium proposal.377 But opposition to the deal was further weakened
when the White Sox agreed to build new homes for displaced homeowners in the Gap, a
neighborhood between the Illinois Institute of Technology, Michael Reese Hospital, and the
Lake Meadows apartment complex undergoing gentrification at the time.378
There was one alternative proposal for building a stadium in South Armour Square that
would have avoided the destruction of the northern portion of Wentworth Gardens. Architect
Philip Bess designed a much smaller, traditional urban ballpark that would have been constructed
on the site of Armour Square Park, directly to the north of the original Comiskey Park.
According to Spirou and Bennett in It’s Hardly Sportin’, “Critical to Bess’s thinking about the
new White Sox ballpark was the connection between the sports facility and nearby structures,
which drove his view of how the urban ballpark could become a stimulus for associated
economic development opportunities.”379 Bess’s proposal fell on deaf ears, however, for two
primary reasons. First, his stadium plan would have eliminated Armour Square Park, which had
traditionally served the white residents of Bridgeport as a source of civic pride and as a buffer of
territorial protection against African Americans to the south of the stadium. Even if city officials
were not faced with an artificially accelerated timetable controlled by the White Sox, it is
unlikely that they would have wanted to take on residents of Bridgeport who had long tradition
of political influence stretching back to the Daley years at mid-century. Second, the White Sox

376

Ibid., 240.
Euchner, Playing the Field, 159.
378
Von Hoffman, House by House, Block by Block, 127.
379
Spirou and Bennett, It’s Hardly Sportin’, 96.
377

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had already decided to build a suburban-style stadium modeled after the Kansas City Royals
ballpark.380 This was another missed opportunity to approach the stadium issue as part of a
broader neighborhood development, but again, city officials were operating from a defensive
standpoint on stadium development from the start, which severely limited their ability to explore
such opportunities.
In the end, the White Sox got their suburban-style stadium and fan base, city and state
politicians could claim that they had “saved the Sox,” and downtown business leaders had
secured the continued development of their South Loop middle- to upper-class real estate buffer.
The residents of Wentworth Gardens, however, found themselves further isolated, both
politically and physically, from the rest of the city. Rather than simply serving as an example of
the immense exploitative power of Major League Baseball’s monopoly status, the construction
of the new Comiskey Park in South Armour Square was tied directly to institutional precedents
in downtown development, formed and strengthened by Chicago’s political and civic elites
throughout the twentieth century.
Conclusions
Municipal investment typically goes to those who already have substantial resources.
City politicians favor investors that offer the best symbolic value for their political success (like
baseball teams), those that promise to lure middle-class workers and clientele (like Dearborn
Park), and most importantly, those that contribute to their re-election coffers. Commercial
investors also desire development projects free of perceived threats to their investment. A
community of low-income African Americans, for example, has historically been viewed as an
undesirable location for development due to fears that the community of minorities will bring
380

Euchner, Playing the Field, 158.

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down property values and scare customers away.381 Chicago continually struggled to develop
sustainable public housing because city officials were entrenched in developmental policy that
almost exclusively favors large-scale projects. But a policy that attempts to concentrate the city’s
African American population into large “projects” also creates areas that traditional urban
commercial developers view as too risky for investment. By creating these “commercial
investment deserts,” the city isolates the “risks” to property value into smaller sections away
from the city’s commercial core. A community cannot be sustained without local access to
quality employment and food.
By the time the White Sox built their new stadium in Chicago’s South Armour Square,
US cities had long been using “slum clearance” and gentrification urban renewal policies.382
Politically, those policies were accepted by white middle-class majorities who saw the
dilapidated housing projects and Ronald Reagan’s “welfare queens” as blemishes to be removed.
But as recent scholarship (cited above) has shown, the deteriorating conditions of urban public
housing was a long and contested process, at times, involving politically disenfranchised
whites.383 The white majority in the United States has a long history of demonizing racial and
ethnic “others” to suit their own desire for progress or profit. More often than not, white males
conflated the two, defining progress exclusively by profit. Chicago in particular, following the
fire of 1871, chose to rebuild itself as the profitable city at the expense of women’s efforts to
build a livable city.384 And so it should come as no surprise that the construction of the new
Comiskey Park should pit wealthy white male corporate ownership seeking to maximize

381

Fogelson, Downtown.
Gillette Jr., Camden After the Fall; Teaford, Rough Road to Renaissance; Biles, Richard J. Daley; Sugrue,
Origins of the Urban Crisis; Hunt, Blueprint for Disaster; Hirsch, Making the Second Ghetto; Squires et al., Race,
Class and the Response to Urban Decline.
383
Von Hoffman, House by House, Block by Block.
384
Flanagan, Seeing with Their Hearts.
382

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individual profit against the African American women fighting to save what remained of their
homes, neighborhood, and community. The same gendered contest between the profitable city
and livable city still exists in Chicago today. The “quick take” powers of eminent domain
necessary for urban redevelopment projects of the magnitude of a new stadium are more easily
defended and enacted when the target area is home to culturally demonized minorities living in
poverty with little political representation.
Due in part to the cultural significance of professional sports and to the limitations of the
information offered to the public by the press (which is often working in concert with the
professional team), the primarily white middle-class, often suburban, fans of the team do not see
the social problems inherent in urban renewal programs. The politicians behind the programs do,
in fact, see the social problems as they truly exist, but they fail to address them because the
solutions are often politically infeasible. After all, the poor community about to be displaced by
urban “renewal” has no political power to make politicians accountable for such negligence. But
should the team decide to leave for another state, the threat that the white middle-class political
majority will make their politicians pay for losing their team, their “major league” status, is very
real. Even when the facts show that a stadium deal almost never provides the host city with
tangible economic benefits, politicians must give in to the monopoly of Major League Baseball,
the institution holding all of the cultural capital as well as control of the media. Working from a
defensive position from the very start, Chicago politicians had little hope of incorporating the
stadium into a broader development plan that might have proved to be a better long-term
investment for both the city and the residents living near the stadium. As a result, they were
limited to working within the confines of an urban redevelopment policy of institutionalized
precedent, codified by the constitutive policy choices made by civic leaders working in vastly

139

different cultural and economic times. The combination of all of these factors ultimately forced
even politicians with community-minded initiatives, like Chicago’s Mayor Harold Washington,
to displace some of the very people who helped get him elected.

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CHAPTER 3
Little Caesar Brings the Coliseums to Detroit
Stadiums can be the jewel. . . . This is going to be the centerpiece of a revival that
stretches from the freeways that border this [stadium district], all the way back to
Grand River and all the way down to Grand Circus Park.385
In a piece written early in the summer of 1985 about what it was like to experience a
game at Tiger Stadium, a “real ballpark, like Fenway and Wrigley,” Hall of Fame baseball writer
Peter Gammons wrote two sentences that became a self-fulfilling prophesy signaling the ultimate
demise of the grand old stadium. Caught up in the historical romance often peddled by
sportswriters when two storied franchises like Boston and Detroit meet, Gammons wrote: “It’s
fun here because the Tigers are at the heart of the comeback of the downtown of one of
America’s great cities, the way the ’75 Red Sox and the ’79 Orioles coincidentally were vital to
their cities’ revivals. Because it is a lifestyle unto itself, baseball is the only sport that qualifies as
an urban renewal project.”386 Of course, neither the Boston revival of 1975 nor the Baltimore
revival of 1979 had anything to do with the construction of a new stadium. The kind of urban
renewal that Gammons was describing was the emotional exuberance that tends to grow in sports
chat rooms and the blogosphere when a community of fans is excited about their team’s
competitive success. There was likely little of this brand of urban renewal taking place, for
example, in Miami when the Marlins completely dismantled their high-payroll club “one year
removed from opening up a brand-new stadium that cost the taxpayers upwards of $350
million.”387 Gammons did not know that he was writing just prior to a remarkable new stadium

385

Mike Ilitch quoted in Drew Sharp, “Ilitch’s Legacy Is on the Line with New Comerica Park,” Detroit Free Press,
May 28, 1999.
386
Peter Gammons, “ON BASEBALL; They’re Big Wheels in Motown,” Boston Globe (Pre–1997 Fulltext), June 5,
1984.
387
Ron Juckett, “Why Jeffery Loria’s 2012 Fire Sale Is the Lowest Moment in Miami Marlins History, Bleacher
Report, November 13, 2012.

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boom that would sweep across “Major League Cities” over the next two decades and ultimately
claim historically loved stadiums not only in Baltimore and Detroit, but also in major cities like
Chicago and New York.388 But there was something to Gammons’s claims about the power of
baseball in Detroit, and the Tigers would, in fact, become the centerpiece of yet another attempt
to rejuvenate the heart of downtown.
In Detroit They Call It “Urban Crisis”
Following World War II, like many industrial cities across the United States such as
Chicago, Cleveland, and Pittsburgh, Detroit saw increasing white flight and decreasing tax bases
as corporations moved their manufacturing operations to locations that offered cheaper labor
costs and lower taxes. Detroit has found it particularly difficult to recover, however, because so
much of its economy and labor force depended heavily on the automobile industry. But there is
another, and not unrelated, reason why the city of Detroit has been unable to rebuild itself despite
multiple attempts and billions of dollars in federal, state, municipal, and private investments.
Perhaps more than any other major northern city, Detroit has failed to substantively and
effectively deal with problems stemming from years of racial segregation and discrimination.
The tensions caused by political, economic, and residential discrimination boiled over in the
1967 race riots that served to exacerbate racial animosity and speed up the process of white flight.
Moreover, the incredible physical destruction and social disintegration left in the wake of the
uprising gave politicians, journalists, and suburbanites a very tangible, and lasting, scapegoat for
the problems that continued to plague the city in the following decades. As Kevin Boyle stated in
388

Historic Fenway Park in Boston still stands, along with Wrigley Field in Chicago, because of ownership groups
that ultimately found more value in restoring their classic landmark stadiums. They were the only two franchises to
seriously consider, let alone go forward with, the renovation of their old ballparks rather than constructing a new
stadium altogether. Fenway implemented renovations over the course of a decade between 2002 and 2011. At the
time of this writing, renovation plans for Wrigley Field in Chicago have been held up due to stalled legal
negotiations with rooftop owners concerned about how obstructed views created by additional signage planned for
the outfield will affect their business.

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his historiographical article on Detroit’s urban crisis: “Many residents of the Detroit metropolitan
area would be surprised to hear that historians date Detroit’s decline to the years immediately
after World War II. White Detroiters, in particular, have fashioned a different story of the
postwar era.”389 Despite residents’ continued tendency to blame the city’s problems on what they
perceived as black-instigated riots and the inadequacies and prejudices of Detroit’s first black
mayor, the historical evidence demonstrates that the urban crisis began well before the 1967 riots
due almost entirely to the actions of whites.
The historical revision of Detroit’s urban decline began in the 1980s when labor
historians “fashioned a devastating critique of the United Automobile Workers.”390 According to
the updated historical consensus, when the organization began in the 1930s, “its leaders and
shop-floor activists were willing to challenge corporate power at the bargaining table, in national
politics, and at the point of production.” In the following decade, however, “the UAW’s leaders
retreated from the union’s progressive agenda” and ultimately reached an accord with Detroit’s
automakers—the “Treaty of Detroit”—that “set the pattern for labor relations for the next three
decades.” While UAW workers secured higher wages than most industrial workers, their
389

Kevin Boyle, “The Ruins of Detroit: Exploring the Urban Crisis in the Motor City,” Michigan Historical Review,
27, no. 1 (2001): 110.
390
Ibid., 111. Examples of the historical literature on labor from the 1980s include: Kevin Boyle, The UAW and the
Heyday of American Liberalism, 1945–1968, (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 1995); John Barnard, Walter Reuther
and the Rise of the Auto Workers (Boston: Little, Brown, 1983); Dudley W. Buffa, Union Power and American
Democracy: The UAW and the Democratic Party, 1935–1972 (Ann Arbor: University of Michigan Press, 1984); Joe
T. Darden et al. Detroit: Race and Uneven Development (Philadelphia: Temple University Press, 1987); Richard
Feldman and Michael Betzold, eds., End of the Line: Autoworkers and the American Dream (New York:
Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 1988); David Gartman, Auto Slavery: The Labor Process in the Automobile Industry of the
United States, 1897–1950 (New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 1986); Martin Glaberman, Wartime Strikes:
The Struggle against the No-Strike Pledge in the UAW during World War II (Detroit: Bewick, 1980); Charles Harry
Katz, Shifting Gears: Changing Labor Relations in the U.S. Automobile Industry (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press,
1985); Nelson Lichtenstein and Stephen Meyer, On the Line: Essays in the History of Auto Work (Urbana:
University of Illinois Press, 1989). It should be noted that there were scholarly works prior to the 1980s that
addressed the problems of UAW. One particularly good example is: Dan Georgakas and Marvin Surkin, Detroit: I
Do Mind Dying: A Study in Urban Revolution (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1975). An updated version was
published in 1998 by the South End Press in Cambridge, Massachusetts. Detroit: I Do Mind Dying covers the
radicalization of Detroit’s black auto workers and the formation of radical labor organizations, in particular, the
Dodge Revolutionary Union Movement (DRUM).

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leadership surrendered the workers’ rights regarding labor’s input on the automakers’ business
decisions and the conditions for work within the plants. 391 The autoworkers’ victories in
compensation proved shortsighted, however, as work conditions grew increasingly dangerous
and stressful due to increased production demands. More importantly, the decision to concede
worker input for business decisions ultimately left workers powerless when the autoworkers
moved to undercut workers’ wage gains by relocating plants away from Detroit to places where
labor and land were cheaper. African American workers suffered disproportionately as a result of
these changes and their interconnectedness to other issues like discriminatory housing.
As Thomas J. Sugrue convincingly demonstrated in The Origins of the Urban Crisis, race
and inequality were inseparable in postwar Detroit and reached into all areas of African
American life. As waves of African Americans migrated north during the war to escape the harsh
realities of the Jim Crow South, they poured into industrial cities like Detroit where
manufacturing jobs in support of the war effort were abundant. But when the migrants reached
Detroit, they found both a housing shortage of incredible proportions as well as fewer
opportunities to work than they had expected. As Sugrue explained, a number of factors led to
uneven hiring practices from plant to plant where, should blacks be lucky enough to find work, it
was often dangerous and demeaning work.392 In some locations, plant leaders would avoid hiring
blacks in an effort to maintain worker morale and avoid racially motivated hate strikes by white
workers. African Americans were routinely passed over for promotions both within the factories
and within UAW leadership. Discrimination at the hiring gate kept blacks working primarily in
unskilled labor which lacked stability and any hope for social mobility.393 This left them
particularly vulnerable as postwar highway construction and advancements in communication
391

Ibid., 111; Sugrue, Origins of the Urban Crisis, 95.
Sugrue, Origins of the Urban Crisis, 99.
393
Ibid., 100–101.
392

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led to capital mobility and the deindustrialization of cities.394 The lack of steady employment for
the vast majority of Detroit’s growing African American population, combined with federally
sanctioned discrimination in the city’s housing market, forced blacks to live in the overcrowded
inner city which was facing a crisis of disinvestment as well.
African Americans (as well as thousands of whites) migrated to find work in Detroit’s
great industrial Arsenal of Democracy, but the city’s racial tensions and discrimination have a
long history tied to both employment and housing. Before the summer of 1967, the city
experienced serious race riots in 1833, 1863, and 1943; both the 1863 and 1943 riots were
instigated by whites fearful of losing jobs to increasing numbers of blacks.395 Henry Ford used
black workers to break strikes, which led to another racial clash when 800 black workers at
Ford’s Rouge plant “put up a physical fight against the UAW during its final organizing drive in
April 1941.”396 Detroit maintained a strong, and publicly open Ku Klux Klan presence
throughout the 1920s and 1930s as evidenced on July 11, 1925, when “10,000 people cheered on
KKK delegates as they flayed at ‘Catholics, Jews, and Niggers.’”397 This overt racism was
regularly on display as mobs of angry whites routinely attacked and terrorized African
Americans who dared to move into white neighborhoods. This violence and intimidation was
reinforced by racially discriminatory practices in federal housing and lending policies, in the
private real estate market, and in home owners/neighborhood association covenants.398 The harsh
reality of Detroit’s state-sanctioned segregation isolated African Americans in the center of the

394

Ibid., 127.
Sugrue, Origins of the Urban Crisis, 29; Georgakas and Surkin, Detroit: I Do Mind Dying, 153–55.
396
Georgakas and Surkin, Detroit: I Do Mind Dying, 154.
397
Ibid., 153.
398
Sugrue, Origins of the Urban Crisis; Heather Ann Thompson. Whose Detroit? Politics, Labor, and Race in a
Modern American City (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2001); Reynolds Farley, Sheldon Danziger, and Harry J.
Holzer, Detroit Divided: A Volume in the Multi-City Study of Urban Inequality (New York: Russell Sage
Foundation, 2000); Darden et al., Detroit: Race and Uneven Development; June Manning Thomas. Redevelopment
and Race: Planning a Finer City in Postwar Detroit (Baltimore: The Johns Hopkins University Press, 1997).
395

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city, despite massive overcrowding and rapidly deteriorating housing conditions. Inflated rents
due to the scarcity of options for African Americans in the ongoing housing crisis left blacks
with few resources to maintain their homes. In conjunction with the forces of white and capital
flight, this led to overwhelming disinvestment and decreasing tax revenues which left the city
full of poor African Americans and increasingly abandoned buildings.
Like many cities in the American Rust Belt, in the years following World War II, Detroit
began to tap into federal funding in an attempt to bring about urban renewal. While some cities,
such as Chicago, attempted to utilize public housing to maintain residential segregation, in the
1950s the Albert Cobo administration largely put an end to public housing in Detroit.399 Prior to
the Cobo administration, public housing developments were built near industrial areas where
whites received priority access. At one of those developments, the Sojourner Truth homes
(located near the city’s northern boundary and designated for whites only), the inclusion of
blacks in 1942 sparked a violent reaction by area whites which “proved to be only the first . . . of
what would become more serious racial clashes, including the 1943 riot.”400 In 1943, the Detroit
housing commission adopted the segregationist policy devised by director Josephine Gomon:
“No housing project shall change the racial characteristics of a neighborhood.”401 When
conservative Albert Cobo first took office in 1950 as mayor, he “vetoed eight of the twelve
proposed public housing sites, all but one in the outlying, predominantly white sections of the
city.”402 With the support of the private sector, Cobo all but squashed public housing in favor of
a housing policy that favored the construction of single-family homes sold in the private market.
Backed by a segregated public housing policy, segregated federal housing policies, and a white

399

Sugrue, Origins of the Urban Crisis, 84-87.
Thomas. Redevelopment and Race, 24.
401
Ibid., 25.
402
Sugure, Origins of the Urban Crisis, 85.
400

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middle-class political base, Detroit officials left the question of housing largely to the private
sector and turned their attention towards larger urban renewal projects “including the proposed
Civic Center, Medical Center, and a middle-income apartment project, all in the predominantly
black inner city.”403 Of course, that further exacerbated the scarcity of housing for African
Americans who had no legitimate recourse to find new housing in a segregated private real estate
market. As Sugrue has noted and other have echoed: “As late as the early 1960s, four public
housing projects were virtually all-white, with token black residents, and two projects were allblack.”404
In many ways the story of Detroit’s postwar decline and subsequent efforts towards urban
renewal aligns with the experiences of other postindustrial northern cities like Chicago. But
Detroit’s experience was also unique from that of other cities in a few important ways. First, the
strength of Detroit’s industrial economy was tied almost exclusively to the auto industry.
Maintaining prosperity for the city’s (predominantly white) manufacturing middle-class
homeowners was totally dependent on a thriving, locally built, auto industry. Second, members
of Detroit’s middle class were only homeowners because of the high wages secured with their
concessions in the “Treaty of Detroit.” Third, while many cities have failed to address the needs
of African Americans trapped in poverty by economic and residential discrimination, the
thousands of blacks displaced by the promise of urban renewal and slum clearance in Detroit had
nowhere to go. In Chicago, when African Americans were displaced by urban renewal, they
often ended up in public housing developments built to maintain segregation. Detroit’s displaced
African Americans were left to find whatever they could in the already overcrowded black
section in the city’s center. All three of these aspects were once regarded as a sign of Detroit’s

403
404

Ibid., 85.
Ibid., 87; Thomas, Redevelopment and Race, 98–102.

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current and future success. Ultimately, these three signs of Detroit’s greatness were at the heart
of the city’s collapse.
When technological advances made it possible, the automakers began leaving the city,
relocating manufacturing operations to locations that provided cheaper land and labor. Thanks to
the “Treaty of Detroit,” the city’s middle-class workers could do nothing as their jobs moved to
the suburbs, the South, and the West. The employment rate and the city’s economy took a dive as
the automobile companies left the city. Antidiscrimination legislation in the early 1960s initiated
the slow process to desegregate Detroit’s residential patterns, and as whites left for the suburbs,
African Americans began to fill in what were formerly all-white neighborhoods, which then
instigated further white flight. If we refer to the 1967 riot as a “rebellion”—a conscious effort to
affect change in Detroit’s political balance of power—as some do, then it proved to be a hollow
victory for African Americans.405 In just twenty-two years, between 1949 and 1971, Detroit
spent over $290 million of combined federal and municipal funds on 27 renewal projects that
displaced thousands of African Americans.406 Seven short years after the riot, Detroit elected
their first black mayor, Coleman Young, who fired up African Americans with charismatic
appeals for racial equality and cooperation between city and suburbs. Coleman Young’s legacy,
however, would be highlighted by more of the same: big flashy development projects in the
downtown area.
During the Coleman Young administration, the focus for urban renewal planning began
to change. A clear example of this can be seen when Mayor Young’s administration was asked,
“What does the bicentennial have to do with the urban crisis?” The mayor’s office responded:
“Everything. If we can build Detroit as a labor history center and promote it as a tourist
405

Thompson, Whose Detroit?, 85.
Julie Longo, “Remembering the Renaissance City: Detroit’s Bicentennial Homecoming Festival and Urban
Redevelopment,” Michigan Historical Review 32, no. 2 (Fall 2006): 94.
406

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attraction we shall have more jobs. If our streets are filled with people enjoying fairs, exhibits,
and performances, those streets will be safer, and ultimately, to the extent that we are able to
involve all segments of our community, the bicentennial can help build bridges in a polarized
City.”407 Young was forced to get creative in his efforts to rebuild the city’s economy just as he
was beginning his tenure as mayor. In his first two years in office, “at least twenty-three major
employers had moved their manufacturing businesses south, taking 150,000 Michigan jobs with
them.”408 As such, Young had no choice but to turn to the private sector for help.
Driven by analysis and direction provided by Detroit Renaissance Incorporated, a prodevelopment non-profit organization created by members of Detroit’s business elite such as
Henry Ford II and local financier Max Fisher, the city’s urban renewal efforts focused on “large,
attractive corporate and entertainment complexes that would attract black and white suburbanites
with money back to the city.”409 But efforts to lure suburban (primarily white) residents back to
the city proved elusive. Given the teeming animosity that characterized racial relations in Detroit
for decades, it is not surprising that some cited Young’s “flamboyant rhetoric” and “reverse
discrimination” policies (like the hiring of eight hundred minority policemen) as the true culprits
behind white flight.410 And so, as has long been the case, Detroit-area and suburban whites once
again blamed the African Americans for the decline of the city. Ironically, it was under Young’s
watch that the city began to plan for a new stadium for the beloved Tigers, a stadium that would
ultimately cater to and serve his harshest critics—suburban whites.

407

Ibid. 89, emphasis mine.
Marietta L. Baba, Urban Redevelopment in Detroit: The “Renaissance Center” Model of Private Investment and
the Problems of Unemployment (Detroit: Center for Urban Studies, Wayne State University, 1978), 8.
409
Ibid., 90, 95.
410
Ibid., 97.
408

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Keeping Up with the Joneses
Within the context of postwar urban stadium development deals, the Tigers’ deal with
Detroit and the state of Michigan was remarkably equitable; in fact, with public money covering
just 38 pecent of total project costs, it was a steal.411 By comparison in 1995, city officials in
Denver agreed to foot 78 percent of the total cost to build Coors Field for the Rockies. Ironically,
stadium boosters sent Detroit mayor, Dennis Archer, articles and letters about Denver as positive
evidence for building a new ballpark for the Tigers. But stadium deals are complex, constantly
changing endeavors that involve many moving parts and would-be controlling agents. On a
larger scale, the same can be said for the ongoing (re)development of the city of Detroit. Unlike
Chicago and Los Angeles, Detroit’s deal with the Tigers ultimately had little to do with the threat
of relocation. The team seriously considered relocating to the suburbs during Tom Monaghan’s
tenure as owner, but those threats largely subsided after the team was sold to Mike Ilitch in
1992.412 Mayor Archer was cognizant of that potential threat in stadium negotiations, but Detroit
was a city long scrambling for a way to survive, for a lasting identity, for anything that might
restore some civic pride. Moreover, in light of the high demands presented from the outset by the
previous Tigers regime, the dissention (primarily from fan organizations such as the Tiger
Stadium Fan Club) ultimately proved no match for the Archer administration and its county- and
state-level allies who found Ilitch’s plan a relative “bargain” by comparison.413

411

“Comerica Park,” Ballparks.com,updated April 2005; Dave Wright, “Comerica Park/Detroit Tigers,”
ballparkdigest.com, November 29, 2008..
412
Ilitch did mention the suburbs as a possibility early in the process, but that was largely political theater. He had
been consolidating real estate in the theater district around his Fox Theatre and the city had already proposed that
location as a potential site for a new stadium.
413
The “Tiger Stadium Fan Club,” like “Save Our Sox” in Chicago (another organization dedicated to saving their
original old historic stadium), mounted sustained resistance to the new stadium, but it was only briefly considered a
real threat to completing the new stadium. When the Save Our Sox effort ultimately ended with the passage of
stadium legislation in the summer of 1988, they donated the remaining $200 of their funds to the Tiger Stadium Fan
Club, “and wished them luck in their efforts.” See Paul Sullivan, “Sox Were Saved, But Not Comiskey,” Chicago
Tribune, October 1, 1990.

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The quest to build a new Tiger Stadium began in the mid-1980s as then owner, Tom
Monaghan (founder of Domino’s Pizza), began to see the windfall profits other owners in the
league were making due to new stadium deals. On the first anniversary of Monaghan’s purchase
of the Tigers, he claimed that “business had nothing to do with it,” stating that owning the team
was something he wanted to do for his whole life. He continued, saying, “I don’t care what the
return is. If I have to sell more pizzas to pay for it, I would.”414 Monaghan paid a record $53
million dollars for the Tigers franchise in 1983 and represented a new brand of ultra-rich sports
ownership. A New York Times article from November 1985 reported that in “three of the last
four years, both the World Series and the Super Bowl have been won by teams connected to
someone among the 400 richest people in America, as listed by Forbes magazine.” The article’s
writer, Dave Anderson, presciently suggested that “in an era of spiraling salaries for the best
athletes, perhaps it’s a sign that an owner must be rich to get richer.” Citing Monaghan
specifically, Anderson wrote that “the 1984 World Series was won by the Detroit Tigers, owned
by Tom Monaghan, a pizza potentate worth at least $250 million; the 1982 Series was won and
this year’s Series was lost by the St. Louis Cardinals, owned by August Busch Jr., the Budweiser
breumeister worth at least $575 million.”415 Despite their seemingly flush pocketbooks, however,
the wealthy owners of Major League Baseball were once again crying about decreasing revenues
in the press.
There was some legitimacy, however, to the owners’ stated fears about maintaining a
profit in future years given the way player salaries continued to skyrocket in the free agency era.
According to a report produced by the Major League Baseball Players Association, the average
MLB salary in 1983 was $289,194, but by the time Monaghan sold the Tigers to Mike Ilitch in

414
415

Murray Chass, “Baseball’s Tales of Distress,” New York Times, December 2, 1984.
Dave Anderson, “Sports of the Times; In Sports, Rich Get Richer,” New York Times, November 24, 1985.

151

1992 that number had already jumped to $1,028,667.416 Just two years after suggesting that
baseball wasn’t a business and that he would sell more pizza to keep the team afloat if necessary,
Monaghan began to suggest that baseball was in trouble. In January 1986, Monaghan told an
interviewer for the Orlando Sentinel:
I’ve seen some awfully wealthy people have to get out. There isn’t anyone, no
matter how wealthy, who is going to take a $10 million-a-year beating. The
Tigers, traditionally the second-most profitable team in baseball next to the
Dodgers, are projecting big future losses. It just keeps getting worse as you look
at the projections. We show ourselves losing $7.7 million over the next five years.
Now if the Tigers are losing $7.7 million, there’s nobody in baseball making
money with the possible exception of the Dodgers. And if we’re losing $7.7
million, the rest of them are losing $10 million or more. This was based on
drawing 2 million fans a year at Tiger Stadium, and includes national radio and
television money, too.417
When the interviewer followed up by asking what the causes of the financial strain were,
Monaghan replied flatly, “Salary.” It is important to note, however, that sharp rises in average
salary were tied more to a growing trend in outrageous “superstar” contracts.
Clubs were signing a few high-priced free agent superstars, leaving little for other players
on the team. An article on baseball’s changing salary structure pointed out that “in 1994 for
instance, 12 percent of the players accounted for 54 percent of the payrolls.”418 This is not a
trend that was fueled exclusively by the Major League Baseball Players Association either.
During his interview with the Orlando Sentinel, when asked if one individual player was worth
the money to the franchise, Monaghan responded, “If he’s a superstar, yes. But there are few
superstars.”419 Regardless of whether they were to blame or not, baseball’s owners were forced
to find more lucrative sources of income to support the growing “superstar” salary structure.
416

Major League Baseball Players Association, “Average Salaries in Major League Baseball, 1967–2009,” n. d.
PDF.
417
“Monaghan: Biggest Problem is the Owners,” Orlando Sentinel, January 20, 1986.
418
Paul D. Staudohar, “Baseball’s Changing Salary Structure,” Compensation and Working Conditions 2, no. 3 (Fall
1997): 2–9.
419
“Monaghan: Biggest Problem is the Owners.”

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According to an analysis by Andrew Zimbalist, it did not help that “team owners since 1976
have done a singularly unimpressive job of signing top-performing free agents or of paying a
player according to his output.”420 Not only have team owners spent much more on salaries since
then, but according to Zimbalist, “average team salary has been related only tenuously to team
performance.”421 Television and radio deals often generate a large inflow of revenue for
professional sports teams, but they are typically long-term deals that may not meet revenue needs
of a team later in the deal. When media deals are not an option, the surest way to maximize an
investment in a sports team is to build a new stadium with greater revenue-generating modern
amenities.422
When Monaghan began publicly admitting that he was interested in a new stadium, he
echoed the sentiments of many Major League Baseball owners in the market for new stadiums
when he stated, “We really admire the stadium in Kansas City[;] . . . something like that, with
natural grass, would be lovely.”423 Later in the same article, the president of the real estate arm of
Domino’s Pizza further echoed those owners when he claimed that there was “almost no chance
the club would try to finance its own stadium.” At this stage in the process of constructing a new
stadium for the Tigers, the organization was following the lead of the Chicago White Sox, an
organization that also demanded public financing. The owners in Chicago were also heavily
influenced by Kauffman Stadium (then Royals Stadium) in Kansas City. On the tail end of the
wave of multi-purpose, “cookie-cutter” stadiums constructed in cities like Cincinnati, Pittsburgh,
and Philadelphia, baseball owners began looking to the open-air, natural grass, baseball-only

420

Zimbalist, Baseball and Billions, 96.
Ibid., 96.
422
During the 1990s stadium boom, in which the Tigers’ new ballpark was ultimately constructed, modern amenities
included a natural grass playing surface, unobstructed views, modernized clubhouse facilities for the players,
expanded parking access, luxury suites, as well as updated restroom and concessions facilities.
423
“New Stadium in Suburbs Unlikely: Tigers Likely to Stay in Detroit,” Ludington Daily News, January 19, 1988.
421

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facility in Kansas City for inspiration. Unfortunately, owners also coveted the “sea of asphalt”
that surrounded the stadium as well. While that design made sense for the sprawling Truman
Sports Complex that housed stadiums for both the NFL’s Kansas City Chiefs and the Royals, as
the results in Chicago demonstrate, such a design was a poor fit for downtown urban locations.
Nonetheless, by 1991 team president Bo Schembechler argued that the Tigers wanted a stadium
just like the one in Chicago, “with unobstructed sight lines, about 45,000 seats, natural grass,
luxury boxes and expanded concession areas that pump up revenue and attract more-affluent
customers.”424 Furthermore, he “hinted that the club [would] stay . . . if the Tigers and county
officials [could] agree on a plan to provide secure, lighted parking for 12,000 cars with the
revenue going to the Tigers.”425 Much like the process in Chicago, once Monaghan and
Schembechler had their minds set on capturing the additional revenues provided by a new
stadium, alternative plans, such as renovating the old stadium, did not even warrant a response
from the team.
In Chicago, architect Philip Bess designed a more urban-friendly alternative to the new
Comiskey Park called Armour Square Park (see chap. 2). Bess’s design was very much ahead of
its time, and while cities like Cleveland, Denver, and Minnesota ultimately mimicked his
“organically blended into the urban fabric” idea for their new stadiums, the ownership in
Chicago refused to grant Bess an audience. Likewise in Detroit, John and Judy Davids (architects
from Royal Oak contracted by the Tiger Stadium Fan Club) developed a detailed plan to
renovate Tiger Stadium that provided for everything the Tigers were asking for in a new stadium.
Despite the fact that the “Cochrane Plan” was well received both by local and nationally

424

Joseph B. White, “Detroit Facing Suicide Squeeze at Grand Old Tiger Stadium,” Wall Street Journal, April 24,
1991.
425
Rick Haglund, Peter Luke, and Press Bureau Grand Rapids, “New Stadium for Tigers Likely Will Stay in City:
Politics, Funding Would Hinder Any Move to Suburbs,” The Grand Rapids Press, March 24, 1991.

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recognized architects, Tigers officials not only refused to acknowledge the Davids’ work, they
did not even return the Davids’ calls.426 It didn’t even matter that the Davids had redesigned
Monaghan’s private box at Tiger Stadium.427 As was the case in Los Angeles, Chicago, and most
other stadiums constructed over the second half of the twentieth century, the Tigers organization
had little concern for how their new stadium would affect the community around it nor were they
concerned about the many fans that were heartbroken over losing their historic old stadium. As
the Tigers began to struggle on the field towards the end of the 1980s, Monaghan drained the
club of the cash needed to rebuild in order to service the debt (at one point nearly $500 million)
of a pizza empire that was losing increasingly large amounts of money.428
Monaghan owned a team that won the World Series just a year after he bought it. The
team won their division again in 1987 but was soundly defeated in the American League
Championship by the Minnesota Twins (who went on to win the World Series that year). The
Tigers had two other second-place finishes during Monaghan’s tenure, but the pizza baron was
clearly in over his head as a professional sports franchise owner. As the 1980s came to a close,
Monaghan had alienated his fan base, hired University of Michigan football coaching legend Bo
Schembechler as team president, and fired the team’s long-time Hall of Fame broadcaster Ernie
Harwell. Despite repeatedly denying rumors (since as early as 1986) that he was seeking to
relocate to the suburbs, by the end of the decade Detroit fans feared the worst, thanks in no small
part to the boisterous posturing of Schembechler in stadium negotiations.429 As a result, the

426

Bess, City Baseball Magic. For a discussion about the Cochrane Plan, see Cagan and DeMause, Field of
Schemes, 90–94.
427
Patrick Joseph Harrigan, The Detroit Tigers: Club and Community, 1945–1995 (Toronto: University of Toronto
Press, 1997), 268.
428
Gary Gillette, “Tom Monaghan,” SABR Baseball Biography Project, Society for American Baseball Research,
n.d., sabr.org. Web. Accessed Jan 19, 2014.
429
“Monaghan Says Tigers Won’t Move to Suburbs,” Ludington Daily News, May 23, 1986; White, “Detroit Facing
Suicide Squeeze.” Schembechler told “a packed meeting of the Economic Club of Detroit” that “we can’t compete
with that stadium the way it is. . . . It’s unfair for you to think that you can shackle us to a rusted girder in Tiger

155

major Detroit newspapers spent much of 1990 publishing articles that alternately confirmed and
denied rumors of building a new stadium for the Tigers in suburbs such as Dearborn.430 When
Monaghan “trashed the city as crime-infested and a bad baseball town, . . . politicians, the media,
and fans made him a pariah.”431 According to Patrick Joseph Harrigan’s book The Detroit
Tigers: Club and Community, 1945–1995, the “isolation between club and community was never
greater than in Monaghan’s last years . . . nor was the separation of the suburbs from Detroit.”432
That growing isolation ultimately soured negotiations both in Detroit and with suburban leaders
at a time when Monaghan’s other business ventures began to flounder.433
A Different Kind of Legacy
At the zenith of the Tom Monaghan era in Michigan, when his pizza empire and baseball
team were at their competitive peaks, the eccentric mega-millionaire began purchasing and
developing land on Drummond Island, located just off of the southeast tip of Michigan’s Upper
Peninsula. In 1985, Monaghan purchased 288 acres of hunting and fishing real estate on the
island for $350,000.434 He continued buying up land the following year until he ultimately owned
2,000 of the island’s 87,000 total acres, where he built his extravagant $30 million Domino’s
Resort. By 1989 he had also completed the development of his $5 million, 18-hole golf course on
the island, named Pepperoni Links appropriately enough.435 Many island residents initially

Stadium. It’s not going to happen.” Of course the Tigers had won a World Series playing in that stadium and the
team’s lack of competitiveness had more to do with poor ownership.
430
Chauncey Bailey, Tarek Hamada, Don Tschirhart, Fred Girard, Vivian S. Toy, and Jerry Green, “Tigers Deny
Rumor about Move to Dearborn,” Detroit News, July 19, 1990; Joe Falls, “People Leave Detroit; are Tigers Next?”
Detroit News, August 31, 1990; “No Help for New Directions,” Detroit News and Detroit Free Press, December 23,
1990.
431
Harrigan, Detroit Tigers: Club and Community, 6.
432
Ibid., 6.
433
Rebecca Powers, “Suburbs Giving Stadium Cold Shoulder,” Detroit News and Detroit Free Press, February 10,
1991.
434
Bob Campbell, “Marina Blue Print Creates Waves for Baseball Megamillionaire,” Toronto Star, June 12, 1988.
435
Gerry Volgenau, “Drummond Drew Finns, Mormons, Monaghan,” Detroit Free Press, August 18, 2002.

156

welcomed Monaghan’s developments if only, as the Detroit News reported, because “his money
kept the local library open.”436 But not everyone was happy as one resident bitterly exclaimed:
“He has radically changed the tenor of life on the island. . . . He has come into a small
community and taken over.”437 What was previously a small hunting and fishing community
rapidly changed into a hotbed for speculators looking to follow Monaghan’s lead and get in early
on a hot tourist development just across the northern tip of Lake Huron from Michigan’s iconic
Mackinac Island. But Drummond Island community leaders, such as township supervisor Frank
Sasso, opposed the pending invasion by “the walk-and shop-tourist,” arguing that “it’s not what
they came here to live for.”438
Pro-development president of the Drummond Island Chamber of Commerce, Charles
Krahnke, directly profited from the presence of the Domino’s Resort thanks to increased traffic
at his fishing resort located directly across the bay and from his sale of “neighboring James
Island to one of Domino’s land-holding companies.”439 It is not surprising that Krahnke would
publicly defend the impact of the resort. Like many speculative investment booms, few would
realize significant gains on early investment before the contextual reality of the market set it. In
1989, just five years after his initial investment on the island, Domino’s Lodge, the private
retreat that Monaghan had envisioned, had become a “full-scale business venture” that,
according to Domino’s community relations director, Dick Brunvand, was “losing money at a
rapid pace.” Signaling things to come, Brunvand stated, “You have to understand the Domino’s
organization. . . . [T]he point is, we will not continue to lose money here.”440

436

Ibid.
Campbell, “Marina Blue Print.”
438
“Monaghan’s Big Plans for Island Aren’t Going Over with Everyone,” Ludington Daily News, September 14,
1989.
439
Ibid.
440
Ibid.
437

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Lost in the hubris of his resort building to the north, Monaghan began experiencing
troubles with his burgeoning pizza empire as the process of selecting a site for a new stadium
and finding the financing drew on. In 1991, Domino’s was forced to close “about 125
unprofitable stores . . . and [write] off $41 million in bad debt.” In addition, sales were down by
nearly $1 billion from the previous year.441 According to Monaghan, one night during that period
he “laid awake thinking about what a ‘bad’ person he was” and decided that he had fallen to the
sin of pride.442 The lifelong Catholic rededicated himself to “God, family and Pizza” and began
selling off assets and restructuring Domino’s debt. By 1992, Monaghan had sold his interests on
Drummond Island, including the Domino’s Resort and the golf club, “to a group of islanders for
10 cents on the dollar.”443 Before the dramatic, spiritually-inspired realignment of Monaghan’s
life and empire were over, he would also be forced to cede his title as “Pizza Tiger.”444
A Confluence of Timing and Vision
The two central obstacles in stadium construction, from city to city, are variations of two
primary issues: financing and struggles for territorial rights (between residential and commercial
interests as well as competing interests in the same sport). Executives from other regional
professional sports facilities such as the Palace of Auburn Hills CEO, Thomas Wilson, hinted
that the new Tigers’ suites might negatively impact other arenas in the city.445 Then in March
1991, with the support and assistance of the Tiger Stadium Fan Club, bills were introduced to the
Michigan Legislature that would “ban local governments from financing professional sports
441

“Monaghan Confirms Tigers for Sale,” Chicago Tribune, March 1, 1992.
Alex Prud’homme, “Taking the Gospel to the Rich,” New York Times, February 14, 1999.
443
Volgenau, “Drummond.”
444
Pizza Tiger is the title of Monaghan’s autobiography, written with Robert Anderson, published in 1986 at the
height of the team’s popularity.
445
Charles Child, “Tiger Suites: Not as Lucrative as at Palace?,” Crain’s Detroit Business 5, no.13 (March 27,
1989):1. The Palace of Auburn Hills is home of the Detroit Pistons NBA basketball team. Luxury suites are
purchased by local businesses which are limited commodities, particularly in a persistently economically troubled
city like Detroit.
442

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stadiums of more than 25,000 seats and place a $75 million cap on public financing for the
renovation of an existing sports stadium.”446 Promises from the Tiger Stadium Fan Club to
“force a referendum on any proposal for issuing bonds for a new Tiger stadium” appeared to
have some traction, given the results from a Detroit News poll that suggested the public was split
evenly on the issue, even slightly favoring the opposition.447 Wayne County deputy executive,
Mike Duggan (elected as mayor of Detroit in 2013), was searching for a means to issue $120
million of tax-exempt bonds for a new stadium. One obstacle that might be overcome required
“congressional approval for issuing the bonds in light of the Tax Reform Act of 1986, which
essentially eliminated the use of tax-exempt bonds for sports facilities.”448 This was hardly
insurmountable: later analysis would demonstrate that a loophole in the Tax Reform Act actually
encouraged the use of tax-exempt bonds for stadium construction which, some have argued,
made matters worse for taxpayers.449
One of the most notable, albeit short-lived, victories for the grassroots Tiger Stadium Fan
Club was their successful referendum campaign “that resulted, on March 17, 1992, in a
resounding 2-1 vote barring any city money from being spent on a new ballpark.”450 With little
hope for municipal funding, the sizeable gap between anticipated luxury suite income and the
debt service it would take to construct a new stadium, in combination with the more pressing
financial troubles facing his Domino’s empire, proved too much of an obstacle for Monaghan to
446

Karen Pierog, “Michigan,” Bond Buyer, May 7, 1991, p. 28.
Ibid.
448
Ibid.
449
Ameet Sachdev, “Tax-exempt bonds for Wrigley Field Would Be a Federal Subsidy,” Chicago Tribune,
November 23, 2010. The article cites Dennis Zimmerman, “a retired economist who studied the economics of
stadiums at the Congressional Budget Office.” According to Zimmerman, “The Tax Reform Act placed limits on
bonds issued for private activities by determining that no more than 10 percent of the debt service can be repaid by
revenues from the project itself. . . . A loophole allows owners and host cities to push 90 percent of the construction
costs onto taxpayers.” Other public commentary has even gone so far as to suggest that if the Tax Reform Act did
not directly cause the stadium boom at the end of the twentieth century, it “at least quickened the pace.” See Phil
Miller, “The Tax Reform Act of 1986 and Sports Construction Projects,” Market Power: In Economics, X Marks the
Spot. Marketpower.typepad.com, November 24, 2010.
450
Cagan and DeMause, Field of Schemes, 94.
447

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overcome. Monaghan’s Tigers gave Wayne County and Detroit officials a deadline of August 1
to submit a new stadium plan.
In the first days of August 1991, Monaghan rejected the city’s proposal to build a new
stadium downtown off of Woodward Avenue, a site directly across the street from Mike Ilitch’s
recently renovated Fox Theatre. Ilitch had made his fortune as the founder of Little Caesars Pizza
and had owned the Detroit Red Wings hockey team since 1982. Though some fairly assumed
that Monaghan rejected the site at least in part “because it could create a windfall” for one of his
competitors in the discount pizza industry, he deflected those rumors simply stating that “I’m in
delivery and he’s in carry-out.” When asked for a reaction, an Ilitch spokesman declined to
comment.451 Monaghan really did not have time to worry about whether a new stadium would
add to the profits of Little Caesars’ owner. He needed to focus his energies on saving or selling
his own empire. Frustrated by an inability to get the right stadium deal and recognizing the need
to improve cash flow, Monaghan announced that he was putting the Detroit Tigers and various
other holdings up for sale in late February 1992. Just one year after rejecting a stadium package
across the street from his rival, Monaghan announced that he had sold the Tigers to Mike Ilitch
for $82 million.452 The quest for a new Tigers stadium now belonged to a man who had a bigger
vision for Detroit’s downtown development.
Despite multiple attempts by various players in the deal to set a deadline for a new
stadium agreement, the process plodded along, carefully yet purposefully. But it remained to be
seen just whose purposes this new stadium would ultimately serve. Both f Monaghan and former
Detroit mayor Coleman Young had attempted to force the stadium through according to their
own timelines, and ultimately, neither one would see the ballpark completed under their watch.
451

Associated Press, “Parking—Not Pizza—to Decide Location of New Tiger Stadium,” Jerusalem Post (1950–
1988),. August 5, 1991, p. 11. Pro Quest Historical Newspapers.
452
Associated Press, “Baseball/Daily Report,” Los Angeles Times, August 14, 1992.

160

New Tigers owner, Mike Ilitch, publicly and privately expressed his desire to field his team in
the new stadium by 1997, but he also had larger development plans for the area surrounding the
stadium that slowed the process. Ilitch owned the nearby Fox Theatre and was “eyeing a
shopping, sports and entertainment complex for the area.”453 The idea was influenced by similar
sports/entertainment complexes that had been or were being developed in other cities around the
nation, such as the Truman Sports Complex in Kansas City, the Gateway Complex in Cleveland,
and the Camden Yards sports complex in Baltimore. Such plans are very complex due to the
need to accommodate multiple public and private as well as residential and commercial interests.
As was demonstrated by the mixed-use Chicago 21 Corporation development (see chap. 2), even
when led by a coalition of the city’s heaviest financial hitters, such developments invite multiple
hurdles and, as such, often take years to be fully realized. On the other hand, development
initiatives carried out with deliberate caution and patience often lead to smarter, long-term
developments that are sustainable and, more importantly, eligible for federal funding.
Larger projects that involve significant infrastructural, land acquisition, and preparation
costs can sometimes qualify for economic-development loans offered by federal agencies like the
US Department of Housing and Urban Development (HUD). Moreover, any stadium-centered
development project depended on approval and assistance from the state, and by July 1993, all
Governor John Engler’s administration would commit to was exploring different options.
Serving as the governor’s “point man on the Tiger Stadium redevelopment,” Art Ellis, director of
the state Department of Commerce, stated, “They (other parties) are more anxious for resolution
than I am. But that doesn’t mean we don’t end up at the same time and the same place.” Ellis
readily admitted that the stadium was “a major and important project,” but added that “it cannot

453

Amy Bodwin, “Feds Eyed to Help Get Land for Stadium,” Crain’s Detroit Business, July 5, 1993.

161

push everything else aside.”454 It seemed the deal was going to get done, and astute Detroiters
who had followed Ilitch’s exploits in the local press had no reason to assume it would fall apart.
This was the man, after all, that was almost single-handedly bringing excitement, and more
importantly private investment, back to downtown Detroit.
Little Caesars Restores the Faith of the People
In 1987, just five years after he bought the Detroit Red Wings, Ilitch halted construction
of his new corporate headquarters for Little Caesars in suburban Farmington Hills. When he
chose to move “to the10 floors of renovated office space in the Fox Building, which houses the
[newly renovated Fox] theater,”455 Ilitch deliberately countered the devastating centrifugal forces
of capital flight that had plagued the city for decades. This was no small gesture; even the Big
Three automakers that symbolized the Motor City had moved out of town. It was nearly a decade
before General Motors purchased the Renaissance Center in 1996 and began renovating the
tower in order to relocate its own corporate headquarters downtown. Moreover, Ilitch had bigger
designs that coincided with the interests of both city officials and other downtown developers. In
addition, he bought “two blocks of real estate north and south of the Fox Theatre, on the same
side of Woodward . . . as part of a much larger $30 million package aimed at creating a top-flight
theater district for Detroit. The district is bounded by Park Avenue, the Fisher Freeway, John R.
Street and Grand Circus Park.”456 The Detroit Downtown Development Authority, “a quasipublic agency for improvements to downtown Detroit,” had likewise demonstrated a
commitment to the district by suggesting that it might contribute as much as “$8 million for the
demolition of eight structures and site preparation, $5.5 million to acquire property, and $4

454

Ibid.
Jean Halliday, “Ilitch Has Major Plans for Downtown,” Crain’s Detroit Business, July 13, 1987.
456
Ibid.
455

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million for improvements in roads and parking.”457 As is the case with most major development
projects located near the central business district, this required help from the private sector to
“contribute the following to the $30 million project: $6.2 million for demolition and
rehabilitation of properties, $3 million for construction of a parking garage, $1.5 million for
roads and improvements, and $1.8 million for working capital.”458 Well before Tom Monaghan
declined this location for his new Tiger stadium, city officials, local business interests, and
developers were already working with Ilitch on a major, unified, long-term development plan for
the area.
Ilitch got farther in negotiations than his predecessor for three basic reasons. First, he
wanted to build the stadium downtown in the theater district off Woodward Avenue, where city
officials wanted it anyway. Second, his plans to develop a larger stadium and entertainment
complex created the perception that he was interested in more than personal gain and had a real
vested interest in rebuilding the city. Third, he had already demonstrated his commitment to the
city in a number of ways. He was the owner of the Detroit Red Wings and the Detroit Tigers,
two of the city’s most powerful cultural icons. He continued to invest in the maintenance of
Tiger Stadium even though the park was ultimately going to be replaced. And the new stadium
would be built in the middle of the emerging theater district that Ilitch had spearheaded in
1987.459 Unlike Los Angeles and Chicago, where large communities of poor racial minorities
were forced to relocate for new baseball stadiums, there was little protest in the clearing of
empty office buildings to make way for a new Tigers stadium. Resistance in Detroit came
primarily from a coalition of fans and local residents who were perfectly happy with the original

457

Ibid. The Detroit Downtown Development Authority will be explained in further detail later in the chapter.
Ibid.
459
Bill Shea, “Ilitch Rises to the Upper Crust through Pizza Dough, Dreaming,” Crain’s Detroit Business, October
28, 2012; “Michael Ilitch, Chairman,” Leadership Team, Ilitch Holdings, Inc.
458

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Tiger Stadium located just a mile and a half west, down at “The Corner” in Corktown.460 The
Fans of Tiger Stadium did put up sustained resistance to losing the old stadium that had housed
thrilling memories spanning multiple generations. But by the time Dennis Archer was elected
mayor in November 1993, public officials at the city, county, and state levels had already been
enticed by the promising upside of stadium-driven urban renewal. With significant plans and
investment already underway, the new entertainment district made perfect sense to city officials
as a location to build a new Tigers stadium.
A Symbolic Gate to the City
Dozens of discussions and arguments, hundreds of pages of documents and
thousands of hours of research all condense to this: The intersection of the
Chrysler and Fisher freeways is a dynamic site for baseball—the diamond in the
heart of downtown Detroit.461
When Dennis Archer succeeded Coleman Young as mayor of Detroit in 1993, he had
every reason to be optimistic about his chances of closing the stadium deal with the Tigers.
Within the documents provided to facilitate the new mayor’s transition into power was a draft of
a detailed presentation titled “The New Tiger Stadium: Downtown Detroit.”462 The opening
paragraphs of the stadium plan both highlight the potential for a “diamond in the heart of
downtown Detroit” and the depressed reality of the location prior to development: “To look at
the stadium site today is to look at a shambled past. But to look at these illustrations is to see a
first glimpse of the future—the first glimpse of a new stadium district alive with human and

460

The original Tiger Stadium was located at the corner of Michigan and Trumbull Avenues. The site has long been
referred to by fans and journalists as “The Corner.”
461
Edward H. McNamara, Wayne County Executive, and Coleman A. Young, Mayor of Detroit, “The New Tiger
Stadium: Downtown Detroit,” no date, folder 17, box 35, Tiger Stadium, Dennis Archer papers, 1976–2001, Burton
Historical Collection. Detroit Public Library.
462
Ibid. There is no date on the document, but given the details of the stadium plan regarding location (the downtown
theater district) and surrounding development plans, it is reasonable to assume that the document was drafted
sometime between 1991 when former Tigers owner Tom Monaghan rejected a package targeting this site and 1993
before Young left office as mayor.

164

economic activity.”463 The brief introduction to the plan ends with a mental exercise, asking
readers to close their eyes and imagine the excitement of walking to their seats on Opening Day.
An example of stadium boosting at its finest, the introduction closes with the confident assurance
that “tickets will be on sale shortly.” Unlike Chicago’s Harold Washington, who had to wade
through multiple proposals with varying site locations, by the time Dennis Archer took office on
January 3, 1994, the site had already been agreed on between the city and the Tigers, and efforts
to secure financing involving all levels of government were already underway.
Detroit’s city officials had bought into the excitement produced by Ilitch’s bold efforts to
redevelop the theater district, and now that he owned the Tigers, there was no reason why those
efforts could not be expanded into a more diverse and culturally attractive stadium and
entertainment complex. The infrastructural needs of a professional sports stadium seating more
than 40,000 are vastly greater than those of even a robust theater district. When Ilitch first began
redeveloping the district around his Fox Theatre, a developer who still owned 26 properties in
the area, Chuck Forbes, told reporters that Ilitch’s purchase “just makes all the difference in the
world.” Forbes hoped to develop the State Theater in the Palms Building (which he owned) on
Woodward Avenue, along with the Fox Theatre, so they could open together. With both theaters
completed, Forbes estimated that “at least a million people a year will be coming down there.”464
The operative words, “will be coming down there,” were typical of the ends sought by those
involved in developing a tourist economy. Forbes’s words also carry an unsaid assumption—the
development taking place in downtown Detroit was not intended to serve the local inhabitants of
the city. This was an area built to suit the spending habits of suburbanites with disposable
income. After the new Tiger stadium (Comerica Park) opened in 2000, the team averaged

463
464

Ibid.
Halliday, “Ilitch Has Major Plans for Downtown,” emphasis added.

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between two and three million fans a year depending on their competitiveness, and Ford Field,
the new stadium built adjacent to Comerica Park for the Detroit Lions football team, averages
another 450,000 to 500,000 fans annually.465 Before either stadium opened, the city also
approved the construction of three downtown casinos. As had been done in other cities like
Boston, Baltimore, and Cleveland, Detroit appeared to be reinventing itself as a tourist city.466
The “New Tiger Stadium: Downtown Detroit” plan created by Detroit city and Wayne
County officials cited location as the “single most significant element in the building of the new
Tiger Stadium,” which would “build and draw upon the success of Greektown, Joe Louis Arena,
and the Fox Theater [sic]; sharing in the continued renaissance of Detroit downtown.”467 Perhaps
not coincidentally, Ilitch was directly involved with two of the three cited examples as the owner
of the Red Wings who played at the Joe Louis Arena, and as the developer/owner of the Fox
Theatre. Just as the Washington administration in Chicago initially sought to tie the construction
of a new stadium to the South Loop where it might have built on the early success of
redevelopment projects in Chinatown and Dearborn Park, officials in Detroit likewise wanted to
place the stadium within a larger development. Again, with Ilitch’s plans for developing the
theater district and subsequent purchase of the Tigers, the city now had an owner not only warm
to the idea, but one that was already two steps ahead of them. City officials in Chicago found
White Sox owner, Jerry Reinsdorf, wholly uninterested in a similar plan for his stadium in the
South Loop. Without that owner commitment to a more complex, long-term development plan
that would likewise benefit the area surrounding the stadium, what might have been a vibrant
465

“Detroit Tigers Attendance Data,” Baseball-Almanac,accessed November 3, 2013, http://baseballalmanac.com/teams/detatte.shtml.; “NFL Attendance,” ESPN.com, accessed November 3, 2013,
http://espn.go.com/nfl/attendance/_/year/2013.
466
For a detailed collection of work on how cities have attempted to retool their economies in an attempt to draw
tourism dollars, see Judd and Fainstein, Tourist City.
467
Edward H. McNamara, Wayne County Executive, and Coleman A. Young, Mayor of Detroit, “The New Tiger
Stadium: Downtown Detroit,” no date, folder 17, box 35, Tiger Stadium, Dennis Archer papers, 1976–2001, Burton
Historical Collection. Detroit Public Library.

166

catalyst for urban redevelopment in Chicago became nothing more than an isolated ballpark
surrounded by a sea of concrete. Traffic flow and parking access were just as important in
Detroit as they were in Chicago, but they were handled differently based on different
assumptions.
In Chicago, the White Sox were simply interested in funneling suburban money,
transported in suburban automobiles, directly from the freeway to the parking lot and back again.
Reinsdorf’s deal with Chicago was designed to give him total control over (and the sole profits
from) any money spent before, during, and after a White Sox game. Conversely, with vested
interest already in the area and the foresight to multiply his profits through diverse yet
interrelated investments, Ilitch thought of parking and pedestrian flow entirely differently. Ilitch
consulted with “image-makers from Walt Disney” when developing his vision for a “Foxtown”
neighborhood where “the stadium would be the linchpin of an 80-acre downtown entertainment,
shopping, and sports mecca.”468 Regarding parking, the owner of the Tigers did not want to
repeat the “sea of asphalt” mistake that Chicago had made by dropping the enormous footprint of
a suburban stadium into the heart of downtown. Instead, he wanted “Tiger fans to use [parking]
lots that would be scattered throughout downtown within a 10-minute walk of the stadium.”
Ilitch envisioned “nightclubs, sports bars and retail shops emerging where abandoned,
dilapidated structures [once stood].”469 Citing Cleveland’s Jacobs Field as a model, he
acknowledged to reporters that the success of the team, the stadium, and the surrounding area
were all interrelated: “We get people to come downtown to watch baseball, and we keep them

468

Michael Goodin, “Stadium Can’t Ensure Revival: But Ilitch Consults Disney to Make Foxtown,” Crain’s Detroit
Business, March 28, 1994. Walter O’Malley’s Dodger Stadium in Los Angeles (chap. 1) was also heavily influenced
by Walt Disney. It makes perfect sense that developers interested in attracting and maintaining an essentially tourist
clientele should consult with the creators of America’s biggest tourist Mecca.
469
Sharp, “Ilitch’s Legacy.”

167

downtown afterwards.”470 Unlike the stadiums in Los Angeles and Chicago, the stadium players
in Detroit drew on models in Cleveland, Baltimore, and ultimately Denver in their attempts to
build a truly urban ballpark that emphasized foot traffic and an organic design that blended with
the surrounding urban area. They were after the tourist city, not just a tourist stadium. But Detroit
had long been plagued by disinvestment, racial strife, and rising crime, and its representation in
popular culture—particularly in movies and television—gave the city a lasting image as the
landscape of dystopian nightmares. And as had often been the case since Willie Horton’s efforts
to quell the race riots of 1967 and the Tigers subsequent 1968 World Series win, city officials
were hoping that the team (and particularly its new stadium) could once again serve to improve
the image of the city in the national discourse.471
In her essay published in part 1 of The Tourist City titled “Marketing Cities for Tourism,”
Briavel Holcomb identified the importance of visual landmarks with symbolic potential as one
key strategy behind successful tourist cities:
Although selling cities is especially hard because they can rarely count on
customer loyalty, several strategies have been used, with varying success. One is
to construct, sometimes intentionally, a landmark that will put the city on the
tourist’s mental map. . . . [M]any cities have succeeded in establishing, through a
specific structure, a symbolic shorthand for their identities—Seattle’s Space
Needle, St. Louis’s Gateway Arch, and the Eiffel Tower are obvious examples.472

470

Ibid.
Examples of popular culture’s dystopian representation of Detroit in film include but are not limited to, Detroit
9000 (1975), Blue Collar (1978), Robocop (1984), The Crow (1994), 8 Mile (2002), and Gran Torino (2008). For an
account of Horton’s effort to bring peace to the 1967 riots, see Grant Eldridge and Karen Elizabeth Bush, Willie
Horton: Detroit’s Own Willie the Wonder (Detroit: Wayne State University Press, 2001), 12–14; Bruce Markusen,
“Detroit’s Hero: Willie Horton Helped Heal the City in Wake of 1967 Riots,” National Baseball Hall of Fame and
Museum, February 15, 2013, http://baseballhall.org/news/personality/detroit’s-hero. Detroit Digital, the culminating
project of the 2013 Cultural Heritage Informatics Fieldschool which is hosted by MATRIX at Michigan State
University, is another “attempt to suggest a counterpoint to the popularly held and grossly simplistic picture of
Detroit as a dead city whose only redeeming value is a place for cheap real estate and as a setting for urban decay
photography.” There are sections in Detroit Digital that deal with both the Tigers’ “representation of the city itself,”
and “Representing Detroit in Popular Media.” http://detroitdigital.matrix.msu.edu.
472
Briavel Holcomb, “Marketing Cities for Tourism,” in The Tourist City, ed. Dennis R. Judd and Susan S.
Fainstein (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999), 57–58.
471

168

As was the case in Los Angeles and to a lesser extent in Chicago, Detroit officials (and the
Tigers organization) envisioned the new stadium as a “symbolic gate to the city” for new visitors
arriving via freeway/expressway, the “principal vehicular entryways to the city.” The initial new
stadium plan for the Tigers claimed, “Downtown Detroit is the point of origin for the outstate
freeway network . . . the Fisher Freeway and Chrysler Freeway. . . . Together they will provide
dramatic views of the future stadium.”473 While the stadium was to be a part of a much larger,
modal re-visioning of the downtown area, serving to “anchor the northern end of downtown, just
as the Renaissance Center anchors the southern downtown,” city officials suggested that the
“sheer mass of the stadium [would] provide a dominant image, while baseball as an event fits
well into the active and interwoven activities in the downtown environment.” The stadium plan
further identified what city officials hoped would become the key to or “framework” for a newly
revitalized downtown Detroit: “The framework that can be established is one of great
possibilities; where crowds gather and the entire downtown comes alive as a total environment.
Greektown, The Fox Theater [sic], and Joe Louis Arena already generate such activity, and a
new stadium will become a vital part of this environment.”474
Heavily influenced by the excitement generated by “nostalgic” stadium projects such as
Baltimore’s Camden Yards, Detroit officials, too, hoped to create a historic urban theme for the
stadium accentuated by “historic light fixtures” and “ornamental iron fencing and gateways.”475
A game that has long celebrated its mythic past, the nostalgic trend in baseball stadium
construction was influenced by the ballparks built during the first permanent stadium
construction boom of the first two decades of the twentieth century. From the perspective of city
473

Edward H. McNamara, Wayne County Executive, and Coleman A. Young, Mayor of Detroit, “The New Tiger
Stadium: Downtown Detroit,” no date, folder 17, box 35, Tiger Stadium, Dennis Archer papers, 1976–2001, Burton
Historical Collection. Detroit Public Library.
474
Ibid., emphasis added.
475
Ibid.

169

officials and urban planners, the lure of the nostalgic trend in stadium development also rested on
the empirical evidence provided by previously successful, historically-themed urban renewal
efforts like Boston’s Faneuil Hall.476 Detroit officials were interested in more than just keeping
the Tigers downtown; a new Tiger Stadium was a vital piece in the effort to turn Detroit into a
tourist attraction.
In addition to connecting the stadium with existing entertainment options downtown, the
stadium plan suggested that “projected commercial program elements associated with . . . the
new stadium might include an attraction such as a Tiger Hall of Fame or auto museum, retail
shops, restaurants, a health club/training center or a media center.”477 Ultimately, the
construction of a new Tigers stadium would directly lead to much more with the subsequent
construction of the NFL Detroit Lions new downtown stadium, Ford Field, as well as the
recently approved new arena for Ilitch’s Detroit Red Wings hockey franchise. A city that had
been at different times referred to as the Motor City, the birthplace of Motown, the Arsenal of
Democracy, Hockey Town, and more notoriously as the “murder capital” of the United States,
had begun to take on a new identity: “Sportstown USA.”478 But that would all come later. As
exciting as all of this attraction-based development sounded, when Dennis Archer succeeded
Coleman Young as mayor in 1994, it was no more than an exploratory plan making the rounds

476

Bruce Ehrlich and Peter Dreier, “The New Boston Discovers the Old: Tourism and the Struggle for a Livable
City,” in The Tourist City, ed. Dennis R. Judd and Susan S. Fainstein (New Haven: Yale University Press, 1999),
170.
477
Ibid.
478
Ford Field opened right next to Comerica Park (the Tigers’ new stadium) in August 2002, and just recently the
city announced its intention (despite filing for bankruptcy) to spend $444 million on a new hockey arena downtown
for the Red Wings. On the new hockey arena, see Chris Isidore, “New $444 Million Hockey Arena Is Still a Go in
Detroit,” CNNMoney, July 26, 2013, http://money.cnn.com/2013/07/26/news/economy/detroit-bankruptcy-arena/.
The term “Sportstown USA” was used in an article for ESPN by Sandy Baruah, president and CEO of the Detroit
Regional Chamber of Commerce: Lynn Hoppes, “When Will People Stop Ripping Detroit?” ESPN Playbook,
October 26, 2012, http://espn.go.com/blog/playbook/trending/post/_/id/10025/when-will-people-stop-making-funof-detroit.

170

among city officials. It would be Archer’s task to see that the project received the funding and
public approval necessary to move forward.
An Enterprising Mayor
The Archer administration in Detroit received primarily positive reviews (more so from
whites than from African Americans) as the mayor deftly began the work of revitalizing the
city’s image. In a speech to city workers, board members, and commissioners highlighting the
administration’s progress during his first year in office, Archer cited “some important
achievements” that contributed to “laying the foundation for rebuilding [the] city” including:
•

The attendance of millions of visitors over the summer to events such as the
“Grand Prix, Freedom Festival, Boat Races, Riverfront Festivals, & Jazz
Festival—Without Incident.” [Emphasis in original, no doubt highlighting
increased safety measures.]

•

New investment in the city totaling over $170 million from sources including
Detroit Renaissance and other area foundations and corporations.

•

And what Archer labeled the city’s “Big Christmas Present—The
Empowerment Zone Award” which provided $100 million in funding to
improve 18.35 square miles over a ten-year period as well as an astounding
$1.9 billion in additional commitments from the private sector.479

Archer was quick to qualify those achievements, however, when suggesting that “all of this was
just a beginning—we cannot count on big awards and special events to rebuild Detroit.”480 In
479

Dennis Archer, “Speech: City Speech,” no date, folder 24, box 45, Speech: City Speech, Dennis Archer papers,
1976–2001, Burton Historical Collection. Detroit Public Library.
480
Ibid.

171

reality, however, that is precisely what the Archer administration and its private sector allies did.
In the section of his speech dedicated to “the area of business expansion and growth,” Archer
explicitly cited the continued implementation of the Empowerment Zone, a Chrysler expansion
at the corporation’s Jefferson North facility, additional investment from General Motors, and
casino gambling, which had just passed an exploratory voter referendum in August 1994 in
response to concerns over lost tourism dollars to Windsor, Canada, across the Detroit River
where a new casino had opened for business.481 The Archer administration’s blueprint for
reviving the city of Detroit was ultimately tied to leveraging the Empowerment Zone resources
to pursue “pro-business policies” and to “narrow the divide between the mostly black city and
the mostly white suburbs.”482
Researchers have since found that the efficacy of the Empowerment Zone’s impact on
Detroit has been hard to quantify. By all accounts, the “urban renewal program sought to
improve businesses in the area, reduce unemployment, and lower the poverty rate” in selected
zones.483 Evidence from a 2006 report published by the US Government Accountability Office
(GAO) suggested that “the targeted areas [in Detroit] experienced all the benefits the program
intended: improved economic performance as well as lowered unemployment and poverty
rates.”484 Despite evidence of achieving the program’s desired outcomes, however, “data
limitations and survey results” prevented the GAO from being able to establish direct causation
between the program’s initiatives and the outcomes. Furthermore, researchers began to ask
whether or not they were asking the right questions to determine the efficacy of the
481

Ibid.; Mayor Dennis W. Archer, “Will Detroit Be Dealt a Winning Hand? Criteria for Casino Gambling,” Casino
Gambling Press Conference, August 18, 1994, folder 12, box 45, Speech: Casino Gambling, Dennis Archer papers,
1976–2001, Burton Historical Collection. Detroit Public Library.
482
Robyn Meredith, “A Revival in the Motor City: U.S. Program Helps Return Industry to Depressed Area,” New
York Times, April 11, 1997.
483
Tara Clark, “Detroit’s Empowerment Zone: Evaluation of Success,” Virginia Policy Review 11, no. 1
(Fall/Winter 2012): 45.
484
Ibid., 45.

172

Empowerment Zone programs. There is ample evidence suggesting that the program did improve
economic performance while lowering poverty rates in the targeted zones, though the
employment rates also dropped;485 but as Tara Clark argues, the point of the program was to
“promote the relevance and competitiveness of inner cities in comparison to suburban areas,
which had been experiencing population and industry growth [within] the context of
decentralizing populations and suburban industry growth.”486 Moreover, Clark argues that if that
was indeed the purpose of the program, “then analysts and policy makers will have to ask if it
matters whether or not gentrification occurs despite attempts to avoid the effect. For example, a
researcher may be able to determine that high-wage earners have relocated into the treatment
area, as hypothesized based on qualitative surveys.”487 In the case of Detroit, the Archer
administration and its business allies were clearly more interested in the quantitative results for
targeted downtown areas that could be measured economically. This was a renewal plan
developed by and for Detroit’s business community.
One of Archer’s first orders of business when he became mayor was to build his
transition team which provided Detroit residents an unmistakable clue as to who their new mayor
was working for. As Karen R. Miller stated, “Since the beginning of his term in office, Archer
had been criticized by city residents for pandering to suburbanites and for prioritizing business
interests over neighborhood concerns.”488 According to an article Miller cites from the Detroit
Free Press, “In his first act as mayor, for example, Archer appointed a team of eight people,
485

Ibid., 53.
Ibid., 47.
487
Ibid., 59. Clark also cited (p. 49) a “primary observational problem” identified in the GAO study: “that
individuals originally living in the Empowerment Zone moved out and were replaced by individuals with higher
earnings.” While existing data limitations prevent a definitive analysis of the benefits provided to those living in the
Empowerment Zones prior to initiating the program, there is ample qualitative evidence to argue that even if
residents managed to avoid relocation, they received little if any tangible benefit from the program.
488
Karen R. Miller, “Whose History, Whose Culture?: The Museum of African American History, the Detroit
Institute of Arts, and Urban Politics at the End of the Twentieth Century,” Michigan Quarterly Review41, no. 1
(Winter 2002). Web. http://hdl.handle.net/2027/spo.act2080.0041.117.
486

173

seven of whom were business executives and five of whom lived in the suburbs.”489 Beginning
first with the strategic plan for Detroit’s Empowerment Zone application, Archer consistently
invited and encouraged business leaders to reshape the downtown area according to their own
interests. In addition to inviting them to the table regarding shaping urban development policy
and planning, Archer tirelessly courted Detroit area businesses using incentives provided by the
federal Empowerment Zone designation to secure commitments for downtown investment. By
1996, Archer had “created a new nonprofit called the Greater Downtown Partnership” which
“invited developers and prominent regional business leaders to sit on its board of directors, and
granted the organization full authority to plan the shape of downtown Detroit.”490
According to researchers Deirdre Oakley and Hui-Shien Tsao, who analyzed the impact
of the Federal Empowerment Zone program, Detroit’s strategic plan focused on creating
economic opportunity including: “(a) access to capital and credit resources; (b) strengthening the
business and technological base; (c) linking zone residents to jobs and labor force expansion; (d)
increasing international trade and tourism, and (e) connecting the broader regional economy.”491
Oakley and Tsao highlighted a “commitment from General Motors to develop a new
manufacturing facility within the zone and to provide financing for other zone ventures” as a
“hallmark of Detroit’s economic opportunity initiatives.”492 As early as February 1995, Archer
began sending letters to business leaders touting the “story of [Detroit’s] economic comeback . . .
based on a growing number of public/private enterprises, a strong domestic auto industry, a

489

Roger Chesley et al., “Archer Picks Suburbanites: Just 3 Detroiters on Transition Team,” Detroit Free Press,
November 5, 1993.
490
Miller, “Whose History.” Christopher Ilitch, son of Tigers owner Mike Ilitch and president and CEO of Ilitch
Holding, Inc., is one of the current board members for the Greater Downtown Partnership (since renamed
Downtown Detroit Partnership) as well as Renaissance Detroit, where an Ilitch family member has seemingly served
uninterrupted for decades.
491
Deirdre Oakley and Hui-Shien Tsao, “A New Way of Revitalizing Distressed Urban Communities? Assessing the
Impact of the Federal Empowerment Zone Program,” Journal of Urban Affairs 28, no. 5 (November 9, 2006): 452.
492
Ibid., 452.

174

$1.974 billion dollar commitment for our successful Empowerment Zone application and $200
million dollars in access to capital for businesses who either want to expand or move into
Detroit.”493 Archer also sent a letter to Robert J. Eaton, chairman and CEO of Chrysler
Corporation, promising support for the company’s “plans to locate its newest engine line in
[their] New Mack Plant on the east side of the City of Detroit.”494 In return for going forward
with the $750 million project—“the single largest private sector investment in the City of Detroit
since Chrysler opened its new Jefferson North Assembly Plant in 1992”—Archer offered the
city’s support in the form of free real estate, grant tax abatements for twelve years at 50 percent,
$12 million to support employee training, and additional Empowerment Zone benefits, as well as
providing utilities connections and further infrastructural assistance.495 On the face of things, it
appeared that Archer was indeed on his way to turning Detroit around. The automobile industry,
which had long been Detroit’s biggest employer, seemed to be poised to reverse the
decentralized approach to business development that had characterized the activities of the Big
Three (Ford, GM, Chrysler) for the latter half of the twentieth century. But the Archer
administration’s development plans extended beyond the city’s traditional reliance on the auto
industry, for none of these proposed initiatives addressed another prominent part of the
Empowerment Zone’s strategic plan—increasing international trade and tourism. For that part of
the plan, Archer turned his attention towards casino gambling and building the Tigers a new
baseball stadium.

493

Mayor Dennis W. Archer to Business Leaders, February 27, 1995, folder 21, box 5, Detroit Mayor’s Office:
Correspondence – Outbound, January – June 1995, Dennis Archer papers, 1976–2001, Burton Historical Collection.
Detroit Public Library.
494
Mayor Dennis W. Archer to Mr. Robert J. Eaton, April 5, 1995, folder 21, box 5, Detroit Mayor’s Office:
Correspondence – Outbound, January – June 1995, Dennis Archer papers, 1976–2001, Burton Historical Collection.
Detroit Public Library.
495
Ibid.

175

Let the Games Begin: Diversifying Detroit’s Tourism Economy
Despite the visible centrality of casinos in recent Detroit downtown development
initiatives, in 1994 the prospect of building casinos was far from a sure bet. In 1972 Michigan
voters had authorized only the state lottery, bingo, horse-race betting, and “Las Vegas”-style
fundraisers held by charitable organizations. By the mid-1980s, however, members of various
Indian tribes began opening casino operations on federally protected reservations in efforts to
seek tribal revenue and jobs in the face of long-term economic troubles.496 Two separate rulings
by the US Supreme court in 1987, followed by Congress’s passage of the Indian Gaming
Regulatory Act the following year cleared the way for a state-regulated compact that allowed
tribes to operate casinos on reservation land. After long negotiations that stalled over the
implementation of video gambling, the Michigan tribes operating casinos finally agreed to a
compact with Governor Engler which received legislative approval in the summer of 1993;
language in the original compact stipulated that “tribal governments were given exclusive rights
to operate casinos in the state, both on and off reservations and allowed the privilege of using
video gambling devices. In return, the tribes agreed to pay 10% of all profits from those
machines to government. Eight of the ten percent went to the state’s ‘Michigan Strategic
Fund.’497 The remaining two percent was reserved for the local communities where the casinos

496

“Beginning of Indian Casinos in Michigan,” Clarke Historical Library, Central Michigan University, n.d., Web.
Accessed March 5, 2014,
https://www.cmich.edu/library/clarke/ResearchResources/Native_American_Material/Treaty_Rights/Contemporary
_Issues/Casino_Gambling/Pages/Beginning-of-Indian-Casinos-in-Michigan.aspx.
497
This is significant to note, as a large amount of the funding for the Tigers’ new stadium was to come from the
Michigan Strategic Fund. One important element to the Michigan State Gaming Compact was the stipulation that
“should the state allow non-Indian owned casinos to operate, the tribes would no longer be obligated to make
payments into the Strategic Fund.” With the approval of two privately-owned casinos in Detroit prior to the approval
for the construction of a new Tigers stadium, it would seem that the state inadvertently undercut a significant source
of revenue for the State of Michigan’s contribution to stadium financing.

176

operated.”498 Once casino gambling had been legalized on the state level and with the conflux of
timing that saw a profitable casino also open up in Windsor just across the Detroit River,
momentum began to build for bringing casinos to Detroit.499 But there were still many obstacles
to overcome before city and state leaders would consider building casinos as a viable tool for
downtown development.
There are illuminating parallels worth noting between the processes that led to the
approval and eventual construction of both a new stadium for the Tigers and Detroit’s downtown
casinos. Casinos and baseball stadiums are, at their core, tourist-driven businesses drawing the
vast majority of their customers from suburbanites with higher levels of discretionary income,
and yet, both stadium and casino construction have increasingly been promoted by urban
political and business leaders as powerful tools for revitalizing postindustrial cities. But for the
residents of cities like Detroit, tourist-economy development projects offer little in terms of both
employment and personal use-value. Poorer inner-city residents typically cannot afford to go to
ballgames, and while they might be able to afford low-cost gambling options like slot machines,
even casino industry experts such as William Thompson, professor of public administration at
the University of Nevada in Las Vegas, acknowledge, “It’s no damned good if all the money
comes from out of your local economy. . . . [I]t works in Las Vegas because 90 percent of the
money comes from outside.”500 Given the lack of clear economic benefits for local residents,
both casinos and a new stadium for the Tigers had been repeatedly rejected in the past by local
498

“Michigan State Gaming Compact,” Clarke Historical Library, Central Michigan University, n.d., Web. Accessed
March 5, 2014,
https://www.cmich.edu/library/clarke/ResearchResources/Native_American_Material/Treaty_Rights/Contemporary
_Issues/Casino_Gambling/Pages/Beginning-of-Indian-Casinos-in-Michigan.aspx.
499
Rae Corelli, “Betting on Casinos.” Maclean’s, May 30, 1994, 26,
http://search.proquest.com/docview/218431841?accountid=1599 (accessed March 2, 2014). Ironically, the tribes
operating casinos on reservation lands proved that gambling could be used as a way to generate tremendous
economic activity in segregated, disinvested areas composed almost exclusively of poor minorities. Sadly, it did not
work out as well for the African Americans living in Detroit.
500

Ibid.

177

residents based on largely accurate criticisms that the projects would succeed only in stuffing the
pockets of business owners.501 If these downtown developments were intended to serve a
suburban clientele, Detroit residents reasoned, who were city officials and developers rebuilding
the city for? But the situation in Detroit was desperate, and while the type of work available in
casinos and stadiums was far from what most would consider stable, long-term employment,
they offered many disheartened residents local jobs for the first time in years.502 Moreover, the
man offering the jobs had a track record of getting things done in Detroit, most notably the
largely successful development of Greektown in the heart of downtown.
Ted Gatzaros and his business partner, Jim Papas, were Greek immigrants who made a
name for themselves first as small-scale restaurateurs and then as pioneering urban developers in
an eastern section of downtown Detroit that would ultimately come to be known as
Greektown.503 Gatzaros and Papas were quick to seize on the momentum being generated by
reservation gambling and began working with the Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians as
early as 1988 to bring gambling to Greektown, providing the tribe with “seven-tenths of an acre
in Greektown next to Trappers Alley, a former seed company converted into a festival
marketplace.”504 Gatzaros was the visionary, the driving force behind the gradual acceptance of
casino gambling in downtown Detroit. But for various reasons, both Mayor Archer and Governor

501

Christine Snyder, “Greektown Gambler: Ted Gatzaros’ Wager on a Chippewa Casino May Be the Biggest Bet
Greektown Will Ever See,” Corporate Detroit 12, no. 4 (April 1994): 45. Detroit voters rejected casino proposals
four times prior to the successful August 1994 vote. Opponents to building a new stadium for the Tigers also
initially succeeded with a ballot initiative to ban any municipal funding for stadium construction before it was
nullified by the City Council and a subsequent vote that ultimately approved the stadium deal.
502
James Bennett, “Mere Hint of Jobs Draws Crowd in Detroit,” New York Times, November 12, 1993,
503
J. C. Reindl, “Greektown Developer Gatzaros Dies; Pioneered Casino Gambling in Detroit,” Detroit Free Press,
January 10, 2013; Snyder, “Greektown Gambler.” The Gatzaros family owns “the London Chop House, the WahHoo Chinese restaurant and all three Fishbone’s Rhythm Kitchen Café’s in metro Detroit.” Gatzaros, with Papas,
also “developed what is now the International Center Building at 400 Monroe in Greektown and the Atheneum Suite
Hotel. Their other projects included the Marquette, Bount and Murphy-Telegraph buildings.” Other significant real
estate developments included the purchase of Trappers’ Alley (next to where the Greektown Casino was eventually
built) and the development of the International Marketplace.
504
Ibid.

178

Engler were opposed to casinos in the city and vowed to use their powers to shut down any
attempt to build one.505 One of the major concerns for Michigan politicians was ultimately about
control. Prior to any construction, the US Department of the Interior had to take the land into
trust for the tribe, thereby federally (and legally) sanctioning the development. Once that is done,
however, zoning laws do not apply. According to Anne Bolton, superintendent of the Michigan
office of the Bureau of Indian Affairs, once the land is in trust the tribes “do not have to go by
the zoning of any county, state, township or whatever. It is the same with all government
land.”506 This angered city officials, because once the land was taken into trust, the tribe would
not need approval from city officials or voters to proceed with developing the area. Governor
Engler opposed expanding gambling off the reservations and into Detroit if it did not “benefit all
seven of Michigan’s tribes and if it [was] not part of a larger urban revitalization plan.”507 But
Gatzaros was an adept developer with years of experience playing the political game during
Coleman Young’s years as mayor. If there was one thing he understood, it was political theater.
On a cold November day in 1993, nearly a full year prior to the first successful citywide
casino vote in Detroit, Gatzaros began taking applications for more than 4,000 jobs in the
“inevitable” Greektown Casino. By seven A.M., “three hours before applications were available,”
there were already hundreds of people waiting in line. By the end of the day, “more than 10,000
people had filled out applications, and many more had picked them up.”508 According to
Gatzaros, “base wages of $16,000 to $18,000 would be paid for work cleaning bathrooms to
dealing blackjack to spinning the roulette wheels.” He also claimed that another “11,000 jobs
will open up around the casino for tour guides, jewelers, bakers, baby sitters, taxi drivers and
505

Bennett, “Mere Hint of Jobs.”
Amy Bodwin, “Indian Casino Leaves City without Control,” Crain’s Detroit Business 10, no. 31 (August 1,
1994): 1.
507
Bennett, “Mere Hint of Jobs.”
508
Ibid.
506

179

others.”509 By way of contrast, the $750 million New Mack Plant development that Archer tried
to secure from Chrysler with promised Empowerment Zone benefits in 1995 was projected just
to “retain some 950 jobs in the City of Detroit by relocating employees” from one plant to
another.510 Despite the relatively obvious truth of then Mayor-elect Archer’s claims that the
“offer of 4,415 jobs like dealing cards or spinning roulette wheels [was] an effort to build
political pressure,” the situation in Detroit had been so desperate for so long that unemployed
residents were ready to gamble on those odds. After all, the auto industry had done very little to
demonstrate that any of those corporations were seriously committed to providing significant
levels of stable, long-term employment in downtown Detroit.
As obvious as Gatzaros’s political play may have been, it certainly created the intended
effect. The momentum in the debate over whether or not Detroit should build casinos was
turning. When Casino Windsor reeled in an estimated $6.5 million at the end of its first week of
business in May 1994 (an estimated “80 percent of [the customers] from Detroit”), Gatzaros’s
efforts received a much needed boost from local and national press.511 Gatzaros was as
outspoken in the press about other notable Detroit-area businesses’ failures in the community as
he was about his own dedicated commitment to downtown development: “There’s no reason for
National Bank of Detroit to be relocating its service center along with thousands of people, out to
Novi, while people like Mr. (Max) Fisher sit on the Detroit Renaissance Board and express their
concern about the city of Detroit.”512 Moreover, Gatzaros was receiving valuable public support
from Detroit city officials who likened his commitment to the city to that of another of Detroit’s
509

Ibid. See also, “Say ‘Yes’ to Gaming Proposal,” Michigan Chronicle, July 6, 1994.
Mayor Dennis W. Archer to Mr. Robert J. Eaton, April 5, 1995, folder 21, box 5, Detroit Mayor’s Office:
Correspondence – Outbound, Jan – Jun 1995, Dennis Archer papers, 1976–2001, Burton Historical Collection.
Detroit Public Library.
511
Corelli, “Betting on Casinos”; “Say ‘Yes’ to Gaming Proposal;” “As Vote Nears, Detroit Edges Closer to
Gambling,” New York Times, July 24, 1994.
512
Snyder, “Greektown Gambler.”
510

180

favorite (development) sons. John Slater, chairman of the Detroit Planning Commission, also
took aim at other local business while offering his support for Gatzaros: “I look at two people,
Ilitch (Mike, owner of Little Caesars) and Gatzaros who have done something in the city of
Detroit. Both are immigrants. Then there are the bluebloods who are loaded up to their fannies,
where are they? Where are those who made their money off the city of Detroit?”513 While the
“bluebloods” were criticized for relocating manufacturing operations outside of the city and
destroying the local economy, these two immigrants were busy remaking it in their own image.
And despite both men’s rags-to-riches immigrant stories and unlike the vast majority of Detroit
residents, these men were white and rather wealthy.
When it became apparent that Casino Windsor was taking in millions of Detroit dollars
just before the city was yet again poised to vote on bringing casinos to Detroit, members of the
local press became willing boosters. An editorial for the Michigan Chronicle broke down the
pending vote by tapping into the power of Bill Clinton’s 1992 successful campaign slogan, “It’s
the economy, stupid”:
What has continued to concern many of Detroit’s business, civic and community
leaders is that Windsor’s prosperity is vastly attributable to support from Detroit
consumers. In fact, 80% of Casino Windsor’s customers are Detroiters.
What does this mean? In numbers it translates into about $192 million Detroit
dollars being spent monthly to boost another country’s economy while Detroit
continues to experience a $63 million budget deficit.
Clearly Detroiters have come to realize the economic benefits that a casino could
bring are much too important to overlook.514
Two weeks after the casino referendum, Mayor Archer acknowledged (via press release) that on
August 2, 1994, Detroit residents voted in favor of “Proposals B and C, riverboat gambling on
the Detroit riverfront and Indian casino gambling in Greektown.” But lest casino boosters get

513

Ibid.
“Say ‘Yes’ to Gaming Proposal.” The iconic Clinton campaign slogan was coined in 1992 by Democratic
campaign strategist James Carville.
514

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ahead of themselves, Archer made it clear that “an advisory vote is but one factor in considering
whether Detroit will have casino gambling—it is not the only factor.”515 In addition to laying out
a credibly supported argument against the risks of casino-based development—notably, “that
when more than 50% of gambling is by locals, then gambling is a ‘sure loser’ for economic
growth in the area”—Archer homed in on what was ultimately at stake with this kind of urban
development: “Do we know who the casino audience in Detroit will be? I contend that this
question is central to our ability to make a fair decision about gambling.”516 If Detroit was
committed to commercial development that was not intended to serve the city’s residents, the
necessary follow-up question was, how could they ensure that the development would bring
economic relief not only to city coffers but also to its unemployed? Over the next year, Archer
would find that casino development and stadium construction could work hand-in-hand to reinvent the purpose and identity of downtown Detroit—as a tourist attraction for suburbanites.
Archer immediately went to work seeking answers to the central questions “concerning
the impact of casino gambling on Detroit,” that required “full answers before we go down [that]
road:”517
What kind of casinos are best suited for Detroit? Land-based or riverboat? Large
or small? Hotel and resort-based or free standing?
What are the economic development consequences of casinos? Will they enhance
or hinder other forms of economic activity? Will they add to or simply displace
other business activity? What are the opportunities for minority and women
businesses? Will the riverfront become a “dead zone” for more traditional
development?
What are the service and community costs of casinos? Will the revenue generated
for the city exceed the costs absorbed by the city? Will police and fire services,
street repairs, garbage pick-up, and traffic control have to be expanded to provide
casino coverage?
515

Mayor Dennis W. Archer, “Will Detroit Be Dealt a Winning Hand? Criteria for Casino Gambling,” Casino
Gambling Press Conference, August 18, 1994, folder 12, box 45, Speech: Casino Gambling, Dennis Archer papers,
1976–2001, Burton Historical Collection. Detroit Public Library, 1. Emphasis Archer’s.
516
Ibid., 3–4.
517
Ibid., 4.

182

What will be the impact on jobs? Will residents of Detroit get the jobs? Will the
people hired reflect the racial and ethnic composition of the city? What wages
will be provided? How much training will be needed? How will lay-offs be
handled? Will Detroit residency be required? Will Detroit contractors and
suppliers be used?518
Many of Archer’s questions were answered after a visit from East St. Louis mayor Gordon Bush,
who was regarded at the time as “that city’s most successful mayor.”519 During his visit Bush
told Archer and members of Detroit’s city council that his city’s dramatic economic turnaround
was “a direct result of casino gambling.”520 Bush claimed that revenues from the Casino Queen
(close to $1 million a month) had “not only stabilized the city’s economy, but [had] allowed it to
hire 50 percent more police officers, reduced the residents’ tax bills by 25 percent and brought
over 1,400 jobs to the region, that . . . pay an average of $21,000 a year.”521 Bush also claimed
that there had been a reduction in crime since opening the Casino Queen and that “to date, there
have been no (that means zero) incidents of crime on the riverboat.”522 In marked contrast to
Detroit’s Mayor Archer, who had emphatically stated that “the long-term strategy for revitalizing
our city is simply too important to place in the hands of a single group,”523 Bush stated very
plainly: “For East St. Louis, casino gaming was not one way, it was the only way.”524 Finally,
addressing the issue most closely tied to Detroit’s own experience, Bush cut to the chase:
“Without it our city was headed for a dead end. If we would have had to claim bankruptcy it
would have sent a bad message to the world that a city that is 99 percent African American
cannot be run by one of its own.”525 There were still questions to be answered, such as the level
of involvement/employment for women and African Americans, but Archer had heard enough to
518

Ibid., 4–5.
“The Casino Question Is Still Waiting to Be Answered,” Michigan Chronicle, November 9, 1994.
520
Ibid.
521
Ibid.
522
Ibid.
523
Archer, “Will Detroit Be Dealt a Winning Hand?”
524
“The Casino Question.”
525
Ibid.
519

183

suggest that casino gaming was a viable strategy for downtown development.526 Following
Bush’s presentation, Archer publicly acknowledged as much and began planning for an effort to
lobby in favor of bringing casinos to Detroit before state legislators and the governor in Lansing.
The final obstacle to bringing casinos to Detroit involved meeting the needs and interests
of the two most significant (and historically, most fiercely-opposed) forces in development in
downtown Detroit: African Americans and the business community. Archer had implicitly stated
that if there was to be casino development in Detroit, there must be investment and employment
opportunities for locals and African Americans, which in Detroit at that time essentially
amounted to the same thing. Toward those ends, the original two casino developments proposed
that passed the 1994 referendum had already made significant commitments. The voter-approved
Atwater Entertainment Associates plan for a casino by the Detroit River was comprised of
roughly forty local investors, “many of them African Americans.”527 For their part, spokespeople
for the Chippewa-backed casino proposed for Greektown stated that they had “pledged to create
a $10 million minority-business development fund for the city.” They continued to maintain that
the Greektown casino would create 4,000 jobs, but added that “60% of [them] would go to
African Americans.”528 Many thought it important that city and state politicians approve the
construction of non-tribal-backed casinos so that, as Larry Doss, an investor in the MirageAtwater plan, suggested, “African Americans can share in the casino bounty.” But Doss was

526

Gail Wingard, “Strategies for Change: The Mackinac Conference is Where it all Happens ... for More than 1,000
Who Wouldn’t Miss it for Anything,” The Detroiter 17, no. 7 (Jul 01, 1995): 36. An important note regarding the
role of women in Detroit casino development is that Marion Ilitch, the wife of Detroit Tigers and Red Wings owner
Mike Ilitch, bought a majority interest in the Motor City Casino just west of the stadium district in 2005 and has
been the principle owner ever since. With the acquisition of Motor City Casino and the imminent construction of a
new Red Wings stadium just north of I-75, the Ilitch family empire now spreads across the entire north end of the
central business district.
527
Hiawatha Bray, “How Will Detroit Spell Economic Relief?” Black Enterprise, 07, 1995. 17. One note of interest:
one of the Atwater investors was Johnnie Cochran, the African American attorney made famous most notably in the
O.J Simpson murder trial which would conclude just months after the publication of this article.
528
Ibid.

184

optimistic, suggesting “the legislature understands that Detroit has severe economic problems. . . .
I think the presence of Detroiters and minority investors definitely should help our chances of
approval.”529 The clearest, and arguably most important, evidence for the sea change in opinions
about building casinos in Detroit, though, was taking place at the yearly gathering of the state’s
most powerful policymakers on Mackinac Island in June 1995. And it was at this meeting where
casinos and stadiums were first addressed as two sides of the same urban development coin.
The Greater Detroit Chamber of Commerce’s fifteenth annual Mackinac Conference
hosted a record crowd of 1,035 participants, “lured by the star-studded lineup of major speakers
joining Michigan Gov. John M. Engler this year: First Lady Hillary Rodham Clinton, Co-director
of EmpowerAmerica Jack Kemp (former US Secretary of Housing and Urban Development) and
Malcolm S. Forbes Jr., president and CEO of Forbes magazine.” The political and economic
heavyweights were in attendance due primarily to Detroit’s recent federal Empowerment Zone
award. Chamber president Richard E. Blouse Jr. called the conference a “model for the country
in terms of the networking and public policy debate it provides among the leaders of government
and industry. It’s a catalyst for strategies and solutions.”530 One of the items on the conference
agenda was a discussion about the role of stadium construction and casino gambling in urban
development. There were concerns that those projects had “a stranglehold on Detroit’s economic
development plans.”531 James Tervo, Mayor Archer’s executive assistant, responded, saying,
“While these are important . . . not all of Detroit’s development eggs are in these baskets. More
and more businesses are breaking ground in Detroit.”532 With so much focus on the
Empowerment Zone initiatives, a new Detroit Revitalization Tool Kit being assembled by the

529

Ibid.
Wingard, “Strategies for Change.”
531
Ibid.
532
Ibid.
530

185

Chamber as well as the governor’s own proposed tax-free “Renaissance Zones,” Tervo’s claims
had evidential merit. At the same time, Ilitch and casino boosters knew very well that this was
the place to get political and even financial backing for their projects.
Announcements about the future of casino and stadium development caused significant
waves at the conference. During a private press conference at the event, Detroit Tigers owner
Mike Ilitch announced that a new stadium deal was imminent. In another announcement that
drew audible “groans from the audience,” Paul Twigg, chairman of the board of management of
the City Venue Business Association in Windsor told crowds that “a new riverboat casino would
be docking in Windsor in August.” Moreover, Twigg continued, “As Michigan’s gaming dollars
leave the state of Michigan, they have helped to revitalize the Central Business District of
Windsor, create jobs, promote tourism, promote new retailing, restaurants and industry around
the casinos.”533 Archer noted a “sense of urgency” and “[credited] the Chamber for its recent
decision to support casino gaming.” Archer told reporters that his daily frustration was “the view
from my 13th floor window in the City-County Building, watching the lines of Michigan license
plates snaking their way to Casino Windsor and leaving $1 million on the other side of the
river.”534 The state’s business community responded to these developments by overwhelmingly
supporting casino gaming as a legitimate economic development tool for the city of Detroit.
According to an audience response system, attendees expressed the following opinions:

533

Ibid.
Ibid. Notice the striking similarity between Archer’s concerns about exporting local money to Windsor and
Walter O’Malley’s revelation regarding the impact of highways on downtown baseball: “O’Malley was leaving
Ebbets Field after a night game. He was in his chauffeur-driven Buick. He gets stuck in a traffic jam… He’s going
east, and he sees a tremendous amount of cars going west. ‘What’s that?’ he asks his chauffeur. ‘That’s all the
people coming home from the trots, Mr. O’Malley.’ Suddenly, O’Malley’s ears perked. Harness racing had yet to
reach its real peak… O’Malley was a shrewd man. He already saw the demographics. Hey, what were those 20,000
people doing there and not going to a ball game at Ebbets Field?” Cited from Sullivan, The Dodgers Move West, 38.
534

186

•

89 percent agreed gaming would be an effective catalyst for economic
development.

•

80 percent said they now supported legalized casino gaming in Detroit.

•

76 percent felt it would greatly attract tourists to the city.

•

73 percent supported the family-style, multi-purpose entertainment rather than
just casinos by themselves.

•

61 percent believed it would positively help Detroit’s image.

•

52 percent supported limited gaming sites throughout Michigan.

•

51 percent felt that their views were impacted by Windsor’s success.

•

48 percent thought casino gaming should only be in Detroit.535

Coming away from the Mackinac Conference, it was all but clear that both casino gaming and
stadium construction were going to be used as essential “tools in the tool kit” to bring vitality
back to downtown Detroit as key components in an entertainment-driven tourist economy
development strategy. The Empowerment and Renaissance Zone initiatives would hopefully fill
the streets of downtown during the day with growing numbers of people on their way to work for
new businesses created in the central business district, while the casinos, stadiums, theaters, and
restaurants would fill the streets at night with tourists spending their discretionary income in the
city of Detroit.

535

Ibid.

187

Back to the Business of Baseball
As Ilitch announced at the Chamber of Commerce conference, 1995 was the year that the
stadium deal between the city, state, and the team finally came together. It was a frantic year
with much to accomplish before the developers could even think about breaking ground for the
new stadium. One of the most important obstacles was securing the approval of the Detroit City
Council, which according to the Downtown Development Authority Act 197 of 1975, was the
governing body with the authority to adopt an ordinance approving the development plan after
certain other provisions have been met. Before that could happen, however, the Downtown
Development Authority (DDA) had to gather a long list of time- and cost-related information
from developers and finish developing a Tax Increment Financing and Development Plan that
ultimately amounted to roughly 500 pages “covering the stadium and other projects.”536 The
entire review process was scheduled to play out to completion between August 18 (when the
DDA provided the completed information) and October 5 (when there was to be a meeting to
facilitate public hearings and final adoption of the ordinance by City Council). In those six weeks,
the plan would also need to reviewed and approved by the DDA Board of Directors (September
12), the Planning and Development Department (September 12), City Council (September 13,
for the TIF financing), and the City Planning Commission and Downtown Citizens District
536

William M. Wolfson and Michael G. Sarafa to Freman Hendrix and James Tervo, “Stadium Council Strategy,
DDA Issues,” Interdepartmental Communication, August 23, 1995, folder 17, box 35, Tiger Stadium, Dennis Archer
papers, 1976-2001, Burton Historical Collection. Detroit Public Library. The DDA has been central to the
development of all three new (or in the case of the new Red Wings hockey arena, proposed) stadiums over the past
two decades in downtown Detroit. The DDA was created as a quasi-public entity to manage economic development
for the cities Central Business District. In summary, it was established by an Act to: “provide for the establishment
of a downtown development authority; to prescribe its powers and duties; to correct and prevent deterioration in
business districts; to encourage historic preservation; to authorize the acquisition and disposal of interests in real
and personal property; to authorize the creation and implementation of development plans in the districts; to
promote the economic growth of the districts; to create a board; to prescribe its powers and duties; to authorize the
levy and collection of taxes; to authorize the issuance of bonds and other evidences of indebtedness; to authorize the
use of tax increment financing; to reimburse downtown development authorities for certain losses of tax increment
revenues; and to prescribe the powers and duties of certain state officials.” A PDF version of the full Downtown
Development Authority Act can be accessed from the Michigan Legislative Council’s website at
http://legislature.mi.gov/doc.aspx?mcl-Act-197-of-1975.

188

Council (October 4).537 As of August 17, however, the DDA was still waiting on developers to
provide such key pieces of information as the details for land-use designation surrounding the
project, proposed or potential parcels that needed to be acquired by the city (by enforcing its
powers of eminent domain), an accurate total cost estimate including a statement of proposed
financing (for the private contribution towards development), and whether or not there would be
displaced citizens in need of assistance/relocation.538 In the midst of all of that, the mayor had to
deal with other sources of opposition to completing the stadium plan emanating from the
neighborhood of the old Tiger Stadium.
The Corktown Citizens’ District Council met on September 19, 1995, to “elicit the
opinions of the community about the future of Tiger Stadium.”539 In a statement they sent to the
Mayor, the citizens backed a study that supported renovating the old stadium rather than tearing
it down and building a new one. They cited real concerns “about the impact of decisions made
about the stadium issue on our economic and social environment.”540 Anyone even remotely
familiar with Detroit Tigers baseball would concede that Tiger Stadium was “the anchor” of the
Corktown neighborhood. The Planning and Development Committee for the Corktown Citizens’
District Council even sent the mayor a proposed Community Plan that called for the formal
annexation of Tiger Stadium and the surrounding blocks into the Corktown Neighborhood
Statistical Area (NSA). Many of the parcels inside the existing NSA contained “significant
rehabilitation homes,” products of the Corktown Neighborhood Enterprise Zone which was

537

Wolfson and Sarafa to Hendrix and Tervo.
Ibid.
539
Corktown Citizens’ District Council to Mayor Dennis Archer, “Corktown Opinion Statement on the future of
Tiger Stadium,” September 1995, folder 17, box 35, Tiger Stadium, Dennis Archer papers, 1976-2001, Burton
Historical Collection. Detroit Public Library.
540
Ibid.
538

189

approved by the Detroit City Council on October 24, 1994.541 Corktown residents felt just as
deserving to be beneficiaries of new downtown development and could not understand why the
city would turn its back on an improving neighborhood in favor of projects that would seem to
benefit primarily suburban tourists. By the end of the following month, the residents of
Corktown would find out that the city, and their beloved Tigers, had officially agreed to move on
without them.
As the timeline for adopting the DDA stadium financing and development ordinance
approached, Mayor Archer relied on his carefully cultivated business allies to apply needed
pressure to members of the City Council. On September 25, President Richard E. Blouse Jr. of
the Greater Detroit Chamber of Commerce sent a letter to Maryann Mahaffey, his counterpart on
the Detroit City Council, urging her on behalf of the Chamber to “take whatever actions are
necessary to support and assist the Detroit Tigers in meeting their need for a new home for the
ball club in the City of Detroit.”542 Blouse argued that the “Tigers are an integral part of the
quality of life and image of the City of Detroit, both in providing jobs and spin-off economic
benefits for the city as well as in attracting thousands of residents and visitors to downtown
Detroit each year.”543 Blouse highlighted testimony presented to the Michigan Strategic Fund
Board by “business, labor, community and religious organizations” that demonstrated
“unprecedented collaboration among local and state leaders that continues the spirit of
cooperation that has been the key ingredient to other successful cities.”544 Even with all of that,
however, the specter of fear regarding seemingly unbalanced development priorities expressed

541

Corktown Citizens’ District Council, “Exhibit #2 – Community Plan,” no date, folder 17, box 35, Tiger Stadium,
Dennis Archer papers, 1976-2001, Burton Historical Collection. Detroit Public Library.
542
Letter from Richard E. Blouse, Jr. to The Honorable Maryann Mahaffey, September 25, 1995, folder 17, box 35,
Tiger Stadium, Dennis Archer papers, 1976-2001, Burton Historical Collection. Detroit Public Library.
543
Ibid.
544
Ibid.

190

by many at the annual Chamber conference in June was still haunting stadium project discourse.
And while Blouse acknowledged that “a new Tiger Stadium alone will not be a panacea for
Detroit’s ills,” he argued with rhetoric that suggested that Detroit policy makers and
businesspeople still saw a new stadium as a “diamond in the heart of downtown,” as “the
Gateway to the City.” Blouse closed, suggesting (as many had before) that “a new stadium could
be a powerful tool to jump start further economic development activity in the city. In fact,” he
continued, “many Chamber leaders consider this project the singular most important economic
development tool for the center city.”545 Blouse and his cohorts at the Chamber were ultimately
correct, at least in terms of spurring future economic activity. It is fair to argue that the following
projects would not have happened without the new Tigers stadium and Ilitch’s commitment to
further downtown development: the construction of Ford Field for the NFL’s Detroit Lions,
which fed an emerging stadium district filling up with new restaurants and bars; the revitalization
of the theater district and a commitment to making Detroit an entertainment destination; and the
continued commitment to invest in Detroit by entrepreneurs like Dan Gilbert, who is the
Chairman of Rock Ventures LLC, the founder and chairman of Quicken Loans, Inc., owner of
the Cleveland Cavaliers professional basketball team, and quickly becoming one of the most
heavily invested men in all of Detroit.546
At the end of October, Archer sent a letter to Ilitch outlining the city’s next steps toward
finalizing a stadium agreement. Governor Engler had imposed a December 31, 1995, deadline
for all parties in the stadium project to reach an agreement.547 Once the Tax Increment Financing
Plan (which had needed revisions) was sent back to the City Council, Archer warned, it would
545

Ibid.
There is no question that Ilitch’s new stadium has led to additional economic activity for the city, but none of that
activity was able to prevent the City of Detroit from filing for bankruptcy in 2013.
547
Letter from Mayor Dennis W. Archer to Mr. Michael Ilitch, October 25, 1995, folder 17, box 35, Tiger Stadium,
Dennis Archer papers, 1976-2001, Burton Historical Collection. Detroit Public Library.
546

191

“trigger certain procedural steps, which will include actions by the Planning Commission, the
Citizens District Council and the City Council.” Archer anticipated that there would be at least
two public hearings at which “representatives of the Tigers [would] be requested by Council to
appear.”548 After calmly stating that they were “optimistic” that their plan would be adopted and
that they would be able to sell their bonds in December, Archer closed promising that Detroit
stood “ready to do [its] part for this exciting project, which will play a major role in the
revitalization of . . . downtown.”549
Ilitch responded the following day with a letter marked for “Hand Delivery.” Ilitch’s
letter had a more urgent quality to it. He affirmed that the Tigers organization was “very aware
of the deadlines which the State has set.”550 Ilitch offered the Tigers’ full support “at any public
hearing or other meetings” that Archer considered important. Ilitch acknowledged that both sides
had worked “in these most difficult of negotiations . . . towards a mutually fair agreement,”
which set up the “however” sentence that followed. While the agreement was deemed mutually
fair, Ilitch still felt compelled to remind Archer that there were “a few major issues that Jim
Tervo and your lawyers are aware of for which we are awaiting a response.” Ilitch closed his
letter without the “exciting” rhetoric that concluded Archer’s note, saying simply, “I and my
people are available to do whatever is reasonably necessary to finalize the Letter of Intent.” From
Ilitch’s perspective, it seemed, the deal was done and the hangup was simply a matter of the city
getting its financial house in order and agreeing to the “mutually fair” conditions of the
agreement.

548

Ibid.
Ibid.
550
Letter from Michael Ilitch to The Honorable Dennis W. Archer, October 26, 1995, folder 17, box 35, Tiger
Stadium, Dennis Archer papers, 1976-2001, Burton Historical Collection. Detroit Public Library.
549

192

On October 30, 1995, the Memorandum of Understanding regarding the construction of
the new stadium was executed “by and between the City of Detroit Downtown Development
Authority (the “DDA”) and Detroit Tigers.”551 The Memorandum opened with statements from
the Tigers and the DDA about why building a new stadium was necessary and/or desirable. The
Tigers organization “determined that it is in the best interest of the Tigers and their fans to play
major league baseball in a new stadium complex in the City designed to provide the best
facilities for playing and attending major league baseball.”552 Reading between the lines, one can
see in this language the beginnings of Ilitch’s plans for the development of a much broader
entertainment complex. For its part, the DDA was required by law to provide a very specific
explanation of how stadium construction fit within the Authority’s call to maintain economic
development in the central business district. Towards that end, the Memorandum stated that the
DDA “has determined that the construction of a new stadium and appurtenant facilities for the
Tigers within the downtown district of the DDA will have a beneficial effect upon the property
values of property within the City and the downtown district of the DDA, will stimulate
economic development resulting in the creation of new businesses and employment
opportunities.”553 Ironically, the funding was to be provided, in part, through a “Grant
Agreement” entered into between the Michigan Strategic Fund and the DDA.554
While the Tigers are often cited for the generosity of their contribution to the financing of
their new stadium, particularly as opposed to what the White Sox did to Chicago, the City put up

551

Memorandum of Understanding, October 23, 1995, page 1, folder 17, box 35, Tiger Stadium, Dennis Archer
papers, 1976-2001, Burton Historical Collection. Detroit Public Library.
552
Ibid.
553
Ibid.
554
Recall that original the casino agreement between the state and the Indian tribes called for casino taxes to be
contributed to the Michigan Strategic Fund. With the subsequent legalization of casino gaming off of the
reservations, that aspect of the agreement was rendered void.

193

more than the numbers suggest on their face.555 The Memorandum stipulated that any real estate
needed for the construction of the stadium, if not already owned by the city, would be acquired
“in the Project Area through the exercise of eminent domain or otherwise, and convey such
property and the right to recover costs for environmental remediation related to such property to
the DDA.”556 That was in addition to the $35 million contribution provided by the DDA towards
the total projected $235 million stadium project costs and another $5 million contributed to the
project’s “Contingency Fund.”557 The Memorandum further stipulated that the Tigers would
have exclusive rights to “all concession revenues derived from all events and activities
conducted at the Stadium Complex and all other revenues derived from Major League Baseball
games and other events at the Stadium Complex promoted by the Tigers or any person under
common control as the Tigers.”558 Given that Ilitch also owns Olympia Entertainment and runs
the vast majority of the entertainment promotion downtown, that clause virtually gave Ilitch
exclusive rights to any and all revenue generated at the stadium, even though the stadium itself
would be owned by the DDA. The DDA also transferred to the Tigers ownership rights to
naming the stadium complex and the revenue that might be generated by selling those naming
rights. In light of the Tigers’ contribution to the overall project cost and “in consideration of an
annual payment of $1.00 . . . and the agreement of the Tigers to play major league baseball at the
Stadium Complex,” the DDA granted the Tigers exclusive use-rights at the stadium complex for
a period of thirty-five years.559 At the end of the thirty-five-year term, the Tigers were “granted
an option to exercise a right to extend the term for a period of ten (10) years.” This was
555

Despite the City’s impending bankruptcy and despite already shelling out between $90 and $115 million for
Mike Ilitch’s baseball stadium, Detroit officials recently agreed to build a new $650 million entertainment venue
that will also serve as the new home for Ilitch’s Detroit Red Wings hockey team.
556
Ibid., 3.
557
Ibid, 4.
558
Ibid., 5.
559
Ibid., 5-6, Exhibit B.

194

renewable up to a total term length of 95 years, at the discretion of the Tigers’ organization.
There is no denying that Mike Ilitch contributed roughly 62 percent ($145–185 million) of the
money for the construction of the new baseball stadium. But on the whole, this was a sweetheart
deal for a “job creator” whose contribution to the job market included jobs making five-dollar
pizzas and slinging hot dogs at the stadium eighty-one days a year.560
Despite what the Archer administration, the Tigers, and the Chamber of Commerce
would suggest, there were still very vocal opponents to the deal. Detroit City Council member
Mel Ravitz released a statement that cited the 1992 public referendum organized by the Tiger
Stadium Fan Club that “clearly stipulated that public funds should not be used for a new
stadium.”561 Ravitz argued that “the only way to determine whether or not public sentiment has
changed is to hold an election” and that anything short of an election constituted “a betrayal of
the public trust.”562 Ravitz emphatically stated that as a representative of the people of Detroit,
he could not “agree to rescind an ordinance initiated by the citizens of this City.”563 After
explaining how the public money would be used and the unlikelihood of realizing a real return
on the investment, Ravitz returned to emphasizing the “violation of the 1992 referendum” and
how the city (and ultimately taxpayers) would be liable if the DDA were unable to repay its
financing debts.564 It was not about the Tigers so much, according to Ravitz, who called himself
a “strong supporter of the home team,” but rather about the best way to use public resources for
economic development and most importantly “about the meaningfulness of a public
referendum.”565 Citing an apropos analogy with the recent casino vote, Ravitz powerfully
560

The major league baseball season is 162 games long, half at home and half on the road.
Mel Ravitz. “Tiger Stadium: 1995,” November 1, 1995, page 1, folder 17, box 35, Tiger Stadium, Dennis Archer
papers, 1976-2001, Burton Historical Collection. Detroit Public Library.
562
Ibid.
563
Ibid.
564
Ibid., 2.
565
Ibid., 2.
561

195

argued: “Indeed, if City Council can blithely repudiate that referendum, it might also do the same
with the recent public casino vote. City initiated referenda ought not be repudiated by any body
other than the public itself.”566 In the eyes of Ravitz and many like him in and around Detroit, the
business of Detroit ought first to be looking out for the people already living and voting there,
and city officials ought to be looking after the interests of their constituents.
There were other distractions in addition to the objections from Councilman Ravitz.
There were some external voices beginning to find their way to the mayor’s desk, like that of
Cleveland mayor Michael R. White, who was facing tremendous political stress and
embarrassment at the increasingly likely prospect of losing Cleveland’s NFL team, the Browns,
to Baltimore. With the ground yet to break on the Tigers Stadium project and the Detroit Lions
beginning to make noise about a new stadium, White was looking for allies who might
empathize with his plight. Archer noted White’s correspondence, but it did not seem to have an
effect on his own negotiations. Due to a previous engagement, Archer couldn’t make it to
White’s proposed “two day work session” on “how to prevent further damage due to the
relocation of NFL franchises from hospitable communities,” held in Cleveland in midDecember.567 Besides, Archer was gearing up for his bond-rating pitch and was focusing on
making the final push to meet the December 31 deadline. With the Memorandum of
Understanding agreed to and the subsequent support from the state, Archer went about securing
higher bond ratings for the DDA.
At a luncheon for rating agencies at the end of November, Archer introduced the DDA
and explained what its role was in city development before cutting straight to the chase. Archer
told guests that the DDA was going to “play a very vital role in the rebirth of our downtown,”
566

Ibid., 2.
Letter from Mayor Michael R. White to The Honorable Dennis W. Archer, November 20, 1995, folder 17, box
35, Tiger Stadium, Dennis Archer papers, 1976-2001, Burton Historical Collection. Detroit Public Library.
567

196

and more importantly for those in attendance, he said, “the upcoming bond issue will allow us to
assemble land for future projects and to proceed with what is probably one of the most
significant developments in the downtown area—the new Tiger Stadium.”568 Here again was
another public official pitching the new stadium project with the rhetoric of centrality, a crown
jewel, if you will. Moreover, this was a stadium project that was being generously supported by
Ilitch’s $145 million contribution which, Archer made sure to point out, was “three to four times
the normal contribution by an owner.” One obvious way to improve the DDA’s bond rating was
to highlight the stability and future growth potential of the project the bonds were going to
finance. Ilitch’s personal involvement in this context served both purposes. Archer argued that
“Mr. Ilitch’s actions have also demonstrated a level of commitment to a city rarely seen in
modern times. Mr. Ilitch is breaking new ground, demonstrating that sports club owners can
build new complexes without placing any additional burden on the public.” Perhaps Ilitch was no
dummy. He is, after all, a very shrewd and immensely successful businessman. Key to getting
any significant financial contribution from the city for his new stadium was its ability to secure
attractive financing terms. Given Detroit’s postwar development record and prolonged economic
slump, contributing $145 million toward the construction of the stadium might have been the
only way Ilitch was going to get any public investment at all.569
By year’s end, Archer had secured improved ratings from two of the three national bond
rating agencies. In his January 1996 State of the City address, Archer told Detroiters that the new
stadium project would involve “no new taxes for Detroit Taxpayers” and that the bond ratings
568

Dennis Archer, Luncheon for Rating Agencies, November 29, 1995, folder 2, box 45, Speech: Bond Issues,
Dennis Archer papers, 1976-2001, Burton Historical Collection. Detroit Public Library.
569
In October 2013, Wall Street ratings agency, Fitch Ratings, downgraded DDA bonds “over concerns about the
DDA’s ability to make its debt payments on time” just as the DDA had been negotiating with Mike Ilitch’s Olympia
Development about building a new arena for the Detroit Red Wings. When Ilitch threw in $145 million in 1995 the
DDAs ratings went up. In this instance, the city and state are financing the vast majority of the debt, for which the
DDA will be partially responsible. See, John Gallagher, “Downtown Development Authority Debt is Downgraded,”
freep.com, Detroit Free Press, October 31, 2013.

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improvements “literally translate into millions of dollars in savings every year when we pay the
interest on bonds used to finance city projects.” He did not mention that the two were related,
that the issuing of the bonds was what made it possible to avoid levying new taxes. Nor did he
mention that the interest on those bonds, however reduced, had to be paid with something that
probably looked a lot like tax revenues. Archer also pleaded with voters to hit the polls for the
primary elections on March 19 where two proposals on stadium financing would be on the ballot.
The mayor urged voters to vote “No” on A and “Yes” on B. Proposal A would repeal an
ordinance by City Council that had overwritten the previous 1992 voter-initiated ordinance that
banned public funding for stadiums. Proposal B was merely an advisory question with no
binding authority, but it asked voters: “May public tax funds be used to support stadium
construction within the city of Detroit.”570 Once those ballot initiatives passed, the only thing
standing in the way of completing the stadium project was the impending legal battle waged by
the Tiger Stadium Fan Club over the course of 1996.
The Tiger Stadium Fan Club had taken litigation against Governor Engler and the DDA
all the way to the Michigan Supreme Court. Despite multiple correspondences between Mayor
Archer and William R. Dow (a board member of the Tiger Stadium Fan Club) over details
regarding settling the case outside of court, by the end of May 1996, Archer had had enough.571
The mayor wrote in response to a May 21 letter in which Dow communicated that he considered
the settlement discussions “as completed.”572 Archer regretted that they could not mutually
resolve their differences prior to proceeding before the Court of Appeals, but he accepted Dow’s
570

“Public Funding for Stadium Construction in Detroit,” CRC Memorandum, no. 1040, Citizens Research Council
of Michigan, February 1996.
571
Letter from William R. Dow to The Honorable Dennis W. Archer, May 7, 1996, folder 17, box 35, Tiger
Stadium, Dennis Archer papers, 1976-2001, Burton Historical Collection. Detroit Public Library; Letter from Mayor
Dennis W. Archer to William R. Dow, May 13, 1996, folder 17, box 35, Tiger Stadium, Dennis Archer papers,
1976-2001, Burton Historical Collection. Detroit Public Library.
572
Letter from Mayor Dennis W. Archer to William R. Dow, May 24, 1996, folder 17, box 35, Tiger Stadium,
Dennis Archer papers, 1976-2001, Burton Historical Collection. Detroit Public Library.

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decision to move forward with the appeal. All that remained was to wait out the legal process
and hope for a quick resolution. Toward that end Archer filed multiple affidavits “in support of
emergency motion for immediate consideration of application for [permission] to appeal,”
reiterating the details of the stadium project; the large amount of public, private, and resident
support; and arguing that any further legal delays would “have a material negative impact on the
economic revitalization of Detroit” and “result in the loss of the time value of the economic
benefits from construction . . . amounting to millions of dollars.”573 Finally, on August 14, 1996,
“the Supreme Court of the State of Michigan . . . denied the Tiger Stadium Fan Club’s
application for [permission] to appeal.” In a letter from Michigan Jobs Commission CEO, Doug
Rothwell, Mayor Archer was informed that “the time period to meet the conditions of
disbursement and construction of the stadium will commence on September 5, 1996.”574
Conclusions
By the end of 1997, Dennis Archer was a national star, a verifiable “Messiah Mayor”
credited with doing the unthinkable: righting Detroit’s economic ship. In November, Archer
received an invitation from the Economic Club of Washington to address the club at a luncheon
in December. Club Vice President, Elliott Hall, wrote:
As you are aware, the Nation’s Capital has serious management and financial
problems and for the past two years, the city, for all practical purposes, had been
run by a presidentially-appointed financial control board. Detroit also suffers from
some of the same urban woes that beset the District but under your leadership, we
sense that Detroit has turned the corner and is on the way back. We would like to
learn more about Detroit’s renaissance and the lessons you have learned that
might be applicable to Washington.575
573

Affidavit of Dennis W. Archer, Supreme Court Case No. 106882, July 31, 1996, folder 18, box 35, Tiger
Stadium Fan Club Lawsuit, Dennis Archer papers, 1976-2001, Burton Historical Collection. Detroit Public Library.
574
Letter from Doug Rothwell to The Honorable Dennis W. Archer, September 4, 1996, folder 18, box 35, Tiger
Stadium Fan Club Lawsuit, Dennis Archer papers, 1976-2001, Burton Historical Collection. Detroit Public Library.
575
Letter from Elliott Hall to The Honorable Dennis W. Archer, November 12, 1996, folder 10, box 35,
Speeches/Testimony/Interviews 1987, Dennis Archer papers, 1976-2001, Burton Historical Collection. Detroit
Public Library.

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At the luncheon, Archer emphasized how “President Clinton’s Empowerment Zone initiative
gave people a chance to respond.”576 The possibility of Empowerment Zone designation
“became a catalyst to greater cohesion within the region, greater investment in the city itself.” He
further emphasized the unprecedented “cooperation we’ve seen between business, government
AND the community.” Archer also spent time discussing the “Stadia Projects”; for in the midst
of Tigers negations during the summer of 1996, William Clay Ford Jr. approached the mayor
about relocating his Detroit Lions football team from Pontiac to downtown Detroit. Following
the campaign for public approval to build a new Tigers stadium, Archer found himself looking to
Wayne County and the levying of tourist-focused taxes to raise $80 million for the county’s
share of the investment. Somehow the city found another $45 million to contribute, in addition to
$70 million from the Lions and another $50 million from Ford and other local businesses. Archer
told his audience that the “entire two-stadia complex, which will accommodate sports,
entertainment and major meetings, will cost the City of Detroit a maximum of $85 million—for a
development we will jointly own with Wayne County but the City will run.” Archer closed
saying: “We believe $85 million to land a $505 investment is a great deal, given what has been
extracted by other sports team owners in other cities.”
But Detroit’s investment did not end at $85 million. In the face of declaring municipal
bankruptcy, the City of Detroit has agreed to spend another $650 million total for a new
entertainment complex to host Ilitch’s Detroit Red Wings. Ilitch’s corporation, Olympia
Development “will pick up 42% of the arena’s construction cost[;] . . . the public’s share . . . will
come from a complex financing arrangement that uses school and local property tax collected by
Detroit’s Downtown Development Authority to pay off state-issued bonds.” When the new arena
576

Remarks of Mayor Dennis W. Archer, “The Lesson of Detroit: Never Underestimate a City,” Economic Club of
Washington Winter Luncheon Meeting, December 16, 1997, folder 10, box 35, Speeches/Testimony/Interviews
1987, Dennis Archer papers, 1976-2001, Burton Historical Collection. Detroit Public Library.

200

complex is finished, the Ilitch family empire will effectively control the entire northern end of
the central business district.577 Today (August 2014), the city of Detroit is struggling to claw its
way out of bankruptcy while the Ilitchs, Gatzaroses, and Gilberts, continue to see immense
profits from their stadiums, arenas, and casinos. There is no question that Comerica Park served
as a catalyst for new and successful developments in downtown Detroit; sadly, new and
successful developments in Detroit never quite work out as successful developments for Detroit.

577

See Appendix A and B.

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CONCLUSION
The Suburban Re-Conquest of the American City
We appear to be nearing the end of the third great baseball stadium boom.578 There are
but two survivors of the first wave (1909–1932), Boston’s Fenway Park and Chicago’s Wrigley
Field. Of the second wave (1953–1982), Dodger Stadium, Angel Stadium, Oakland County
Coliseum, and Kauffman Stadium have survived, though the A’s have been trying to move out of
Oakland for years, and the Angels have grown frustrated over negotiations to stay in Anaheim
long-term and are now making overtures of relocating just down the Santa Ana Freeway to
Irvine and Tustin. The Atlanta Braves are building a suburban ballpark in neighboring Cobb
County that will be part of a newly-created larger “downtown-themed urban lifestyle
development” that will also include “500 residences, shops, restaurants, office development” and
a boutique hotel.579 And oddly enough, we have already seen our first casualty from the third
wave (1989–2012), as the Florida Marlins have left Sun Life Stadium (1993) for Marlins Park
which opened in Miami for the 2012 season.580 When the mean age of stadiums from a particular
wave gets closer to thirty years, another wave of construction is likely on the horizon.581
With the exception of a few cities that take the risk of building a stadium to attract a
professional franchise, stadium booms are typically initiated by franchise owners. The impetus
578

Proposed new stadiums for the Oakland A’s and the once-abandoned city of Montreal are really holdovers from
the third wave that have yet to work out. New suburban stadium proposals for the Atlanta Braves and Los Angeles
Angels of Anaheim could be signaling a shift away from the retro, urban ballpark themes that dominated the third
wave and thus, perhaps, the beginning of a new wave.
579
“New Atlanta Braves ballpark renderings posted,” BallparkDigest.com, May 14, 2014,
http://ballparkdigest.com/201405147303/major-league-baseball/features/new-atlanta-braves-ballpark-renderingsposted?utm_source=BALLPARK+DIGEST+INSIDE+PITCH+for+May+14%2C+2014&utm_campaign=may+14+
BPD+newsletter&utm_medium=email.
580
Ballpark Comparisons Sorted by Year Opened, Ballparks of Baseball, accessed May 31, 2012.
http://www.ballparksofbaseball.com/yearopened.htm; “Stadium Boom Amounts to Fountain of Youth for MLB
Parks,” Beyond the BoxScore, January 4, 2011. http://www.beyondtheboxscore.com/2011/1/4/1912546/stadiumboom-amounts-to-fountain-of-youth-for-mlb-parks
581
“Stadium Boom.”

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for a new stadium has historically come from a few rather predicable circumstances.582 A
transfer of ownership has been a significant motivator as new owners look to cash in on the
tremendous return on investment that state-of-the-art stadiums add to their franchise’s value. It
has also arisen in response to historical context and the changing demographics of professional
sports fans.583 Beginning in the 1960s, many sports owners responded to postwar residential
migration patterns by building stadiums in suburban locations. Conversely some owners, like
Chicago White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf, built suburban-style stadiums downtown in an effort
to capitalize on a regional sports tourism economic and marketing plan that hoped to draw the
fans back. As other owners watch their competitors profit from new stadiums with modern
amenities, they put pressure on local politicians to help them build a new stadium so that they
can continue to “field a competitive team” in the changing economic environment. New stadium
construction is very rarely initiated by city officials as part of an intentional urban redevelopment
plan; rather, those officials do their best to shape the team-driven stadium deal in ways that have
the best hope of contributing positively to downtown development. With greater national
acceptance and implementation of sports and entertainment district development projects,
however, perhaps that is changing.
Baseball stadiums have been associated with the processes of urban development and
renewal in American cities since the turn of the twentieth century. Architecturally, they have
alternately exemplified influences from the City Beautiful movement, the great classical

582

At least one group of investors headed by Edward P. Roski, who has an ownership stake in both the Los Angeles
Lakers of the NBA and the Los Angeles Kings of the NHL, has stated they are willing to pay for the construction of
a new state-of-the-art football stadium if an NFL team provides assurances it will move to Los Angeles. Like the
new baseball stadiums proposed for the Braves and the Angeles, the proposed Los Angeles Stadium would be a part
of a broader entertainment district development project covering 600 acres in Industry California.
583
On the one hand, the exodus of fans leaving for the suburbs has motivated owners to develop their stadiums in an
effort to draw those fans into the park. On the other, the elevated levels of suburban discretionary income has
likewise motivated professional sports owners to charge higher prices for their tickets and concessions, which
reinforces the decline of fan bases located in urban areas with higher concentrations of poverty.

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structures of the Columbian Exposition’s “White City,” the pastoral sensibilities of Ebenezer
Howard’s garden cities, and the nostalgic urban-industrial influences found in more recent
warehouse district and urban village development programs. After World War II, baseball
stadiums were often constructed in the decaying, older industrial cities of the Northeast in efforts
to redevelop poor neighborhoods suffering from urban blight. City leaders formed public/private
partnerships to build cultural monuments like museums, libraries, and baseball stadiums with the
hopes of luring middle-class whites back to the urban core. As cities transitioned from industrialmanufacturing to service, entertainment, and tourism-based economies, pro-growth coalitions
argued that baseball stadiums offered the hope of increased national and even international
exposure as cities competed with each other to attain “Major League” status. As was the case
with many of the private industries courted by urban leaders in efforts to stop postwar urban
disinvestment, baseball owners were given generous subsidies as incentive to build their
stadiums.
Stadium boosters regularly draw on the myth that a stadium brings benefits to the greater
community. That used to be the case, but in a very different kind of ballpark. Memorial Stadium,
Ebbets Field, and Wrigley Field—these were neighborhood parks where the community and the
team were wed to each other in a way that simply cannot happen now. Exorbitant salaries and
sterile, suburban-style parks, even “retro” parks, are first about profit; there is no time or space
for true community to develop anymore. As walking cities gave way to public transit and
ultimately the automobile, the community spread out into the suburbs.
The monopoly enjoyed by Major League Baseball has allowed owners to turn the
professional game into, essentially, a tourist sport. High school and college sports, by
comparison, draw spectators largely from the immediate surrounding community. While it is true

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that major NCAA Division I programs often draw fans from all over, many of those fans are
alumni of the institution. The student sections in college stadiums and arenas are a major part of
the game day experience. But due to the continued failure to deal with the reality of the
existing—primarily poor and black—residents of the city of Detroit, the games played in newly
built professional stadiums are not for them. Greater profits come from building stadiums and
arenas for a suburban clientele with relatively large amounts of disposable income. Beginning
with Las Vegas and Disneyland, entertainment tourist destinations proved that savvy
entrepreneurs could import deep-pocketed consumers, and over the second half of the twentieth
century, that formula had been increasingly applied to reimagining the central business districts
of postindustrial cities all over the United States.
With the postwar exodus of capital from cities to suburbs, savvy baseball owners simply
changed the business model of the game to target and serve imported customers. But as with
Disneyland and Las Vegas, the more owners diversified the consumer experience and focused
consumer spending on their own goods and services, the higher the percentage of their share of
total tourism dollars. The following is an excerpt describing the tremendous revenue generated
by upscale “modern amenities,” in this instance at Baltimore’s Camden Yards, sought after by
professional sports team owners:
On the eighth floor of the warehouse, in the Camden Club, are youngish men in
office suits and a few well-dressed women who have paid a thousand dollars for
the privilege to tread upon carpeting emblazoned with the pattern of the Baltimore
Baseball Club, circa 1895. Their eyes linger over the purple satin couches, plush,
decorated in High Privilege. Entering the formal dining room for luncheon, they
pause to admire the grand piano before perusing a menu that features a twelvedollar hamburger. . . . The monthly dues are forty-five dollars, the minimum
monthly food expenditure is thirty-dollars—this last requirement met easily, what
with a bottle of Heineken going for $4.50.
Down in the stadium, on the restricted club level outside the luxury suites,
tuxedoed servants stand at the attention next to mobile dessert carts, ready to ferry

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them from suite to suite. Each contains a variety of cakes and confections, and a
bottle of Courvoisier.584
A draft of domestic beer for the regular “working class” stiffs at Comerica Park in Detroit now
costs at least eight dollars. Parking runs anywhere from ten to twenty dollars, on top of the price
paid for seats in the stadium. And prepare to make a second trip to the ATM if you’re bringing
children to the game. Increasingly a day at the ballpark is turning into a special family vacation
that most can only afford to do once or twice a summer. But efforts to expand the marketing of
teams regionally out into the suburbs have succeeded in providing a big enough base of fans to
maintain profitable attendance figures for team owners.
In postwar efforts to reinvent the scope and purpose of urban development, policy makers
and local business interests have increasing turned to broad sports and entertainment districts that
combine the elements of tourist economics with suburban, node-like shopping mall development
to turn once thriving industrial cities into what are essentially large-scale outdoor malls. The
pervasiveness of the entertainment/tourism model is such that “downtown-themed urban lifestyle
development” has even been coopted and adopted in suburban development plans. Left
unaddressed in all of this, of course, is whether or not politicians and developers are still
neglecting to deal effectively with the legacy of poorly handled migration flows and the racial
animosity stemming from unequal access to urban jobs, quality education, healthcare, and
housing. In Detroit, for example, there is much talk of building a greener, leaner, more efficient
city, but there is little said about what will become of the blighted structures and primarily
African American underclass left in the wake of decades of ineffective and racially segregated
urban renewal strategies. And as political sportswriter Dave Zirin has highlighted, while cities

584

Peter Richmond, Ballpark: Camden Yards and the Building of an American Dream (New York: Simon and
Schuster, 1993), 18.

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pour increasing amounts of resources into these entertainment-based tourist economies, often the
very real and pressing needs of local residents get overlooked and go unaddressed:
In August 2005, when Hurricane Katrina flattened New Orleans and the world
saw the levees rupture, the only safe harbor for poor residents was in the
Louisiana Superdome. When the Mississippi River Bridge collapsed in
Minneapolis, Minnesota, the new Twins stadium was to break ground that very
week. In spring of 2009, when a Washington, D.C., Metro train went off the
tracks, a publicly funded $1 billion stadium had just opened its doors the previous
year.585
Los Angeles: If You Build It . . .
In Los Angeles today, there are multiple plans being developed for new stadium-driven
development projects. Ever since the NFL Raiders moved back to Oakland, there have been
investors and boosters clamoring to bring the NFL back to Los Angeles. One such plan led by
AEG, a leading sports and entertainment corporation, would see a new stadium, Farmer’s Field,
built downtown adjacent to the Staples Center arena where the NBA’s Los Angeles Lakers and
Clippers share a space, in what would become a stadium district. According to an article from
Sports Illustrated, the “privately funded $1.5 billion retractable roof stadium would tap into the
existing infrastructure of the entertainment district to support traffic and parking, something
much needed on the minuscule 15 acres of land the stadium must squeeze onto.”586 This plan
would most closely resemble what is currently happening in Detroit, where the major
professional sports teams have built or are building stadiums clustered into one central area of
the northern section of downtown to form a sports and entertainment district.
A second plan has been proposed by Ed Roski, co-owner of the Los Angeles Lakers and
Kings, to build Los Angeles Stadium at Grand Crossing in the suburban city Industry,

585

Dave Zirin, Bad Sports: How Owners Are Ruining the Games We Love (New York: Scribner, 2010), 9.
Tim Newcomb, “NFL now has three legitimate Los Angeles stadium sites in play,” Sports Illustrated, February
4, 2014.
586

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California.587 Roski’s plan is a regional pitch that seeks to demonstrate to the NFL the potential
for a larger regional fan base with potentially lucrative media revenues. In a nice aesthetic nod
(likely unintentional) to Dodger Stadium, the “proposed 75,000-seat venue designed by
architecture firm Aedas would get built right into the area’s hillside.” The stadium would be “just
one small piece in a plan to turn an entire 600-acre site near the interchange of the 60 and 57
freeways into an entirely new entertainment and retail destination.”588 This plan embodies the
nodal, entertainment district approach to urban development being pursued in cities like Detroit,
the suburban shopping center approach to easily accessible centralized shopping and tourist
attraction elements of theme parks like Disneyland. Given the enormous scale of recent NFL
stadium development as demonstrated by Jerry Jones’s massive new football complex for the
Dallas Cowboys, this proposal might be viewed most favorably by league officials.
Finally, with his current lease set to expire in 2014, St. Louis Rams team owner, Stan
Kroenke, has upped the ante in his negotiations with city officials by turning to the threat of
relocation after “purchasing a 60-acre parking lot in Inglewood, Calif., nestled between the
Hollywood Park racetrack and newly renovated forum.” Kroenke could have legitimately
purchased that land with intentions to relocate, as White Sox owner Jerry Reinsdorf did in his bid
build a stadium in suburban Addison, or he could simply be using it as leverage to secure a better
deal in St. Louis. The Farmer’s Field and Los Angeles Stadium sites are both further along than
this parking lot and neither is attached to a specific team. In fact, both proposals being offered by
the organizations building Farmer’s Field and the Los Angeles Stadium are contingent on a firm
commitment from an NFL team to relocate. If Kroenke does not get what he wants from St.
Louis officials, he could always sell the Inglewood property and sign a deal to move to one of

587
588

Ibid.
Ibid.

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the other sites. Ultimately, however, the decision rests with the league, and there are at least two
other teams, the San Diego Chargers and the Oakland Raiders, who have also signaled a desire to
relocate to Los Angeles.589 In professional football, as in Major League Baseball, the stadium
games are both predictable and inevitable.
Chicago: Restoring an Icon and the Power of Reinsdorf
Throughout the summer of 2014, rumors and updates on stadium construction peppered
Chicago news and social media outlets once again, but this time it was coming from the North
Side where the Chicago Cubs’ dispute with neighboring rooftop owners over renovation plans
for Wrigley Field appeared to be coming to a head. When the Ricketts family bought the team in
October 2009 (and oldest son, Thomas S. Ricketts, became board chairman) and brought former
Boston Red Sox general manager, Theo Epstein, in as president of baseball operations, Cubs fans
became excited at the possibility of renovating their classic ballpark just as had been done with
Fenway Park in Boston. Rather than relocate or completely demolish and rebuild a new stadium,
the Ricketts family recognized the historic and iconic architectural treasure they had in their
hundred-year-old ballpark. On Thursday, November 11, 2010, Cubs executive chairman Tom
Ricketts sent a letter to season ticket holders announcing the organization’s plans to began
planning to renovate and modernize Wrigley Field.590 It took another two years of negotiating
with the city before Ricketts publicly announced his plans to invest an estimated $300 million to
renovate the ballpark over roughly five off-seasons.591 After a number of setbacks that included a

589

Eric D. Williams, “Chargers pitch plan for new stadium,” ESPN, last updated February 21, 2014; Jason La
Canfora, “Battle for Los Angeles: Rams, Raiders jockey for return to SoCal,” CBS Sports, March 21, 2014.
590
Tom S. Ricketts, “Cubs owner Tom Ricketts’ letter to season ticket holders,” The Chicago Sun-Times, 11 Nov.
2011.
591
“Wrigley Renovation: Cubs Unveil $300 Million in Planned Improvements,” The Huffington Post, 21 Jan. 2013;
Maury Brown, “Proposed Wrigley Renovations,” The Biz of Baseball. 21 Jan. 2013.

209

political scandal that soured Chicago mayor Rahm Emanuel on the deal592 as well as prolonged
and seemingly fruitless negotiations with members of the Wrigleyville Rooftop Association over
the placement of new advertising signage in the leftfield bleachers,593 the team’s final revised
proposal was approved by the Commission on Chicago Landmarks on July 10, 2014. If the team
can avoid litigation with the Rooftop Association, the team-financed $575 million renovation,
which includes expanded bleachers, relocated bullpens, updated clubhouses, increased
advertising signage, a new hotel and a new office building that will overlook a “triangle property
plaza adjacent to the park,” is projected to be completed by Opening Day 2018.594
The Wrigley Field renovation has received much less criticism than the White Sox
received when the new US Cellular Field opened in 1991 for a number of reasons. First, by
choosing to renovate rather than replace Wrigley Field, the Cubs have committed to preserving
the rich history of one of Major League Baseball’s oldest ballparks. Granted, there will be
Jumbotrons and relentless advertising signage, but the Red Sox have already demonstrated with
the Fenway Park renovation that fans are willing to compromise if it means saving the old park.
Some of the stiffest opposition to the new stadiums for both the White Sox and the Detroit Tigers
came from fan clubs organized specifically to save the old stadiums. Second, Cubs ownership
has offered to foot the bill for the entire $575 million renovation. Meanwhile, on the South Side
of town, as if getting his new stadium built solely with public dollars, White Sox owner, Jerry
Reinsdorf, has managed to tap into more public money for additional renovations to the new US

592

Don Babwin, “Wrigley Field Renovation Plans Stalled by Ricketts Family Political Flap,” The Huffington Post, 2
Jul. 2012. Joe Ricketts, the patriarch of the Cubs-owning family, was accused of considering to contribute $10
million towards a racially-charged campaign against President Obama. Mayor Emanuel formerly served as Obama’s
Chief of Staff.
593
Ameet Sachdev, Jared Hopkins and Blair Kamin, “Rooftop Owners Agree Not to Sue Cubs if Only 2 Signs,”
Chicago Tribune. 4 Jul. 2014.
594
Danny Ecker, “Cubs win Landmarks OK for Wrigley redo,” Crain’s Chicago Business. Crain Communications,
Inc. 10 Jul. 2014. See also Josh Sanburn, “After Today, Wrigley Field Will Never Be the Same,” Time.com. 10 Jul.
2014. The Chicago Cubs’ official website for the renovation can be accessed at http://www.wrigleyfield.com/plan.

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Cellular Field including a new restaurant and sports retail store. He has also looked into moving
his Chicago Bulls practice facility from suburban Deerfield back downtown where he hopes to
develop a $95 million entertainment complex on the east side of the United Center along with
Rocky Wirtz, owner of the Chicago Blackhawks and an investor in Wrapports, LCC which owns
the Chicago Sun-Times.595 Reinsdorf has mastered what Chicago-based stadium financing
consultant, Marc Ganis, referred to as a “tradition that goes back 50 years.”596
“It’s not who you know,” according to Ganis, it’s “are you in good standing with the
political leadership or not? Political favoritism using taxpayer resources is a tradition in Chicago
and Illinois.”597 Reinsdorf used his political connections, particularly to former Illinois governor
James Thompson, to secure a publicly funded stadium and major tax breaks for the United
Center where his Chicago Bulls play.598 Even when the former director of the Illinois Sports
Facilities Authority (the organization that funds and owns US Cellular Field) Perri Irmer brought
a wrongful termination suit against both Reinsdorf and Thompson with what appeared to be clear
evidence, the case was dismissed by US District Court Judge John W. Darrah for failing to prove
a connection between Reinsdorf and her termination.599 Irmer had began an investigation into the
particulars of the state’s stadium deal with the White Sox and succeeded in getting the team to
pay $1.2 million a year in rent for use of the stadium; she was subsequently fired by Thompson

595

Fran Spielman, “Bulls to Move Training Facility from Deerfield to Downtown Chicago,” Chicago Sun-Times.
Sun-Times Media, LLC. 13 Jun. 2012; Mark Brown, “Chicago Bulls Owner Jerry Reinsdorf’s Art of the Deal,”
Chicago Sun-Times. Sun-Times Media, LLC. 14 Jun 2012.
596
Spielman, “Bulls to Move.”
597
Ibid.
598
Ibid. The tax breaks limits the rent on the $180 United Center to $1 million a year. The deal expires in 2016.
Reinsdorf was trying to extend and expand the deal to include his newly proposed entertainment complex and
practice facility.
599
The lawsuit claims that Reinsdorf pressured Thompson to fire Irmer after she succeeded in revising the
agreement so the White Sox had to pay $1.2 million a year in rent for U.S. Cellular Field. The Memorandum
Opinion and Order, signed by Judge Darrah on June 19, 2014 can be accessed online at:
http://docs.justia.com/cases/federal/district-courts/illinois/ilndce/1:2013cv02834/282345/42/0.pdf?1403262677.

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who was the acting chair of the ISFA board at the time.600 More than twenty years after forcing
city and state leaders to build his White Sox a new stadium under the threat of relocation,
Reinsdorf is still using his political clout to profit from public money.
Detroit: Emergency Managers, Bankruptcy, and a $650 Million Entertainment Complex
Even as the city of Detroit prepared for the October 29, 1997, groundbreaking ceremony
for the Tigers’ new stadium while the Archer administration worked to expand the downtown
stadium development project to also include a new football stadium for the Detroit Lions, Mike
Ilitch had already purchased “about a dozen parcels on the west side of Woodward.”601
According to city and county property records, by March 1999, “companies under the Ilitch
umbrella own[ed] or [were] in a position to buy more than a third of the property in the area
bounded by Woodward, the Fisher Freeway, West Grand River and Adams in Detroit.”602
Despite efforts by company and city officials to refute such claims, real estate insiders began to
speculate that Ilitch was “banking land to eventually build a new hockey and entertainment arena
behind the Fox.”603 A spokesman for Olympia Development, Ilitch’s downtown real estate and
entertainment development company, stated there were no current plans for new hockey arena
but cryptically added that “Olympia Development and the Ilitch family are master-planning for
the area around the theater district and the downtown.”604 As was the case in other postindustrial
American cities like Chicago, the public-private partnership that shaped downtown development

600

Peter S. Lubin and Vincent L. DiTommaso, “Former Illinois Governor Thompson Says That Recent Lawsuit
Against the White Sox is Simply a Self-Serving Tirade,” ChicagoBusinessLitigationLawyerBlog.com. 30 April
2013.
601
“Ilitch Buying up Land near Theater: New Arena for Hockey may be Long-Term Goal.” Detroit Free Press, Sep
17, 1999. ProQuest.
602
Ibid. The parcels behind the Fox Theater are largely parking lots now, servicing both stadiums and the Theater
District. Whether or not that land was intended to be used for the hockey arena is uncertain given Ilitch’s agreement
to provide 1,000 to 1,200 parking spaces when the Lions secured their stadium deal.
603
Ibid.
604
Ibid.

212

in Detroit became increasingly, overtly, dominated by the interests of the private sector. The
professional class of urban planners that had previously designed and implemented city
development has been circumvented altogether as business moguls like Mike Ilitch devised their
own downtown development master plans.605 Not unlike the process that often leads the
introduction of legislation and the passage of new laws in Congress, corporations draw up the
plans and terms for downtown development to maximize their own profit. What makes stadiumdriven development in Detroit so remarkable, however, is the scope of Ilitch’s development and
its dramatic influence on Detroit’s latest attempt to redefine itself.
On March 31, 1999, Mike and Marian Ilitch “announced the formation of Ilitch Ventures
Inc., a privately held Michigan corporation that [would] own and manage their primary business
interests in the food and entertainment industries.”606 The companies that fall under the umbrella
of the holding company “had consolidated revenues in 1998 of approximately $800 million,”
demonstrating the scope and magnitude of Ilitch’s designs for the reimagining of downtown
Detroit.607 The nature of the companies brought into the holding company further underscores
Ilitch’s single-minded focus on building an entertainment empire: Little Caesar Enterprises,
Olympia Entertainment, Olympia Development, the Detroit Red Wings, the Detroit Tigers, the
Detroit Rockers, and Olympia Specialty Foods. In conjunction with the legalization of casino
gaming downtown (not to mention Marion Ilitch’s subsequent purchase of the Motor City
Casino), Mike Ilitch capitalized on “tourist city” development trends to build a local
entertainment empire that has reshaped downtown development in Detroit. That trend continues
in Detroit today as Ilitch Holdings, Inc. now partners with Quicken Loans CEO, Dan Gilbert’s,

605

“Ilitchs Announce Growth Plan; Form New Holding Company/Make Key Personnel Appointments.” Business
Wire, Mar 31, 1999.
606
Ibid.
607
Ibid.

213

real estate development company Rock Ventures, LCC and others in a new development strategy
the coalition is calling Opportunity Detroit.608
A Placemaking Vision for Downtown Detroit
In 2011, Dan Gilbert started buying up numerous properties in downtown Detroit in what
Gilbert called the city’s “skyscraper sale.”609 Following the example of Mike Ilitch, Gilbert
moved his Quicken Loans headquarters downtown and began buying up properties in the central
core of the city along the Woodward Avenue corridor and to the east, south of Gratiot Avenue.
Like Ilitch, Gilbert owns a professional sports team, the NBA’s Cleveland Cavaliers, and he has
been using his tremendous wealth to invest not only in downtown Detroit, but in Cleveland as
well. Aside from his role as the head of Quicken Loans and as an urban real estate developer,
Gilbert has also begun investing heavily in the casino industry, not only in Detroit where he now
owns the Greektown Casino and hotel, but also in other cities such as Cleveland, Baltimore, and
potentially Toronto.610 With his holdings in Detroit, Gilbert is developing what the coalition
behind Opportunity Detroit call “great places,” which contain four key attributes: accessible
(walkable, convenient), active (fun, engaging), comfortable (attractive, clean), and sociable
(neighborly, welcoming).611 The plan was heavily influenced by William H. Whyte’s faith in the
tremendous multiplier effect of small spaces. The planners behind Opportunity Detroit have
turned that principle into what they call the “Power of 10,” explained as follows:
A successful downtown should be conceived of as a series of destinations, and
each destination should be made up of smaller places. Each place should offer
608

“A Placemaking Vision for Downtown Detroit,” OpportunityDetroit.com, PDF, accessed May 4, 2014,
http://opportunitydetroit.com/wp-content/themes/OppDet_v2/assets/PlacemakingBook-PDFSm.pdf. Other partners
in the Opportunity Detroit plan include M1-Rail, Detroit Economic Growth Corporation (DEGC), Detroit
Entertainment District Asscociation (DEDA), the Downtown Detroit Partnership and the City of Detroit.
609
David Segal, “A Missionary’s Quest to Remake Motor City,” New York Times, April 13, 2013.
610
Eugene McCormick, “Two Years after Cleveland’s Horseshoe Casino Opening Phase 2 still just a Promise,” The
Cleveland Leader, May 5, 2014.
611
“A Placemaking Vision,” 8.

214

many things to do and activities for people to engage in. An opportunity to sit,
contemplate art, touch and play with water, purchase food, play a game, listen to
music, etc. are the kinds of activities that attract people to a place and keep them
coming back. These places create a district filled with multiple activities. A great
downtown or city needs at least 10 such great destinations, each with 10 places
and 10 things to do.612
The plan identified ten such already existing or potential places key to this placemaking
development strategy: Grand Circus Park, Woodward Avenue Promenade, Capitol Park,
Paradise Valley, Campus Martius/Cadillac Square, Monroe Entertainment/Greektown,
Woodward Avenue Esplanade, Hart Plaza, River Walk, and the Entertainment District, which
was developed by Mike Ilitch and the city for the sports stadiums and theater district. The heart
of the plan calls for focused development in the Capitol Park, Campus Martius/Cadillac Square,
and Grand Circus Park areas. Continuing with Detroit’s recent redevelopment focus, these areas
highlight the need for fun, food, entertainment, and a place to spend disposable income.
All of this development is going on as the city of Detroit continues to fight its way out of
a state imposed bankruptcy, but that did not prevent Ilitch from reaching an agreement with city
and state officials for a new $650 million hockey arena and expanded entertainment district—
which lies just to the north of the Fisher Freeway and Ilitch’s other stadium-centered
entertainment district. Ilitch argued that “stadiums can be the jewel . . . the centerpiece of a
revival that stretches from the freeways that border this [stadium district], all the way back to
Grand River and all the way down to Grand Circus Park.”613 Jewels represent a number of things,
such as a sign of commitment between two parties or a shiny sign of status that catches the
attention of envious onlookers. The problem is that no matter their purpose, the only real value in
a jewel belongs exclusively to the owner. While Ilitch’s second stadium-driven development
612

Ibid., 10.
Drew Sharp, “Ilitch’s Legacy is on the Line with New Comerica Park,” Detroit Free Press,
May 28, 1999.
613

215

does appear to reaffirm his commitment to the city of Detroit, when the ink dries on the final
deal, the Ilitch family will obtain exclusive rights to the revenues generated by his new hockey
arena, from parking and concessions all the way up to the naming rights to the arena. On the
other hand, it is hard to argue that Ilitch’s investment in developing the stadium and
entertainment district did not have a big influence on and encourage the new development
spearheaded by Gilbert in the center of downtown. And yet, it’s likewise hard to imagine that
either of these tremendous development projects will serve the primarily poor and
underemployed African American population that much of this investment is looking to displace.
Detroit appears to be on the way toward some form of urban renaissance led by
unprecedented levels of private investment. But those investments are money-making ventures
for some of the wealthier men in the United States and have little to do with improving the
experiences and opportunities for the vast majority of the city’s black residents. No, much like
those evicted from Chavez Ravine in Los Angeles and along Wentworth Avenue in Chicago, the
poor African American residents in Detroit will be forced out and replaced with entertainmentdriven developments intended to lure back suburban whites. More than a decade into the twentyfirst century, urban development in the United States still emphasizes large-scale commercial
development projects while turning a blind eye to the problems of racial inequality and poverty.
For Julian Chavez and the Mexican migrants living in his ravine; for the tired elderly African
Americans who migrated to Chicago for jobs only to be evicted in their old age so that kids
growing up in suburban Addison could safely and securely drive in and watch the White Sox
play; for the remnants of the Great Migration left scrambling for low-skilled jobs and housing in
a Detroit that no longer provides either; for these and many more, both natives and migrants of
color, there is and never really has been, a place in the American city. Thanks in large part to

216

stadium-driven and other entertainment-centered urban development strategies, US cities are
becoming spaces reimagined and constructed as tourist destinations and entertaining shopping
centers for the suburban whites who once abandoned them.

217

APPENDICES

218

Appendix A: Casino/Sports/Entertainment-Driven Development in Downtown Detroit

Figure 1: Casino/Sports/Entertainment-Driven Development
Created with Fireshot from: “Downtown Detroit,” Google Maps, Google, 2014.

219

Appendix B: Future Site for new Detroit Red Wings Arena

Figure 2: Future Site for new Detroit Red Wings Arena
Taken from: Jose Guillen, “Detroit Red Wings’ New Stadium Land Transfer Approved by City,”
Detroit Free Press, Gannett, February 4, 2014. Web. March 6, 2014.

220

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