Speaking at a luncheon meeting at the city's existing major convention center, Cobo Center, on the eve of the city's biggest annual event, the North American International Auto Show, Kilpatrick on Friday revealed plans for a new convention hall to replace Cobo. Kilpatrick said the new center would contain more than one million sf of convention space on one contiguous floor and would cost somewhere between $700 million to $1.5 billion.
Kilpatrick refused to reveal the likely location of such a property, saying he didn't want to encourage a run-up in land prices. Likewise, the mayor didn't offer any concrete plans for funding the project, though he did say he and other city leaders would be traveling to Denver in the near future to learn about ways that community financed the expansion of the Colorado Convention Center.
Kilpatrick did stress, however, that the new center should be run by a regional authority, likely consisting of representation from Detroit and Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties.
"Taxpayers of the City of Detroit and probably different places in the state will be asked to do something to contribute to this project. We don't know exactly what that is yet," Kilpatrick told reporters after his speech.
The mayor said Cobo's riverfront location, however, may actually benefit the new project. "The old facility may play very heavily in the financing of the new one. I don't know what I mean by that yet ... but I do know that this is prime real estate," he said.
Kilpatrick said expanding the existing Cobo is impractical because it could only be expanded vertically, due to land limitations.
The Detroit Auto Dealers Association has been asking for more space for the auto show for several years. The show annually draws more than 6,500 journalists and more than 800,000 visitors. On Friday night, a charity preview event of the show raised more than $7 million for 11 local children's charities. Some say at some point Detroit could even stand the risk of losing the international show because of the growing space crunch at Cobo.
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