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Nobody had heard of Andreas Apostolopoulos until he bought the Pontiac Silverdome. Can the Toronto resident save the stadium and its city with his dream of a professional soccer team?
On a Saturday night earlier this year, nearly 7,000 people poured into the Silverdome in Pontiac, Mich., to watch a boxing match. The event was most notable for the venue itself. The Silverdome, a massive stadium about a half-hour north of Detroit, had sat empty for more than four years and had only reopened less than 12 months ago. Fight promoter Don King explained the significance to reporters a few days prior. "The Silverdome is what we call 'the Resurrection,' because the building was ead and we're rolling away the stone and bringing it back alive," he said.
By 10 o'clock, the ringside seats were bouncing with raucous fans. The event was staged at one end of the stadium, with the remaining three-quarters hidden behind giant blue curtains. As the boxers for the main bout were summoned to the ring, a pile of officials and hangers-on scrambled in to mill around for the cameras from HBO. King waved a couple of small American flags. But the man most responsible for the event, Andreas Apostolopoulos, looked lost and unsure of why exactly he was in the middle of a boxing ring. A short, stocky man with thinning white hair, he wandered around with his hands in his pockets. He'd been working in his office most of the night and likely would have stayed there if the stadium's general manager hadn't forced him out.
Apostolopoulos, a 59-year-old real estate developer, owns the Silverdome. Born in Greece but a Toronto-resident for more than four decades, he had never heard of the 80,000-seat stadium until shortly befo: he bought it. Built in 1975 for US$55.7 million, the dome served as the home for both the Detroit Lions and the Detroit Piston; has hosted events ranging from the holymass performed by Pope John Paul Il-to the hokey, such as WrestleMania III. As a source of civic pride for the roughly 66,000 residents of Pontiac, it was a kind of existential blow for the stadium to sit empty for so many years. Even worse, Pontiac was forced to auction off...