One of the more interesting, albeit off message, comments during the press coverage of the opening of the MotorCity Casino Hotel is the statement by Marian Ilitch, owner of MotorCity and wife of Mike Ilitch, owner of the Fox Theatre, Detroit Tigers, Detroit Red Wings, and Little Caesars, regarding an extension of the People Mover.
Ms. Ilitch stated that they are seriously investigated an extension of the Detroit People Mover, a fixed-circuit, elevated, light rail transit system that currently encircles the core of downtown Detroit. A couple of thoughts about that statement.
First, the People Mover has been controversial because of its low ridership and substantial annual subsidies. So, an expansion could be a double-edged sword. It would logically increase ridership, as the station at the Greektown Casino is one of the busiest in the current loop, and one would assume a second casino location would increase ridership overall. But who is going to fund the land acquisition and construction of the expansion? MotorCity Casino? The City of Detroit? If the rumored construction of a new hockey arena behind the Fox Theatre comes to fruition, there would be two logical beneficiaries, the Detroit Red Wings, and the MotorCity Casino (both of which, of course, are owned by the Ilitch family).
The second thought is that such a statement, at the grand opening of the new casino hotel, merely highlights for me that the casino's executives have come to grips with the fact that MotorCity Casino has the worst location of the three Detroit casinos. An extension of the People Mover to MotorCity would arguably reduce the gap in location benefit that MGM Grand Detroit and Greektown Casino currently enjoy.
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