December 05. 2006
Proposal Offers Glimmer of Hope

TOM WALSH, FREE PRESS COLUMNIST

MEGA-COBO: Ficano cites economic need, says 'failure not an option'
If this new proposal to expand Cobo Center and run it like a private business pans out, give credit to Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano and two key deputies, along with Walbridge Aldinger CEO John Rakolta and Chuck Watters Jr. of Hines Interests.

They persevered when a slew of previous Cobo expansion efforts died for lack of money, vision or because of political bickering.

"If 15 years go by and we find ourselves with a second-tier auto show because we haven't done anything about Cobo, we have only ourselves to blame," Rakolta said Monday evening.

"We need to put partisanship in the trash can and look at this to see if it can work. It's just one idea from some private sector guys; there's a lot of room for movement and discussion."

For more than a year -- quietly and rigorously -- Azzam Elder and Turkia Mullin, deputy and assistant Wayne County executives, have been crunching numbers and recruiting private-sector experts to help resolve a raft of obstacles and objections that had killed previous Cobo plans.

They tapped Rakolta and Watters for ideas on how to cut the construction cost for a Cobo expansion and makeover -- $1 billion in some previous discarded schemes -- down to $425 million and have Cobo operations run by a private-sector business.

They looked at previous plans for building a new convention center or expanding Cobo, and studied detailed objections raised by Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson.

Ficano, Mullin and Elder knew that no Cobo plan would fly unless it met several key criteria:

In August, the team had the outline of a plan and briefed Detroit Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick for the first time.

The plan would do what the Detroit Auto Dealers Association had wanted for five years -- expand Cobo from 700,000 square feet of exhibit space to about 970,000 square feet, so that its most important event, the North American International Auto Show, would no longer be dwarfed by other major international shows.

And the new plan has some interesting new twists:

Kilpatrick was impressed by the outline and encouraged the group to keep working on a detailed proposal.

Next stop was Patterson, the Oakland County executive who had shot down previous Cobo proposals after skewering them as too expensive.

He commissioned his own convention center study and lambasted Detroit for what he called incomprehensible financial reports on Cobo's operations as a city-owned entity. Patterson had advocated a privately financed convention center, perhaps linked to a casino, but no such proposals have materialized.

In late October, the Wayne County group briefed Patterson and Nancy White of the Macomb County Board of Commissioners on the plan.

In addition to his construction expertise, Rakolta's presence on the team was a political plus.

Like Patterson, Rakolta is a well-known Republican. Patterson agreed to have his financial people give the Cobo proposal further study; a follow-up meeting was scheduled for today.

Now that the Cobo proposal is out in the public arena, we will hear some of the usual squealing.

Some in Detroit will protest surrendering regional ownership of a city-owned jewel to regional governance.

But if I had a jewel that was draining away $15 million in taxpayer money every year, I'd hock it in a flash.

Patterson spoke up Monday for private-sector support, as others may do. But from where? General Motors Corp., Ford Motor Co. and Chrysler Group aren't exactly flush these days.

Still others in southeast Michigan will want the state to contribute.

Let every group have its say on the plan, by all means.

But let's also give Ficano's team, along with Walbridge Aldinger and Hines, kudos for bringing forth a plan that's appealing as well as fiscally responsible, which means it should not be dead on arrival politically.

Contact TOM WALSH at 313-223-4430 or

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