A new experience could soon be coming to Ford Field in an effort to bring another pro franchise to the city.
During a Monday morning appearance on “The Frank Beckmann Show”, Lions team president Rod Wood mentioned that he along with other team executives would meet later in the week to discuss the possibility of adding a retractable roof to Ford Field in hopes of landing a Major League Soccer expansion team.
Via the Detroit Free Press:
“It’s something we’re looking at. We’re going to have a meeting later this week,” Wood said on “The Frank Beckmann Show.” “It’s been an interesting process working with Dan (Gilbert) and Tom Gores and their teams, and Arn Tellem is pretty much leading this pitch with MLS.”
Wood added:
“Building another stadium makes no sense with the three that we have,” Wood said. “I think there’s a purest wing in the MLS and they like to play on grass, they like to play outside. They have preferred smaller stadiums, although the two most successful franchises play in football stadiums, in Atlanta and Seattle. They regularly draw 40, 50, 60,000 fans and I think we might have a shot at doing the same thing downtown.
“With all the vibrancy downtown and all the young people now working downtown that love soccer, and coming off the World Cup where everybody was very interested in what’s going on. It’d be great to have that downtown, but we’ll see about the roof.”
Currently Detroit is in the mix for a 2020 MLS expansion team. However the United State’s highest tier of professional soccer has typically preferred smaller outdoor venues with a natural grass surface, features Ford Field currently doesn’t have. Now obviously the Lions won’t reduce the capacity of Ford Field and the option of building a new stand alone soccer stadium seems off the table.
But even with the notion of another sports venue being constructed cost and who’ll ultimately take care of the bill still needs to be determined.
According to the Freep, the U.S. Open venue added a retractable roof back in 2016 for a cool price tag of $150 million. If adding a grass surface is also in the mix you’d have to expect the price tag to tear out the field turf and add some sod would further bloat the final cost of Ford Field’s face lift.
Price aside though, watching the Lions play outdoors with the added caveat of having an MLS team in Detroit would be pretty fucking awesome. If this does move forward though you have to wonder if it’s a job that can be undertaken during the NFL offseason and if it can’t where do the Lions play while the construction takes place? Could a temporary move to the Big House be an option?
Bottom line though, it’s hard to imagine Martha Ford agreeing to fronting some of the cost of the retractable roof just so Dan Gilbert and Tom Gores can get an MLS team in Detroit.