After years of landing in the good graces of the public by way of successful sports teams, the true colors of the Ilitch family are really starting to show.
Friday, it was reported by Steve Neavling of the Metro Times (by way of The Detroit News) that a federal lawsuit has revealed that city officials have denied permits to longtime independent vendors who work games outside of Detroit sporting events selling hotdogs, peanuts, bottled water, and other souvenirs. Neavling described this as a “virtual monopoly” for the Ilitch family around the Little Caesars Arena after taxpayers had to surrender nearly $400 million dollars in order for the complex to be built.
“It stinks to high heaven,” Ryan Williams, one of the vendors who filed the suit, told the News. “They just cut everybody off. It’s almost like they just swept us under the rug.”
Detroit Corporation Counsel Lawrence Garcia denies the allegations, saying city code bars vendors from setting up shop there.
“Detroit’s Code prohibits stationary vendors from operating with 300 feet of a sports arena,” Garcia says in a statement to Metro Times. “Before the new arena was built, some vendors may have enjoyed licenses to peddle wares on Woodward north of the freeway. However, since the LCA became a sports arena, BSEED has been unable to provide or renew licenses for vendors wishing to make sales in that area.”
Williams, co-plaintiff Cheryl Robinson, and others involved in the lawsuit claim their constitutional rights of due process were violated when their licenses weren’t renewed “without a legally justifiable reason”. Robinson stated that the license she received in 2017 to sell sports themed memorabilia was later revoked.
So as the Ilitch family continues to go unchecked and essentially rewarded for “The District Detroit” which may go down as one of the biggest scams in city history, the local government has instead basically identified it’s citizens looking to make an honest buck as the villains and threat to the big, bloodsucking business. Also, do not forget the common practice of the Ilitch family who routinely buys up broken down and abandoned apartment buildings to leave them vacant or their promise to develop new communities only to squander more taxpayer dollars into large parking lots to further line their pockets.
The Ilitch family is fucking horrible. They aren’t the saviors of Detroit, they simply found a city that’ll routinely bend over and say “can I have another”.
