History
In the late 1980s, Irvin Yackness, the president of the Home Builders Association of Southeast Michigan, proposed the construction of a convention center in one of Detroit's suburbs to host the organization's expositions and events. [1] [2] He approached Blair Bowman, a local attorney, to develop the proposed venue. In lieu of constructing a new facility, Bowman rejected the offer and opted to lease a vacant warehouse near the I-96 interchange at Novi Road.
Originally constructed in 1966 as a factory for the Adell Corporation, a manufacturer of automobile door guards, the warehouse was closed when its owner, Franklin Adell, relocated the company to Texas in the 1980s. Adell initially leased the building to Mohawk Liqueur, which used it to bottle Kahlúa for sale across the Midwest. [1] When Mohawk moved out, Adell agreed to lease the building to Bowman. Following extensive renovations, the Novi Expo Center opened in the space in March 1992. [3]
In 1994, the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America subleased a space in the Expo Center to open a museum and continued to lease the space until 2009.
Construction of new facility
In 2000, Bowman announced plans to relocate the Expo Center to a new facility, to be built 1+1⁄2 miles (2.4 km) to the west. [4]
The new, $18 million facility opened in August 2005 as the Rock Financial Showplace, under a naming rights deal with Quicken Loans, which, at the time, used its former name, Rock Financial, for its Metropolitan Detroit operations. [5] [6] The company later pushed to use the Quicken Loans name, which was the name of their national business. Bowman instead terminated the original naming deal, and resold the naming rights to the Suburban Collection, a local automobile dealership group, in 2010. [7]
Following the opening of the Showpace, a portion of the original Expo Center was still used by the Motorsports Hall of Fame, until the Hall's collections relocated in 2009 to the Detroit Science Center. The building was then completely vacant until it was torn down in June 2012. [8] [9] The land, still owned by the Adell family, would eventually be redeveloped into the Adell Center, a mixed-use complex including hotels, retail, and restaurants.
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