The Suburban Collection Showplace is a convention center in Novi, Michigan. Located off Interstate 96, about 20 miles (32 km) northwest of Detroit, it is the second-largest convention center in Metro Detroit (after Huntington Place). [1] [2] It is best known as the current location of the Michigan State Fair. [3]
In the late 1980s, Irvin Yackness, the president of the Home Builders Association of Southeast Michigan, proposed the construction of a convention center in Detroit's suburbs to host the organization's expositions. [4] [5] He approahced Blair Bowman, a local attorney, to develop the proposed center. In lieu of constructing a new facility, Bowman instead opted to lease a vacant warehouse near the I-96 interchange at Novi Road.
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, moved 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. [4] 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. [6]
In 1994, the Motorsports Hall of Fame of America subleased a space in the Expo Center to open a museum.
In 2000, Bowman announced plans to relocate the Expo Center to a new facility, to be built 1 1/2 miles to the west. [7]
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 Detroit-area operations. [1] [8] [9] The company later expressed more interest in using the Quicken Loans name, which was nationally known, instead of Rock Financial, which was only well-known around Metro Detroit. Bowman instead terminated the original naming deal, and resold the naming rights to the Suburban Collection, a local automobile dealership group, in 2010. [1] [10]
Following the new Showplace's opening, 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, and remained so until its demolition in June 2012. [11] [12] 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.
In 2013, a six-floor Hyatt Place hotel was constructed at the east end of the Showplace, along with a new ballroom and additional meeting space. [2] Later, in 2019, a two-floor expansion opened at the Showplace's west end, with additional event space. [13]
Currently, the center has 340,000 square feet (32,000 m2) of exhibition and convention space. [2] To accommodate the state fair's anticipated growth, Bowman made several land purchases since 2012, totaling 43-acre (17 ha) of space, including a plot of land across Grand River Avenue and a 30-acre (12 ha) lot to the west. [3]
In 2009, the Showplace hosted Ring of Honor's "Aries vs. Richards" which featured Austin Aries and Davey Richards as the main event along with many other soon-to-be-famous wrestlers including The Briscoes, Colt Cabana, El Generico, Kevin Steen, The Young Bucks, and Kenny Omega.
Since 2012, the Showplace is the home of the revived Michigan State Fair.
It has also been the location for Motor City Comic Con since 2011 due to the large space available for many VIPs, merchants, and other vendors and artists, making it a popular place for many cosplayers and other guests to see their favorite stars, artists, and get merchandise otherwise unavailable through stores and via online.
Huntington Place is a convention center in Downtown Detroit, owned by the Detroit Regional Convention Facility Authority (DRCFA) and operated by ASM Global. Located at 1 Washington Boulevard, the facility was originally named after former Mayor of Detroit Albert Cobo.
Ally Detroit Center, formerly One Detroit Center, is a skyscraper and class-A office building located in Downtown Detroit, overlooking the Detroit Financial District. Rising 619 feet (189 m), the 43-story tower is the tallest office building in Michigan and the second tallest building overall in the state behind the central hotel tower of the Renaissance Center, located a few blocks away. Although the Penobscot Building has more floors above ground (45), those of Ally Detroit Center are taller, with its roof sitting roughly 60 feet (18 m) taller than that of the Penobscot. It has a floor area of 1,674,708 sq ft (155,585.5 m2).
The Frankenmuth Credit Union Event Center was a 2,500 seat multi-purpose arena in Birch Run, Michigan. However, it was sold to Camping World in November 2020 and is now one of their largest showrooms. Prior to 2002, it was the first NHL Skate center. Due to lack of interest, it was converted into an events center. It was also the home of the Great Lakes Storm from 2002 to 2005. Prior to being sold in 2020, it was operated by Oak View Group Facilities and used for trade shows, conventions and other events, such as gun and knife shows and music festivals.
The Bellevue-Stratford Hotel is a landmark building at 200 S. Broad Street at the corner of Walnut Street in Center City Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. Constructed in 1904 and expanded to its present size in 1912, it has continued as a well-known institution for more than a century and is still widely known by that original, historic name.
Hollywood Casino at Greektown, formerly Greektown Casino-Hotel, is a casino hotel in the Greektown neighborhood in Detroit, Michigan. It is owned by Vici Properties and operated by Penn Entertainment.
Daniel Gilbert is an American billionaire, businessman, and philanthropist. He is the co-founder and majority owner of Rocket Mortgage, founder of Rock Ventures, and owner of the National Basketball Association's Cleveland Cavaliers. Gilbert owns several sports franchises, including the American Hockey League's Cleveland Monsters, and the NBA G League's Cleveland Charge. He operates the Rocket Mortgage FieldHouse in Cleveland, Ohio, home to the Cavaliers and Monsters. As of January 2023, Forbes estimated his net worth at US$18.3 billion.
Rocket Mortgage, LLC, formerly Quicken Loans, LLC, is an American mortgage lender, headquartered in Detroit, Michigan. In January 2018, Rocket Mortgage became the largest overall retail lender in the U.S., and it was also the largest online retail mortgage lender. Rocket Mortgage relies on wholesale funding to make its loans and uses online applications rather than a branch system. Amrock is also part of the Rocket Mortgage Family of Companies. The company closed more than $400 billion of mortgage volume across all 50 states from 2013 through 2017.
1001 Woodward is a 25-floor office building in Downtown Detroit, Michigan. It replaced the Majestic Building, a 14-story high rise on the same site. The building is located just south of the neighboring David Stott Building, at the corner of Woodward Avenue and Michigan Avenue overlooking Campus Martius Park. Constructed from 1963 to 1965, the building is designed in the International Style. It was listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 2013.
Chrysler House is a 23-story, 325-foot (99 m) skyscraper located at 719 Griswold Street in Downtown Detroit, Michigan. The building is adjacent to the Penobscot Building in the heart of the U.S. designated Detroit Financial District. It is used as an office building, with retail space on the street level. It was originally known as the Dime Building but has carried numerous names over the years.
Fairlane Town Center is a super-regional shopping mall in the Detroit suburb of Dearborn, Michigan. The mall is adjacent to The Henry Hotel, The Fairlane Club, the University of Michigan–Dearborn, Henry Ford Community College, The Henry Ford, and the Ford Motor Company headquarters. The anchor stores are Macy's and JCPenney, with vacant anchor spaces last occupied by AMC Theatres, Sears, and Ford Motor Company offices.
The Edward Hotel & Convention Center was a 14-story, 773-room former conference center hotel located in the Metro Detroit suburb of Dearborn, Michigan. Until its closure in 2018, it was the second largest hotel in Michigan, after the Marriott in Detroit's Renaissance Center.
One Campus Martius is a building located in downtown Detroit, Michigan. It began construction in 2000 and was finished in 2003. It has seventeen floors in total, fifteen above-ground, and two below-ground, and has 1,088,000 square feet (100,000 m2) of office space. The high-rise was built as an office building with a restaurant, retail units, space for Compuware and a fitness center, as well as an atrium. The building now has Rocket Mortgage, Microsoft, Meridian Health, Plante Moran and Compuware as its major tenants.
The Plaza at Harmon Meadow is a shopping complex in the Meadowlands of Secaucus, New Jersey, approximately six miles from New York City. It was developed by Hartz Mountain Industries, whose corporate offices are located in the Plaza. The Plaza, which Hartz refers to as a “mixed-use community”, encompasses 175 acres (0.71 km2), and consists of over 3,500,000 square feet (330,000 m2) of hotel, office, retail, and restaurants space. It was purchased by Howard Michaels's Carlton Group in 2015. It was built in 1981.
Downtown Detroit is the central business district and a residential area of the city of Detroit, Michigan, United States. Locally, "downtown" tends to refer to the 1.4 square mile region bordered by M-10 to the west, Interstate 75 to the north, I-375 to the east, and the Detroit River to the south. It may also be used to refer to the Greater Downtown area, a 7.2 square mile region that includes surrounding neighborhoods such as Midtown, Corktown, Rivertown, and Woodbridge.
Tourism in metropolitan Detroit, Michigan is a significant factor for the region's culture and for its economy, comprising nine percent of the area's two million jobs. About 19 million people visit Metro Detroit spending an estimated 6 billion in 2019. In 2009, this number was about 15.9 million people, spending an estimated $4.8 billion. Detroit is one of the largest American cities and metropolitan regions to offer casino resort hotels. Leading multi-day events throughout Metro Detroit draw crowds of hundreds of thousands to over three million people. More than fifteen million people cross the highly traveled nexus of the Ambassador Bridge and the Detroit-Windsor Tunnel annually. Detroit is at the center of an emerging Great Lakes Megalopolis. An estimated 46 million people live within a 300-mile (480 km) radius of Metro Detroit.
The metropolitan area surrounding and including Detroit, Michigan, is a ten-county area with a population of over 5.9 million, a workforce of 2.6 million, and about 347,000 businesses. Detroit's six-county Metropolitan Statistical Area has a population of about 4.3 million, a workforce of about 2.1 million, and a gross metropolitan product of $200.9 billion. Detroit's urban area has a population of 3.9 million. A 2005 PricewaterhouseCoopers study estimated that Detroit's urban area had a gross domestic product of $203 billion.
The Michigan State Fair is an annual event originally held from 1849 to 2009 in Detroit, the state's largest city. In 2009 the governor declined to fund it because of other priorities.
The Motor City Comic Con is a fan convention held in Novi, Michigan, United States, at the Suburban Collection Showplace. It is traditionally a three-day event, usually held in May of each year. The Motor City Comic Con was founded in 1989 by comics retailer Michael Goldman.
The Ascension Providence Hospital, Novi Campus, is a hospital in Novi, Michigan in Greater Detroit. It is a Comprehensive Stroke Center and part of Ascension Michigan.