VIDEO: Production of MotorCity Casino Hotel's Chip Foose inspired metal roof

Quality Metalcraft Architecture, now playing on Brightcove.com.

Video explains how QMC Architectural is manufacturing the unique metal roof feature envisioned by renowned Hot Rod designer Chip Foose for the expanded MotorCity Casino Hotel project in Detroit, Michigan.

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New Web site launched for the expanded "MotorCity Casino Hotel"

Detroit Entertainment LLC has launched a new website for the Detroit's expanding MotorCity Casino Hotel. The site attempts to relay the vibe created by the $275 million renovation and expansion and the design elements of contributed by legendary Hot Rod designer Chip Foose.

At best it gives a peak at what to expect from the Hotel addition when it opens later this year. Here are three thumbnails examples of what you'll find at the revamped MotorCityCasino.com. The site is intended to broadcast live from the Casino's Radio Bar but we couldn't get anything today.

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Hotel

Ilitch casino now set for Fall 2007 Grand Re-Opening

6.25.07

MotorCity Casino $275 million dollar renovation set to open Fall 2007

by Bonnie Demos filed under Poker News

MotorCity Casino $275 million dollar renovation set to open Fall 2007

MotorCity Casino (MCC), owned by Marian Ilitch, is the only locally owned and operated casino in Detroit.

MotorCity Casino opened in December 1999 and is located in the historic Corktown neighborhood. The Casino is currently undergoing a $275 million dollar renovation at its current site, which includes expanded gaming space totaling 100,000 sq. ft. and a new 17-story, 400-room hotel tower. The project includes convention and banquet space, a 1,200-seat theater, a spa, retail outlets, new dining options and additional parking. It is expected to be complete by fall 2007.

The expansion incorporates the old Wagner Baking Company Building and has been under construction since the fall of 2006. MotorCity Casino will be the first Detroit casino to bring new gaming and entertainment space online. The new space will open to the general public on Thursday, June 7, 2007.

Chip Foose, the renowned designer behind some of the most famous vehicles of the last decade served as a design consultant for the expansion. Foose and the Genesis Design team carried the "MotorCity" theme throughout the casino with an emphasis on Future Retro styling. The MotorCity Casino expansion offers the latest in gaming technology and must see design elements for all visitors.

Chip Foose, a native of Huntington Beach, boasts a long history of prestigious awards for his innovative automotive and product designs. Some of his trademark cars include the Roadster, Sportstar, Boydster I and II, and Boyd Air.

At the age of seven, Foose began working on cars at his father's company, Project Design. From there he worked at the Asha Corporation, Stehrenberger Design, and Baker Sportronics, eventually becoming president of Hot Rods by Boyd. His award winning hot rods, customs, studio vehicles and show cars premiered in RoboCop, Blade Runner, and Gone in 60 Seconds.

Chip Foose created and currently works at Foose Design, an automotive and product design company specializing in illustration, graphics, surfacing, and complete construction of automobiles and automotive manufacturers. He can also be seen on his hit automotive show, Overhaulin', on the Learning Channel (TLC).

Foose joined the development team in August 2006 as a design consultant on both the interior and the exterior of the MotorCity Casino project. His trademark automotive styling is reflected in various aspects of the casino expansion and hotel design.

Ilitch won't send money out of state or to an Indian tribe, she'll keep it at home

7.11.07

Your hometown casino? MotorCity emphasizes local connections in marketing

By Brent Snavely

MotorCity Casino officials and Ilitch family members want to position MotorCity as Detroit's “hometown casino,” with $275 million in expanded gambling and new hotel construction that more closely embraces the city's heritage than its two Detroit competitors.

Whether the strategy pays off, and catapults MotorCity to the city's highest-grossing casino over market leader MGM Grand Detroit Casino L.L.C., will become evident as the casinos report their monthly sales figures to the Michigan Gaming Control Board.

For April MGM Grand reported casino revenue of $41 million, MotorCity reported $39.3 million and Greektown Casino L.L.C. reported $30.1 million.

MotorCity's decision to go after the hometown casino image is smart, said Tim Smith, president of Royal Oak-based marketing and branding firm Skidmore Inc. The challenge will be for MotorCity to back up its claims to customers after they walk in the door.

Smith, who had not yet visited the new gambling addition of MotorCity that opened last week, predicts that the marketing message of each of Detroit's new or expanded casinos will be far more distinctive than in the past.

“I'm not a big gambler, but I've walked through all three ... and once you are inside, one could very easily be confused with the other,” Smith said.

MotorCity Casino opened its 60,000-square-foot expansion Thursday. Huntington Beach, Calif.-based auto designer Chip Foose served as design consultant and helped to inject elements from Detroit's automotive and musical past.

Marian Ilitch, co-founder of Little Caesars and vice chairwoman of Ilitch Holdings Inc., purchased MotorCity in April 2005. Detroit-based Ilitch Holdings includes the Detroit Red Wings, Detroit Tigers, Olympia Entertainment, Fox Theatre and the management of Joe Louis Arena and Cobo Arena.

During a VIP grand opening Tuesday, her son Chris Ilitch, president and CEO of Ilitch Holdings Inc., said he is proud that the casino project boosts his family's investment in Detroit since the early 1980s to more than $660 million.

Those comments, along with MotorCity's new design and marketing elements, are part of coordinated effort to link MotorCity Casino to Detroit's automotive and entertainment culture and to brand it as Detroit's “hometown casino.”

“That's kind of a straw man argument,” said Bob Berg, partner with Detroit-based public-relations firm Berg Muirhead & Associates, which represents MGM Grand.

“For one, all of the MGM employees are from here. And over half the employees are residents of Detroit.”

While MGM is owned by Las Vegas-based MGM Mirage, Berg said its $765 million investment for its permanent location at the Lodge Freeway and Michigan Avenue dwarfs MotorCity's investment.

“MGM is the only one that has kept their original commitment to build a brand-new facility,” Berg said.

Greektown Casino, meanwhile, says it provides the greatest support to downtown Detroit.

“If you look at where the three casinos are located, only one is integrated in the downtown business district of Detroit,” said Roger Martin, a principal in Lansing-based Martin Waymire Advocacy Communications.

The Sault Ste. Marie Tribe of Chippewa Indians owns more than 90 percent of Greektown; several Detroit investors, including former deputy Detroit Fire Commissioner Marvin Beatty, own the remainder.

“In terms of any of the casinos that have really embraced and supported the downtown business community, I think that Greektown is clearly the one that has done that,” Martin said. “From day one ... Greektown has been 100 percent owned by Detroit and Michigan people.”

But MotorCity boasts that where ownership resides is important. “Marian Ilitch and her family have been reinvesting in the city of Detroit since 1959,” said Gregg Solomon, CEO of MotorCity. “The thing we are very, very proud of is the money we make here has continually gone back to the city of Detroit. We are not sending checks back to Las Vegas or to an Indian tribe. ... It stays here in Detroit.”

Solomon said MotorCity has worked with renowned New York City-based Landor Associates since the 1990s as its branding consultant. Landor's goal is to ensure that all MotorCity's plans fit together into a single image.

Located at 2901 Grand River Ave., MotorCity casino is on the site of the former Wonder Bread bakery, built in 1915 by the Wagner Baking Co. A portion of it was restored to original condition.

“When it was time for us to proceed with our permanent facility we decided — rather than do what most casinos in Vegas would do, which is take dynamite and blow it up — we decided to restore part of the building,” Solomon said.

Inside, Solomon said Foose drew inspiration from concept cars designed in the 1940s and 1950s to create a “future retro” look for the casino.

A sweeping neon light that can change colors spans the center of the ceiling and is reminiscent of the giant tail fins and headlights of the cars of the time.

Elsewhere, the casino's wallpaper is made from the distorted image of a front grill of a car from the 1950s and the VIP valet area is lit by lights that are replicas of car lights from the era.

Other MotorCity Casino design elements play heavily on Detroit's musical and sports heritage.

The space that opened Thursday includes a broadcast studio. Still under construction are a recording studio, a theater and a sports bar.

“We have always fully embraced the thought that we are here operating in Detroit,” Solomon said. “We are not trying to be a Las Vegas casino in any way.”

And by designing MotorCity Casino to reflect the city's automotive, music and sports heritage, Solomon said the casino and its hotel can design vacation packages that include more than just gambling.

MotorCity believes it will be able to draw visitors from a 250-mile radius once its hotel opens in September. Until now, most of MotorCity's customers have come from a 50-mile radius.

“We will be building packages that will ask people to come see a Red Wings game, go to the Fox Theatre, go to the museums, the local restaurants,” Solomon said. “The addition of the hotel product will change face of hospitality in Detroit.”

Brent Snavely: (313) 446-0405, bsnavely@crain.com

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MotorCity Casino unveils first part of $275 million expansion

5.30.07

MotorCity Casino shows off new flair

By HEATHER NEWMAN
FREE PRESS STAFF WRITER

High rollers, you’ve got a hot new place to hang out.

MotorCity Casino officially unveiled its new high rollers and Signature Club areas during a press tour, a high-tech and glitzy 60,000 square feet of gaming space that will go live June 7. The area is the first major opening in the casino’s $275- million permanent facility construction that is renovating its historic bread factory home and putting a skyscraper on the lot next door.

The opening next week is bad news for nonsmokers – the casino’s only nonsmoking floor will be closed June 6 as part of the ongoing renovations, and the new space allows smoking – but great news for everyone who wants to see just how over-the-top, Las Vegas-gorgeous a Detroit casino can be.

“It surpasses anything that I thought I would get excited about,” owner Marian Ilitch said. “We all had a vision and it became true and then some… I thought all casinos kind of look alike. But this casino doesn’t look alike. There are little pieces of Detroit all through the building.”

The high rollers area, which will be open to the public, features tables with $100-$5,000 limits and slots that allow players to bet hundreds of dollars a spin. The area has a "wow” feature everywhere you look. On the ceiling, thousands of individual LEDs swoop in curves designed by automotive guru Chip Foose, churning out computer-controlled geometric patterns.

That music is piped through a fully digital system so sensitive and intelligent that microphones hidden in the ceiling “listen” to the noise of patrons between songs and adjust the music volume accordingly – ramping up in the areas where sound is loudest to provide excitement and ambience during busy times, fading away during quiet times to avoid deafening patrons.

The music and the videos on screens – and there are dozens of screens ranging from individual panels on slots to flat screens on the wall to a giant curving flower of a floor-to-ceiling sculpture, made of curving metal screens also displaying videos – are controlled by a computer system and a VJ, broadcasting from the dual-booth setup in the casino’s Radio Bar.

The bar itself is worth a second look: two booths are tucked inside, one inhabited by guest DJs (the casino has made arrangements with a number of local stations to broadcast from there), the other by the casino’s own VJs. Many of the VJs will come from an arrangement with the Specs Howard School of Broadcast Arts.

In front of them is a curving wooden bar for patrons, and placed at the edges of the area are four giant columns lit from within by green bars designed to look like the digital volume display bars on a giant stereo equalizer – all of which respond, dynamically, to the music being played.

That music is piped through subwoofers tucked into the slot machine cabinets and tweeters hidden in their signs, and the overall result is surprisingly smooth and subtle. It’s definitely the best-sounding room in any of Detroit’s casinos to date.

The walls of the area are panels of bird's-eye maple and honed metal, and subtle little automotive touches abound. The wallpaper is an abstract take on a mural elsewhere in the casino that features a ’57 Cadillac grille, and a couple of royal-blue upholstered walls are covered with chrome discs reminiscent of baby-moon hubcaps. The lights in the new VIP valet parking area are taken directly from the taillight design of a 1950s Buick.

The carpeting is a mix of fire and water themes, with flames in red and gold competing in some areas with blue flames and blue bubbles. In the pit areas, thousands of two-to-four-foot acrylic tubes are suspended from the ceiling, tipped with frosted caps, and display automated patterns of colors – or even full videos. It’s a mesmerizing display that MotorCity Casino chief executive Gregg Solomon calls the casino’s take on a chandelier.

Real chandeliers made of globes of hundreds of pieces of twisted glass hang over the Signature Club area, which is reserved for those 1,500 or so gamers who spend the most time and money at the casino. Those patrons have their own restaurant – a small buffet that features diaphanous sheers, illuminated by more colored LEDs, lining the walls and contrasting heavy curtains of metal beads that divide up the dining floor.

In the Signature Club lounge area, twisting vortexes of air create intertwining lines of flame inside glass tubes lining the room, qualifying as possibly the most intricate fireplaces in the metro area.

On the outside, the casino’s expansion is the largest real-brick project in the country in the last two decades, Solomon said. Brick extends up almost half the building, topped with gorgeous swoops of stainless steel that part to show off the original peaks and brick detail of the 1916 Wagner Bakery building that most folks locally know as the Wonder Bread factory.

“We hope that we’ll continue to make bread,” he quipped.

The new heated VIP parking entrance for Signature Club members shows off especially intricate herringbone brickwork, combined with medallions based on the original building’s flourishes. (On a practical level, it also offers the casino’s best customers something the building has sorely lacked: a direct exit onto Grand River Avenue.)

A new nonsmoking poker room is dominated by the huge rust-colored smokestack that literally takes up a quarter of one wall, one of many original architectural elements the design team chose to keep. Other nonsmoking areas will return when the first floor of the original casino receives its renovation later this year.

That building is now connected seamlessly with the new skyscraper next door.
Most people won’t notice as they step into the new second-floor high rollers area that they’re actually leaving one building and entering the other.

The new design is based on automotive concept cars of the '40s and '50s, and the finished facility will include a display of those cars – along with five of Foose’s own customization projects, which are popularized on the TLC show “Overhaulin’.”

“We decided to do something completely new and completely Detroit,” Solomon said. “This casino has many, many firsts… We look at our gaming operation as a theater.”

Customers will notice practical updates as the casino completes its renovations. The restaurant spaces are being redone (including massive updates to the kitchens) throughout the casino, and a brand-new air-handling system will change out the air in the building every 10 minutes.

Contact HEATHER NEWMAN at 313-223-3336 or hnewman@freepress.com.

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070529/BUSINESS06/70529039/1019

MotorCity's new gaming room set to open June 7

Todd McInturf / The Detroit News A view of the main expansion area of the Motor City Casino with 500 slot machines; 45 gaming tables, and rows of lights in the ceiling. The new area will open to the public, June 7. An adjacent 400-room hotel is scheduled to open this fall.

MotorCity showcases new gaming facility expected to open June 7

Joel J. Smith / The Detroit News

DETROIT -- The Motor­City Casino showcased its new expanded gaming facil­ity today, becoming the first Detroit casino to complete at least a portion of its massive permanent ca­sino/hotel/ entertainment complex. MotorCity has added an ad­ditional 25,000 square feet of gaming space, which it expects to open to the public June 7. The new space, which is one-third larger than the existing 75,000-square-foot facility, will al­low room for 600 additional slot machines. With the news space, the casino will boast about 3,100 machines The new facility has an automotive theme with hub­caps, various car parts and other car photos and artwork spread throughout. Custom car designer Chip Foose was hired to help the design team. A new state-of-the-art sound, light and video sys­tem will be installed throughout the casino.

Todd McInturf / The Detroit News An artist's rendering of the new MotorCity Casino and Hotel. Todd McInturf / The Detroit News A view of the high-limit gaming area with slot machines and gaming tables. On the other side of the gold wall is The Signature Club Lounge.

Gregg Solomon, Motor­City's chief executive offi­cer, said plans call for the completion of the 400-room hotel, entertainment venue, new restaurants and meeting rooms later this year. "I'm extremely excited over this," Marian Ilitch, owner of MotorCity, told reporters following a morning tour. "We all had a vision, and it came through and then some. We wanted a locally owned casino so we could give back to the community. It's important to put our dollars back into the com­munity." The casino is located on Grand River Avenue and the Lodge Freeway. The MGM Grand Detroit Casino is expected to open its new ca­sino/hotel/entertainment complex by the end of the year. Greektown Casino is expected to open in late 2008. You can reach Joel J. Smith at (313) 222-2556 or jsmith@detnews.com. http://www.detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070529/UPDATE/705290407

MotorCity Casino unveils new gaming room

5.29.07

A safe bet new MotorCity will impress
Its new look is looking good

BY JOHN GALLAGHER
FREE PRESS BUSINESS WRITER

Among its stodgier critics, casino architecture is looked down upon as mere glitz and glitter.

But the new gaming room at Detroit's MotorCity Casino, which opens to the public next week as the first piece of a $275-million expansion, demonstrates casino architecture's two redeeming features.

First, with MotorCity's auto-themed swirls and lights and pizzazz, there's more architectural energy devoted to the smallest details than in almost any other field of design.

And second, MotorCity's lavish new facility shows that, unlike almost all other architectural endeavors, casinos have budgets expansive enough to indulge every whim.

True, all this creativity is aimed at separating players from their money. But as I saw last week during an exclusive Free Press tour of the new gaming room, MotorCity demonstrates that casino architecture can be remarkably creative -- as long as one doesn't mind being a bit overwhelmed.

Keying off Detroit's rich history of hod rods and muscle cars, the design of the new casino projects 1950s cruising iconography everywhere.

It's all part of what MotorCity Chief Executive Gregg Solomon calls the "future retro" look -- a deliberate attempt to echo Detroit's stylistic history while avoiding looking dated 10 years from now.

Wall displays mimic car upholstery. Ceiling fixtures look like chrome steering wheels or hubcaps. The flame motif -- omnipresent in carpeting and in the orange-tinted ceiling lights -- evokes the stylized flame decorations found on many hot rods.

Choosing an auto theme was just the beginning. Visitors will find an integration of audio, visual and lighting designs that probably has been done only in major theatrical venues.

Along the way, MotorCity tips its neon hat to its historic roots in a renovated 1916 bread factory. A lot of the exterior brick and terra cotta has been restored. And while much of the exterior will be covered in a metallic sheathing in months to come, enough of the original façade will remain to create a blend of old and new.

How MotorCity got its new look is instructive. There was, of course, a main interior designer, Genesis Associates of Santa Ana, Calif. Noted automotive designer Chip Foose contributed some of the wavy ceiling features. But everyone, from MotorCity's owner, Marian Ilitch, to the chief executive Solomon, got in on the day-to-day brainstorming.

What resulted was a multilayered, try-anything look. Decisions often had less to do with architectural theory than with gut judgments. Showing me around last week, Solomon explained numerous design decisions with a simple, "We thought it was a very cool look."

Any quibbles? Sure. Casinos tend to be isolated islands that contribute little to the pedestrian life of a city. After all, the whole point is to get people inside and keep them there.

But much the same could be said of the original Renaissance Center design (before General Motors corrected at least part of that problem). And it could be said of gated residential communities, or of the high-security government buildings in a post-9/11 world. Lack of pedestrian vitality is a broader problem created by many different types of buildings.

MotorCity's gaming room is just the first step toward what will become three permanent casinos in the city. The rest of MotorCity's campus, including a hotel, restaurants and meeting space, will open around November. MGM Grand's new Art Deco-styled casino will open about that same time. The expanded Greektown Casino opens about a year later.

That's a lot of casino architecture for one city to absorb. Many people no doubt will find it too much.

But in an age when architectural budgets are crimped, and design is often blandly conservative, and many architects count themselves lucky just to have a job, it's worth celebrating those rare architectural moments when anything goes.

Contact JOHN GALLAGHER at 313-222-5173 or jgallagher@freepress.com.

http://www.freep.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20070529/BUSINESS06/705290307