Jack Utsick faces contempt in SEC ponzi scheme case that spawned Paris Hilton & Michael Malik, lawsuits

2.06.09

Ex-promoter faces contempt in Fla. SEC fraud case

By CURT ANDERSON

MIAMI (AP) — A once high-flying concert promoter of acts such as Aerosmith, Elton John and Shania Twain could face contempt charges for failing to show up in Miami for a Securities and Exchange Commission fraud case that has spawned a multimillion-dollar lawsuit against Paris Hilton.

The promoter, John Utsick, 66, now lives in Brazil and refuses to return to the U.S. out of fear he'll be arrested for possible criminal violations, his attorney Richard Kraut said at a hearing Friday. The SEC wants to take his deposition regarding assets he took from his former company, Worldwide Entertainment Inc.

"Mr. Utsick has created this issue. He decided to flee," SEC attorney Robert Levenson said at the hearing.

Kraut said Utsick isn't hiding, but he wouldn't divulge in court where he lives in Brazil. "He's not in the Amazon someplace," the lawyer said. "He's not dodging anything."

The deposition dispute is the latest twist in a case first brought by the SEC in 2006 claiming that Utsick fleeced some 3,000 investors out of nearly $300 million between 1998 and 2005. Utsick, whose company promoted tours and concerts by top rock and country music acts and other shows, allegedly created a Ponzi scheme in which he paid older investors out of money from new investors, while his business actually lost gobs of money.

U.S. District Judge Paul Huck previously found against Utsick and appointed a receiver to identify assets around the world intended to return some of the lost investments. That receiver, Michael Goldberg [Akerman Senterfitt], said he soon will send the first installment of as much as $25 million to be divided among investors, and eventually hopes to recover up to $60 million.

One of Utsick's yet-to-be sold former assets is a 17,500-seat amphitheater in Berlin, Germany. There's also sizable property in northern Florida, condos in the Miami area and six homes in California, Goldberg said.

The SEC wants to take Utsick's deposition to find assets he took personally and may still have. Kraut said Utsick's position is that as chief of the company he was entitled to the assets as a form of salary. Huck said he would give the two sides one more week to reach an agreement before deciding on the contempt issue.

"I don't have a lot of sympathy for Mr. Utsick. He's the one who put himself in this situation," Huck said.

The Hilton lawsuit stemmed from a 2006 film in which she appeared called "National Lampoon's Pledge This!" Utsick's old company, Worldwide Entertainment, invested in the movie and was an executive producer. Part of the deal was that Hilton was to pitch the movie on TV talk shows and media interviews, but Goldberg says that never happened.

"Hilton failed to attend any talk shows or telephonic or in-person interviews," the lawsuit says.

Goldberg said he is seeking about $7 million from Hilton and her management company, with trial in that case set for May 18. Ultimately any money recovered would go to Utsick's defrauded investors.

Hilton's lawyers contend that she fulfilled her main obligation to the film — publicity events at the Cannes Film Festival — and that there were only "vague and unspecific requests" that she do other appearances after it was released. At the time, they said, she couldn't do it because she was filming her reality TV show "The Simple Life."

"Defendants are not currently aware that the producers ever arranged any dates or agreements for Ms. Hilton to appear on any talk show," attorneys Michael Weinstein and Stephen J. Binhak said in court papers.

NOTE: this case also spawned a multimillion dollar fraudulent transfer lawsuit against Detroit casino syndicator and real estate developer Michael J. Malik, Sr., (Goldberg v. Malik) who is a longtime business partner with Mrs. Marian Ilitch. Ilitch Holdings, Inc. subsidiaries include Detroit Tigers (Comerica Park), Detroit Red Wings (Joe Louis Arena), Fox Theatre, MotorCity Casino, Olympia Entertainment, etc.

Judge Huck orders Jack Utsick to return to Miami for SEC deposition no later than Jan. 28th

A Miami-based U.S. District Judge, Paul C. Huck, has ordered defendant Jack Utsick (John P. Utsick) to appear in Miami, Florida for a Deposition with attorneys representing the U.S. Securities and Exchange Commission (SEC) no later than 1.28.09. Judge Huck filed the order on 1.15.09.

Utsick has attempted to maintain asylum in Brazil where he claims he now lives. Among other things, Utsick represented that the expense of travel prohibited him from returning to the U.S.

Judge Huck ordered the SEC to pay reasonable travel expenses associated with Utsick's return to Miami. The Judge denied Utsick's attempts to win advances on legal expenses.

The SEC alleges that Utsick, a one-time entertainment mogul, was running what amounted to a $300 million ponzi scheme. This is allegedly how he received new capital to pay previous investors and produce theatrical productions, concerts and festivals around the world.

Judge Huck has also ordered all parties in the primary matter to complete Discovery by 1.28.09. But, then again, Judge Huck has attempted to compel discovery on several previous occassions.

Michael I. Goldberg, an attorney at the Akerman Senterfitt law firm, is the court appointed Receiver in the matter. Goldberg has filed numerous actions against individuals who are alleged to have received fraudlent "profit payments" from Utsick or whom otherwise were indebted to Utsick, Worldwide Entertainment Group or any of several other Utsick partners and affiliates. (See: Receivership's Web Site)

Among those who Goldberg has charged: Paris Hilton; two of Australia's top concert promoters Michael Chugg and Kevin Jacobsen; and Detroit-based casino syndicator Michael J. Malik, Sr., who has strong ties to the Ilitch family (Mike & Marian Ilitch) owners of Olympia Entertainment, Detroit Tigers (MLB), Detroit Red Wings (NHL), Detroit's Fox Theater and MotorCity Casino.

The Ilitch Family controls a significant number of Detroit's top theatrical, sports and concert venues including Cobo Arena, Fox Theatre, The City Theatre, Joe Louis Arena, Comerica Park, MotorCity's Sound Board Theatre and the Masonic Temple Theatre.

Ilitch Holdings building management monopoly over Detroit entertainment venues

2.20.08

Ilitch entertainment muscle

With the agreement to operate the Masonic Temple, Ilitch Holdings Inc. now controls entertainment venues of almost every size in downtown Detroit.

City Theater: Located inside the Hockeytown Café, small auditorium has 500 seats.

Loyal Order of Moose: A long-empty Cass Avenue club with a 1,500-person capacity, purchased quietly last year.

Soundboard: The theater being built at the MotorCity Casino described as "House of Blues-type venue" with a capacity that recently was expanded to 1,800 seats.

Fox Theatre: The converted movie palace seats 5,000 and also is home to the headquarters of Ilitch Holdings Inc.

Masonic Temple: The debt-ridden landmark includes two auditoriums. The main chamber seats 4,300; Scottish Rites hall seats 1,600.

Cobo Arena: The classic downtown hotspot for concerts seats 12,191.

Joe Louis Arena: Besides being the home of Red Wings hockey, the Joe can seat 20,058 for concerts.

Comerica Park: The baseball park can host stadium-size shows, with some 30,000 seats.

Source: Olympia Entertainment

Detroit forum affirms Ilitch paid record price for .17 acre Foxtown parcel

On 12.24.07 a forum participant, 3rdworldcity, posted the following affirmation of a previous TVT post in a forum thread, "Motown site (Woodward/75) back in the news:"

Dennis K [Keffalinos] was paid $1,600,000 for the .17 acre parcel on Grand River. That's $234/sq. ft., not a bad price. (Price reported by Verifiable on this forum, which I verified from the seller.) What is amazing is that the Ilitch entity took no steps to prevent the public from seeing the purchase price, such as filing a Valuation Affidavit. Unbelievable. That [apparent] slip-up will cost them a fortune when negotiating future purchases and may sink an arena behind the Fox if they have much more land to acquire.

YouTube: A promotional video for Olympia Entertainment, an Ilitch Holdings Inc. company

Promotional video of Olympia Entertainment a division or subsidiary of Ilitch Holdings, Inc. that manages Detroit's Fox Theater, Cobo Arena, Comerica Park, Joe Louis Arena, Hockeytown Cafe and other area entertainment venues.

http://youtube.com/watch?v=jMAvMrMRWFU

Will Ilitch build hockey arena on site of Berry Gordy's failed Motown entertainment complex

12.04.07

Motown entertainment complex plans fall through
Berry Gordy's group couldn't raise money to build $28M facility north of the Fox Theatre.

Robert Snell / The Detroit News

...Hockey arena a possibility?

The three Woodward properties faced foreclosure April 1, 2008, because Motown Center owed about $14,000 in unpaid property taxes dating to 2005, according to the Wayne County Treasurer's office.

The back taxes were paid Nov. 29, days after The Detroit News first called Heidelberg-Yopp, asking about the delinquency.

The Woodward land could be combined with the other parcels owned by the Economic Development Corp. and the city, and sold to a developer, Papapanos said.

The city and the Detroit Economic Development Corp. own about half of the land within the first four blocks north of I-75, between Woodward and Park.

But the cost of acquiring other parcels and offering the space for one development has been too expensive, said Brian Holdwick, the growth corporation's vice president of business and financial services.

The city has marketed some of its land to prospective developers, perhaps for a mixed-use development, Holdwick said. The nearly four-block area has been called an ideal spot for a new Detroit Red Wings hockey arena according to one development expert. But Ilitch Holdings spokeswoman Karen Cullen declined to discuss specific locations for a new arena.

One development official suspects the land would give Mike and Marian Ilitch, owners of the Red Wings, an option other than building behind the Fox Theatre, where the family empire has acquired a wide swath of land.

"Ilitch always has two or three areas (in mind) to stay ahead of the speculators," said Patrick Dorn, executive director of the Cass Corridor Neighborhood Development Corp. "You can't get a better, sweeter spot for an arena," than the Motown Center land and surrounding properties.

Cullen acknowledges the company is considering more than one location. She was unaware of the Motown Center property, but wouldn't rule it out.

"In the broadest sense, I don't want to get into various sites," she said. "We haven't made a decision on the arena and are still considering all of our options, both whether to renovate (Joe Louis Arena) or build new."

James Canning, spokesman for Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, has not heard of any city effort to offer the land to Ilitch for a new hockey arena.

"It's a great parcel of land and our development guys will go out and market it," Canning said.

Though the Motown project won't be built, Canning said: "We have an awesome Motown museum (on West Grand Boulevard). The community needs to continue to embrace that location."

You can reach Robert Snell at (313) 222-2028 or rsnell@detnews.com.

http://detnews.com/apps/pbcs.dll/article?AID=/20071204/ENT04/712040388/1424/ENT04

"Hockeytown" as posted at Wikipedia

as posted at WIKIPEDIA, the free encyclopedia:

Hockeytown

Hockeytown is a nickname for the city of Detroit, which arose in 1996 thanks to a marketing campaign by the city's NHL franchise, the Detroit Red Wings. The nickname, over time, has gained national and international recognition, and has become an official nickname of the Joe Louis Arena.

To capitalize on the Hockeytown name and its 40 years of restaurant industry expertise, Ilitch Holdings, Inc., parent company of the Red Wings, established Hockeytown Café in 1999 adjacent to its corporate headquarters in the historic Fox Theater building at the heart of the Foxtown neighborhood of downtown Detroit.

Behind the Scenes: Ilitch and City in Hockey Arena showdown

note: on September 29, 2006 the Detroit News ran a story entitled "Ilitch to announce Joe's fate within 30 days." An announcement is 232 days over due (or almost 8 months).

6.18.07

The lease agreement between Detroit and the Ilitches for Joe Louis Arena, above, and Cobo Arena expires in August 2008.


Ilitch has to decide the Joe's fate soon
Wings must renew lease in Aug. or go for new arena


David Josar / The Detroit News

DETROIT -- Mike Ilitch and the Detroit Red Wings have two months to tell city leaders whether they will exercise their option to renew for 20 years the exclusive lease -- considered the best of any NHL team -- for Joe Louis Arena and Cobo Arena.

The Aug. 16 deadline is expected to set in motion intense deal-making and negotiations that will involve the future of Cobo Arena, Joe Louis Arena -- the home of the Red Wings -- and how much money the state, city and taxpayers are willing to toss in to subsidize a new Detroit hockey arena.

"They talk to us all the time," Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick said. "They're still trying to decide whether to stay and improve the (Joe Louis) facility or move."

Ilitch, whose fortune started with a suburban pizza place in 1959, bought the Red Wings for $8 million in 1982. The team is now worth an estimated $258 million -- a value due in large part to the bargain-basement lease on the Joe. According to Forbes magazine, he is among America's richest citizens, worth $1.5 billion...

Some executives for Ilitch's companies are not sure city officials have the right deadline date. They note, for example, the team did not take occupancy for more than a year after the agreement was signed, a situation they suggest pushes the renewal date back...

Either way, a showdown is expected this summer...

Council doesn't like deal
So far, the Red Wings and their owners have remained quiet. The city isn't saying much, either.

The city recently sold to Olympia Development, another of the Ilitch-run companies, two vacant, tax-reverted parcels behind the Fox for $200,000. Earlier this year, the city awarded Olympia development rights for the historic GAR building nearby.

The Ilitches are known as hard negotiators. In the 1990s, Mike Ilitch threatened to move the Tigers unless the team got a new ballpark -- which it did, across Woodward Avenue from his Fox Theatre and Hockeytown Cafe.

This time, Ilitch is in the driver's seat, thanks to the deal brokered in 1979 by Mayor Coleman Young that kept the team from moving to Pontiac.

Ilitch will decide whether to extend the lease -- the city has no vote -- and if the pact is extended, it will become even more favorable for him and the Red Wings.

Currently, the city imposes up to a 10 percent surcharge on tickets sold to events at Joe Louis and Cobo Arena; Detroit gets a cut of concessions and luxury suites.

If the lease is extended, the city will lose the surcharge -- which brings in about $2.5 million a year -- and, in five years, its share of concession and suite revenue. Council fiscal analyst Irv Corley, in a February report to the council on the lease, said the contract is "strongly in favor" of the Ilitch companies. He called it "convoluted" and questioned whether the city was receiving its fair share of concession sales.

The lease is much more lucrative than those of other teams. For example, the San Jose Sharks pay $1.6 million a year for the building and get a small percentage of ticket sales, but the team also chips in money for capital improvements and agreed to split with San Jose any profits from naming rights.

Council members have been upset for several years about the lease arrangement, but their anger reached a new level in February, when the fiscal analyst, at their urging, probed the specifics of the arrangement between Detroit and the Ilitch-family controlled company.

"This is clearly a sweetheart deal, and if they (the city law department) don't find a way to terminate this contract I'm going to turn it over to the FBI because this is ridiculous," Councilwoman Barbara-Rose Collins said. (Complete Story)

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 opens; Marian Ilitch sits down with reporter

7.07.07

Her casino growing, she tells of life with Mike

BY TOM WALSH
FREE PRESS COLUMNIST

For 48 years, as the Ilitch family business empire grew from Little Caesars pizza joints to include hockey and baseball teams, the Fox Theatre and more, it has been headed by Mike and Marian Ilitch.

Mike's name almost always came first, whether as front man in deals to buy the Detroit Red Wings and the Fox, or as sole owner of the Detroit Tigers -- even if it was wife Marian's sharp eye for finance that helped keep the Ilitch enterprises profitable.

Today, Marian grabs the spotlight as MotorCity Casino, which she owns, unveils expanded gaming areas to the public in its new Detroit hotel-casino project.

In a rare interview this week with the Free Press, Marian Ilitch, 74, predicted that MotorCity and two other hotel-casinos under construction will transform Detroit's hospitality industry, luring tourists from faraway cities and drawing suburban families downtown for weddings, bar mitzvahs and other events.

She also talked about how she and Mike hash out key business decisions, how they once put their seven kids to work peddling Red Wings tickets, why they bought the Fox and what moved her to become Detroit's queen of casino gaming.

"It's important to me that one of the casinos is Detroit-owned by someone that really wants to invest in the area," said Ilitch, who purchased a controlling interest in MotorCity in 2005 from Mandalay Resort, which had merged with MGM Mirage. She had been a minority shareholder since the casino's inception in 1999.

MGM owns the Detroit casino with its name on it, and the third, Greektown Casino & Resort, is owned by the Sault Tribe of Chippewa Indians.

And make no mistake: Marian Ilitch is a very hands-on owner. Her prints are all over the $275-million hotel-casino project, from the swooping curved roof design on the hotel to the swank Signature Club for the casino's 1,500-or-so biggest spenders, who get their own restaurant and VIP marking entrance.

"I want it to be a destination spot," she said. "I want people talking about us, saying, 'Whoa, you've got to see MotorCity.' "

Gregg Solomon, MotorCity's CEO, said extra expenditures for things like the roof and a half-acre purchase to make room for the new Signature Club would not likely have been made by a publicly owned firm like Mandalay.

"Public corporations are risk-averse, not willing to do some of those gut-feel type of things" that Ilitch has approved for MotorCity, Solomon said.

Ilitch fully expects that spending on extra touches to create a four-diamond hotel with a luxury spa will pay off handsomely.

How the two differ
Indeed, Ilitch said she learned early in her business life with her husband that she was the more bottom-line-oriented of the two. She told a little story to make the point.

In 1959, at their very first restaurant, Little Caesars Pizza Treat in Garden City -- she wanted to call it Little Caesars, he preferred Pizza Treat, so they compromised -- the Ilitches also sold chicken and fish dinners.

Their first customer ordered a chicken dinner. As Marian brought the dinner out, Mike jumped up and said, "This is on the house, you're our first customer." When the second order was for a fish dinner, Mike did the same thing. Marian showed her disapproval and Mike responded, "Well, it's our first fish dinner."

Soon afterward, Marian recalled, Mike came out of the kitchen carrying a pizza. "I snatched it out of his hand, gave him a little hip thing, took it to the customer and said, 'That'll be $2.39, please.' "

And so it has always been with the Ilitches, Marian watching the numbers and Mike, now 77, spouting ideas for new products, new businesses, new marketing gimmicks.

The theme crops up even in discussion of the family's estate planning. There's no easy way to estimate the value of the Ilitch holdings. Forbes magazine guessed Mike's net worth at $1.5 billion last year, and Marian reportedly paid more than $500 million for MotorCity.

The Ilitches intend to keep their various enterprises family-owned, rather than selling off pieces for cash or selling stock to the public.

"We've talked about it at length, and as we speak today, we have no intent at this time of making any changes as far as all the holdings that we have," Marian Ilitch said. "I'm just trying to curb Michael so we don't add any more."

Marian and Mike, both children of Macedonian immigrants, started the pizza chain in Detroit's suburbs after marrying in 1955 and spending a couple of years on the minor-league baseball circuit until an injury cut short Mike's playing career.

They reconnected with the city of Detroit, where Mike was raised and Marian had worked for Delta Airlines as a young woman, in 1982 with the purchase of the Red Wings, then the doormat of the National Hockey League.

"They were awful back then," she said. "All seven of my kids, we put 'em in the box office, on the phones, calling people and begging them to buy tickets. I said I wanted to show them how glamorous the sports business was."

Although the Wings were dreadful in the mid-1980s, the concert business at Joe Louis Arena was lucrative. But then the Ilitches heard about Bill Davidson's plan to build the Palace of Auburn Hills as a new home for the Detroit Pistons.

"We knew that once the Palace was built, we would most likely lose a lot of our concert business," Ilitch recalled. So when someone pitched them on buying and renovating the ornate, but dilapidated, Fox Theatre, they saw it as an opportunity to hold onto some concert business. To reduce the risk of investing in the Fox, Marian suggested that the family abandon plans to build a new Little Caesars headquarters in Farmington Hills and instead relocate to the Fox in downtown Detroit.

And the rest, as they say, is history. Mike Ilitch bought the Tigers in 1992 and moved the team to Comerica Park, a new ballpark across the street from the Fox, in 2000.

When he bought the Tigers, "we didn't know casinos would happen in our lifetime," Marian Ilitch said, noting that Major League Baseball frowns on direct ownership connections between its teams and gambling interests.

"When this opportunity came" to invest in MotorCity, she said, "I thought, why not me? Why shouldn't I invest? He had his own business and so, now, it just made a lot of sense to me."

So that's how Marian Ilitch became Detroit's queen of gaming. And why Mike and Marian, married for 52 years, parents of seven children and partners in many a business venture, must be careful about mixing business with baseball. Or is it poker with profits? Or pleasure with playoffs?

As their Macedonian parents might have said, "Ah, what a country."

Contact TOM WALSH at 313-223-4430 or twalsh@freepress.com

"Detroit: The Reel Story" brings back memories for moviegoers

Exhibit at the Detroit Historical Museum highlights experience of movie- going. See how the experience has changed from the first movie shown at Detroit Opera House in 1906. First movie theater was The Casino, on Monroe St. Most of downtown Detroit's movie theaters were located along Monroe Street or Grand Circus Park.

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you may also want to review this post at another blog:

• Faded Detroit: Detroit's Downtown Movie Palaces

Olympia Entertainment

Olympia Entertainment as sports & entertainment co., owns Detroit's Fox Theatre; books & manages Joe Louis Arena, Comerica Park, Cobo Arena & City Theatre. Owned by Mike & Marian Ilitch (Ilitch Holdings). They also own Detroit Red Wings, Detroit Tigers, Little Caesars Pizza, MotorCity Casino.



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