The former home of the Detroit Lions, the Pontiac Silverdome, was supposed to collapse in a controlled implosion Sunday, but, in a development emblematic of the team’s disappointing history, the blast failed and the long-abandoned structure remains standing.
The Silverdome, which is more than 40 minutes outside Detroit’s city center, has been an eyesore since the team relocated to Ford Field downtown in 2002. It’s had several owners since its abandonment — it was, at times, a practice field and a drive-in movie theater — but it has mostly stood empty, slowly decaying on around 127 acres of land while the city of Pontiac decided what to do.
Several months ago, officials finally decided to implode the eyesore, and Sunday a demolition team claimed to have the structure ready to collapse in on itself. Crowds gathered, and at 9:30 a.m. they heard several explosions and saw a few wisps of smoke, but the arena’s core framework didn’t budge.
We just talked to the city. The #PontiacSilverdome implosion has failed. The city said “what was supposed to happen, did not”, City doesn’t know if it will go down today.
— FOX 2 Detroit (@FOX2News) December 3, 2017
The demolition company told local media that the blast did, in fact, weaken some of the stadium’s support structures, and it could still fall — just not on the correct timeline. They also said that a “faulty wire” is likely responsible for the failure and that crews are working on figuring out the problem.
“Unless we find something in the next few hours researching the wiring, we will take it down mechanically,” a spokesperson said. “We haven’t found the wire yet. It’s going to take us a while to research it all.”
Meanwhile, the Detroit Lions (of whom your fair reporter is a fan) are considering adopting “what was supposed to happen did not” as their official team motto.