Comerica Park refinancing highlights Ilitch financial maneuvers
A complex series of financial moves by Mike Ilitch last year included a previously unreported refinancing of Comerica Park and culminated in the pizza mogul tapping his portfolio of assets to financially backstop the new Detroit Red Wings hockey arena, Crain's Detroit Business has learned. Public records and interviews illustrate how Ilitch, 86, pledged pieces of his family's $5.5 billion empire to build the hockey arena and capitalized on the soaring value of the Detroit Tigers, his other professional sports team, to refinance the baseball stadium's remaining private construction debt. They're leveraging their various assets for a series of high-profile investments, including the arena; a $200 million-plus mixed-use redevelopment over 50 city blocks around the arena (with outside investors, too); a new Little Caesars headquarters next to their Fox Theatre offices; and $40 million for a new Wayne State University business school that will bear Mike Ilitch's name.
