Editorial: Auto show actively pursuing options if Cobo solution isn't found soon

The Detroit News

If Detroit finds itself in January, 2011, watching the bright lights of the North American International Auto Show shining 35 miles to the west of downtown, it can't say it wasn't warned.

Doug Fox, co-chair of the auto show, made it perfectly clear Monday that the organizers can't wait for Detroit to get its political act together and decide how it will fix Cobo Center. The show has decisions to make and quickly.

Fox says in six weeks to two months the auto show must tell the Rock Financial Center in Novi whether it will accept its offer to move the show there. That will allow the folks in Novi to begin the 800,000 square-foot expansion this summer and be ready for the 2011 show.

The 2011 date is crucial. Exhibitors have told the Detroit Automobile Dealers Association, sponsor of the show, they will tolerate the high costs and deteriorating conditions at Cobo for next January's event, but that's it.

Costs at Cobo run roughly two times higher than at the next most expensive auto show, Fox says. That's because broken equipment and inadequate facilities makes the set-up time at Cobo longer, and because mismanagement by the city and inflexible union rules drive up overall operating costs.

"The exhibitors are telling us we're hanging on by a thread," Fox says. "We need to bring costs down."

Another option is moving the North American show out of Detroit and partnering with Chicago or Los Angeles for the major, international press event, Fox says. That would leave Detroit with a simple cars-on-carpet show common in smaller cities.

To make the Rock deal happen, the Legislature would need to separate out Oakland County's share of the regional hotel and liquor tax -- $15 million to $20 million a year -- and use it to service bonds for the Novi expansion. All of that money now goes to Cobo. But without the auto show and other major conventions, it will be hard to argue that Oakland is reaping any real benefit from the Cobo tax.

If the choice comes down to losing the international show to another state or cutting loose Cobo, lawmakers would have to support the Novi expansion.

This potential showdown was set up by Detroit City Council's rejection of a regional authority that would have operated Cobo and paid for its repairs and expansion. The council turned down the deal, which Fox says would have kept the auto show in Detroit, without a plan for paying for Cobo's repairs.

That put the auto show organizers on a deadline. They have to act in the next few weeks, or place the 2011 show at risk.

"This is not our choice," Fox says. "It is Detroit's choice."

City Council members were told of the consequences of rejecting the Cobo authority. If their action causes the auto show -- Detroit's premier annual event -- to migrate to Novi, the members can't say they weren't fairly warned.

The most important thing now is that Michigan keep the prestige of the international auto show.

If that means allowing Detroit to reap the reward of its self-destructive politics, that's just too bad.