High-ranking Detroit officials are meeting with a Las Vegas casino and convention center operator to discuss taking over and expanding Cobo Center, Deputy Mayor Anthony Adams said Tuesday.

The Venetian Group, which runs the Venetian Resort and Casino and the Sands Expo and Convention Center in Las Vegas, visited Detroit during the North American International Auto Show on Monday to make a pitch to officials from Detroit and Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties on its vision for a facility that would include a casino, hotel and expanded Cobo Hall.

Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick talked with the casino group Tuesday in Washington, D.C., where he was attending the U.S. Conference of Mayors, Adams said.

The energetic round of meetings with key political and business leaders demonstrated the group's seriousness, and their proposal was immediately met with delight by Wayne and Oakland county officials, who balk at the prospect of more public dollars being used to expand Cobo Center.

"This is the deal of a lifetime. We're not talking millions, we're talking billions of dollars here," said Oakland County Executive L. Brooks Patterson. "If the mayor doesn't jump on this opportunity, then I've underestimated him."

Wayne County Executive Robert Ficano said the key to the deal was to make sure that the Cobo expansion occurs without any taxpayer dollars.

"The auto show generates $500 to $700 million, and if a company came in and said the same thing, what would we do for them? We would bend over backwards for them," he said. "The bottom line is with a private investor, we're not going to have to raise taxes to do it."

The casino group also met with the Port Authority to discuss the possibility of selling bonds for the project, labor groups and local bankers as well as scouting the city for possible locations for the facility. Gov. Jennifer Granholm also was brought into the discussions within the last few days, said Liz Boyd, Granholm's spokeswoman.

While the proposal has some benefits, said Adams, it has one huge drawback -- the lack of a casino license.

"There are other groups that have come in that have had a lot more details in their plans, but every group brings something to the table," said Adams. "This group has a tremendous balance sheet, but it's really premature to discuss because they don't have a license."

The MGM Grand Detroit's casino license will become available once a deal to merge MGM and the Mandalay Bay Resorts is completed. Mandalay Bay owns a majority of the MotorCity Casino, and under federal antitrust laws, one company can't own two casinos in the city.

But MGM must agree to sell to the Venetian Group and settle an outstanding lawsuit filed by the Lac Vieux Desert Band of Lake Superior Chippewa Indians against Detroit's casino bidding process, Adams said.

"And then they have to be approved by the city," he said. "Those are three major hurdles, but they're not insurmountable."

The Venetian Group is just one option being considered by the city, said Adams. Several other gambling entities have approached the city with proposals. And city officials have not totally abandoned plans for a publicly funded expansion of Cobo.

Even so, he said, "A privately financed deal makes sense. The less public dollars, the faster the deal can move forward."

That assessment comes a year after Kilpatrick called for a new, 1-million-square-foot, billion-dollar convention center run by a regional authority. With dollar signs spinning in their heads, the rest of the political leaders in the region almost immediately said it was too much for taxpayers to bear, despite the need for an expansion of the aging facility.

Kilpatrick has repeatedly said expanding the 700,000-square-foot Cobo is essential to keeping the auto show and attracting other convention business to the city. McCormick Place in Chicago announced last year that it will expand to 1.2 million square feet and has implied that it could easily take over the North American International Auto Show.

Cobo was built in 1960 and last expanded in 1989. The auto show has been calling for an expansion of the facility for several years. Its primary source of funding is a tax levied on hotels and motels in Wayne, Oakland and Macomb counties.

Ron Reese, spokesman for the Las Vegas Sands Corp., would neither confirm nor deny the company's interest in developing a facility in Detroit.


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