A WARM WELCOME TO DETROIT SUPER BOWL HOST CITY ATTEMPTS TO SHED ITS NEGATIVE IMAGE.

Byline: Billy Witz Staff Writer

DETROIT - Tom Lewand was somewhere in the middle of explaining why his hometown gets a bad rap - that it's not all about crime, poverty, corruption, racial tension, a dying auto industry, fans who can't celebrate without the ceremonial lighting of a car or lose without brawling with visiting players - when the Detroit Lions' chief operating officer was interrupted.

By the sound of police sirens.

``Did you hear that?'' Lewand asked over his cell phone. ``We're trying to change the stereotype.''

Detroit will get a chance to remake those perceptions - or reinforce them - beginning today when the Seahawks, hundreds of thousands of fans and the first wave of about 3,000 credentialed media begin to arrive for next Sunday's Super Bowl XL. The Steelers arrive Monday.

In an effort to put on the city's best face, homeless have been swept up into shelters in recent weeks, hotels are getting spit-polished inside and out, and the downtown streets are so clean that the only candy wrapper you're likely to spot is Eminem.

A Super Bowl XL banner adorns the top of the GM building, the tallest on the city's skyline, and there are other signs - mostly on people's faces - that Detroit is giddy about its place on a national stage.

Such exposure didn't seem likely after the last time a Super Bowl was played here, in 1982.

That game, between San Francisco and Cincinnati, was played at the Silverdome in Pontiac, Mich., about a 45-minute drive from Dearborn, where most of the visitors stayed to avoid downtown. The snowstorms that had kept many visitors inside all week turned getting to the game a logistical nightmare.

The experience didn't keep Lions vice chairman Bill Ford, the son of owner William Clay Ford, from thinking about another Super Bowl.

``When I was hired 11 years ago, Bill said to me it would be great to move back downtown and take the Lions back to Detroit, and get another Super Bowl,'' Lewand said. ``I looked at him like he was crazy.''

But Ford's vision had a happy conspirator. In the late '90s, the NFL began to dangle the economic carrot of a Super Bowl in front of cities in exchange for public financing to build stadiums, which is why the past three Super Bowls have been in Houston, Jacksonville and Detroit. It also didn't hurt that at least 18 owners had bought their clubs after the previous Super Bowl here.

This time around, the Super Bowl experience is being spun as similar to a Winter Olympics. The annual NFL Charities golf tournament has been replaced by bowling. Motown Winter Blast will feature an ice rink and a sledding hill, along with music and food - presumably including hot toddies and gleuwein.

It might take more than a few sips to draw any connection between Detroit and Torino, other than the car Ford manufactures.

Though Steelers fans, who travel famously well, will boost attendance this week, many of the well-heeled types, who use the Super Bowl to do business - from owners to corporate sponsors - are cutting their visits down to a few days, or out altogether.

Robert Ewaniuk of Toronto-based Sportality, which books tours to major sporting events, has seen a 25 percent dropoff in bookings since last year's game in Jacksonville.

``Detroit is a non-destination,'' Ewaniuk said. ``A Super Bowl is not just the game. Most people who want to go don't care who is playing. They want to go deep sea fishing, play golf, go to a spa. You can do that in Miami, Arizona and Tampa Bay. What are you going to do in Detroit?''

The NFL has considered a regular rotation of Super Bowl sites in warm weather locales, but three of the most popular - Los Angeles, San Diego and New Orleans - don't have new stadiums.

``People want to come to warm weather sights,'' said Kathy Schloessman, president of the L.A. Sports and Entertainment Commission. ``This is a corporate hospitality event. It's all about the sponsors and the TV angle.''

With regular events like the Grammys and Oscars, along with this year's national championship game at the Rose Bowl and last year's NBA All-Star game, it's been easier for those in Los Angeles' corporate community to be picky.

Schloessman, who has skipped the Super Bowl in Houston, Jacksonville and now Detroit, plans to go next year.

The destination: Miami.

While Miami conjures images of palm trees, warm breezes and South Beach, it's rarely remembered as the site of the most dangerous Super Bowl, when there was rioting in the Overton area in the days leading up to the 1989 game.

Imagine something like that being forgotten in Detroit.

Not as long as there's T-shirts urging visitors to come back, picturing a pointed revolver with the words: I missed you last time.

This is the city that is still known for celebrating the Tigers' World Series title in 1984 by setting fire to police cars and where, last season, basketball fans set off a melee with the Indiana Pacers.

No wonder this is the town where Tonya Harding had Nancy Kerrigan clubbed in the knee. When it comes to rounding up the usual suspects, where do you start?

``Our reputation precedes us,'' said Sean Jones, a security guard at a juvenile detention center, pointing to the Pistons' brawl last year.

``As soon as it happened, it was a black eye, but you know what? There ain't no poor people sitting that close.''

The city was dealt another blow this week, when Ford announced 30,000 job cuts and $8.6 billion lost last year.

Often lost among the bad news is the new housing downtown, the roadwork done for the Super Bowl, a thriving theater scene, and popular music acts such as the White Stripes, Eminem and Kid Rock.

Deserved or not, Detroit's reputation is so well ingrained that city leaders have used the run-up to the Super Bowl to give pep talks to the citizens.

Mayor Kwame Kilpatrick, after being re-elected in November, cited in his inaugural address this month a quote from Eleanor Roosevelt: ``No one can make you feel inferior without your consent.''

Kilpatrick went on: ``Detroit needs to stop apologizing for itself. ... It's no longer an issue of the world not liking us. Now, it's us not liking us and sending that message out to the world. It's time for that to change.''

Yet Kilpatrick himself has been a polarizing figure.

A former college football lineman, the 35-year-old Kilpatrick has been dubbed the Hip-Hop Mayor, and he often looks the part, often moving with a well-tailored and well-blinged entourage.

Kilpatrick came under fire last year when, at a time when the city was cutting services - including the closing of the famed boxing training facility, the Kronk Gym - the city paid nearly $25,000 to lease a Lincoln Navigator for his wife.

Kilpatrick's re-election came amid charges that a political ally had mailed out absentee ballots to voters who did not request them.

``The mayor is an extremely adroit politician,'' said Khari Brown, a professor of race, religion and politics at Wayne State, in downtown.

While Ford has been the leading financial driver behind the redevelopment of downtown, with lofts and other restoration projects along the Detroit River, Brown credits Kilpatrick for helping lure businesses and young singles to the city.

``Detroit is the poorest city in America, it has a high school graduation rate of 44 percent,'' Brown said. ``The quality of education, access to health care, unemployment - these are big structural problems that can't be fixed overnight. He's been extremely adroit in working with corporations and white suburban leaders.''

The story of Detroit's plight can be best explained by the Motor City's most famous street, 8 Mile Road.

It represents the northern border between the city and the suburbs, but for decades it has also been the line of demarcation between good schools and bad, burned out buildings and tidy brick homes, and between black and white.

The film, ``8 Mile,'' starring Eminem, explored one side of the road,neighborhoods that look familiar a short walk from Ford Field, the four-year-old stadium that will host Super Bowl XL. There are blocks of boarded up and vacant homes and businesses, and more blocks of razed lots.

Cross over 8 Mile Road and you'll see leafy suburban streets.

``There is a big disconnect,'' said Brown, the professor. ``The quality of housing, public schools, safety issues, sidewalks and streets, the opportunities to go to restaurants, retail shopping, grocery stores - it's almost like night and day. Almost like a different country.''

Head out of Detroit in the other direction and you really are in a different country.

Windsor, Ontario, just across the river, looks every bit a Rust Belt town. It is, as one might suspect of Canada, more modest than its neighbor. But it is also cleaner, more well kempt and, the residents believe, safer.

Sitting in Ryan's Irish Pub, enjoying a lunchtime pint and a cigarette, Tim Currie said ``the perception of Detroit as crime-ridden and dirty - it's overblown.''

His sister Janice wasn't so sure.

``It scares me,'' she said.

On the trip back over the bridge, a custom official asks for identification, the purpose of the trip over the border, and then if you're in town for the Super Bowl. He then asks for an opinion on the game, marvels at the parties and says the city is going to put on a show.

He doesn't seem to mind that there's a line of cars waiting, he smiles and offers a fist bump.

As the Super Bowl draws near and the city begins its week on stage, perhaps the outlook of Detroit depends on where you sit.

On the way to Windsor, the Canadian custom official asked the same perfunctory questions, but added one they don't ask on the way into Detroit: Are you carrying any weapons?

Billy Witz, [phone]

billy.witz(at)dailynews.com

CAPTION(S):

photo, chart

Photo:

(color) The Super Bowl heads to Detroit for the second time. When the city hosted the NFL title game in 1982, a snowstorm made going to the contest a logistical nightmare.

Photo Illustration by Chris Hart and Richard Perkins

Chart:

IS IT COLD IN HERE?