When Eugene Gargaro went to The Palace last summer to solicit support for the Detroit Institute of Arts, he anticipated the typical prolonged corporate decision-making process to play out. Instead he got the business version of a 24-second shot clock.
"The meeting took about 10 minutes," the DIA's chairman of the board said Tuesday night to a gathering there to celebrate the Detroit cultural jewel's partnership with the Pistons and tour the Diego Rivera and Frida Kahlo exhibit. "They told me, 'Gene, we get it.' "
And that was about five minutes longer than Pistons owner Tom Gores expected, Palace CEO Dennis Mannion joked, for his organization to throw its full financial and moral support behind the DIA as part of the "Grand Bargain" that saved the art institute from being put at risk through Detroit's bankruptcy resolution.