DETROIT -- Stand in the middle of this city's downtown and there's little to admire, even less to brag about. You can't help but wonder what went wrong. Blocks upon blocks of storefront windows are boarded up, their exteriors covered with graffiti. Garbage flies everywhere.

	Campus Martius: The new home of Compuware in downtown Detroit.

And at just about every street corner, you come across someone -- young, old, black, white, male, female -- asking for spare change. A nickel. A quarter. Anything.

Just when you think there's no hope, that the area is so decayed it can never be revitalized, you look to the sky and see a bunch of cranes. You hear tractors. You smell fresh concrete. And you realize -- in the middle of this urban tragedy, an area nobody would dare wander at night, someone is building a beautiful, brand new building.

That person? Carolina Hurricanes owner Peter Karmanos.

In addition to being the financial backing behind the 'Canes, Karmanos is also the chairman and CEO of Compuware, a computer software company with revenues of more than $2 billion. The 15,000-employee company, currently based in suburban Detroit, will move its headquarters downtown later this year as the cornerstone of an urban revitalization project.

The 16-story, $550 million structure will anchor the Campus Martius project, which plans to feature a park, hotel, business offices and retail space.

"Detroit can be one of America's greatest cities again," Karmanos said. "This will hopefully be part of that transition."

A transition that makes for interesting drama on the construction site, though. After all, these blue-collar laborers are almost entirely Red Wings fans, who show their support for the hometown hockey team with a sticker on a helmet or lunchbox or even a T-shirt.

And yet, when it gets right down to it, the man they are working for owns the Hurricanes.

"It doesn't bother me one bit," die hard Wings fan and construction worker Jerry Meggee said Wednesday, a day after Detroit's 3-2 overtime loss in Game 1 of the Cup finals. "Mr. Karmanos is a great guy. He does a lot. And for him to take his company and move it downtown to try and help boost the economy in the area says a lot. I don't care what team he owns."

The feeling is prevalent throughout the city. Even though Karmanos owns the rival team, he's well respected in his hometown of Detroit, largely because of his numerous philanthropic efforts.

Karmanos was a central figure in rebuilding Detroit-area youth hockey. And in 1995, a few years after the death of his 46-year-old wife from cancer, Karmanos spent $26.1 million to fund construction of the Barbara Ann Karmanos Cancer Institute at Wayne State University. In addition, he's a known contributor to Detroit museums, art galleries and zoos.

At Compuware's current headquarters in Farmington Hills, a giant Carolina banner greats visitors in the main lobby. But don't mistake this place for Hurricanes territory.

"I think a very small percentage are rooting for the Hurricanes -- if that," Karmanos said. "Most of them like the Red Wings. They're all traitors."

Karmanos, who grew up a Red Wings fan on Detroit's northwest side, still calls the area home. He has four prime box seats for the Wings, though he often gives those tickets to customers or employees.

Tuesday night for Game 1, he watched his team's win from a private luxury box. To Karmanos, the final score looked just as good from the rafters it would have from center ice.

"What a game," he said. "What a game."

Karmanos, 59, bought the Hartford Whalers in 1994 and moved them to North Carolina in 1997. The move was heavily criticized, with Hartford's mayor at the time saying if he saw Karmanos on the way out of town he'd "punch him in the back of the head."

The team played its first two seasons in Greensboro, before settling in Raleigh-Durham. Two years later, despite a payroll around $31 million (Detroit's salaries are reportedly in excess of $65 million), the 'Canes are in the Cup.

"It's very rewarding," he said. "I took an awful lot of criticism over the last few years about where the team was playing and how we were building the team. I was watching TV at the start of the playoffs and saw some yo-yo tell me that he was quite sure we weren't going to win a game in the playoffs. I have watched very carefully to see if that person would ever say they were wrong."

Karmanos has done little to shy away from the spotlight this week. While Red Wings owner Mike Ilitch has remained mostly in the background, Karmanos has been quite visible. On Monday, at the team's media day, he pranced in and shook hands with everyone from reporters to security guards.

The hot topic of conversation? His reported feud with Ilitch.

Ilitch, who also owns the Detroit Tigers, founded the Little Caesars pizza chain and has also contributed to a downtown revival, with Comerica Park, the Hockeytown Café, the Fox Theatre and a Second City Comedy Club.

The feud reportedly started years ago, when the two hockey buffs began developing the two most successful junior hockey programs in the area. Compuware's youth teams have include the likes of Pat LaFontaine, Al Iafrate and Kevin Hatcher. Little Caesars alumni include Mike Modano and Bryan Smolinski.

In 1995, Karmanos publicly rooted for the New Jersey Devils over the Red Wings in the Cup finals. Not long thereafter, Ilitch booted Karmanos and his major junior team -- the Detroit Jr. Wings -- from Joe Louis Arena, despite the fact that the Jr. Wings often drew 12,000 to 18,000 fans. Ilitch said he wanted to have more concerts and other events at the arena. Karmanos saw things differently.

"Basically, our little-kids' hockey teams beat his little-kid teams, and he didn't like it," Karmanos said at the time. "We are unfriendly rivals. He doesn't like me at all."

Three years later, Karmanos got revenge, of sorts, when he offered Wings forward Sergei Fedorov the most lucrative contract in league history. The move forced Ilitch to pay the all-star -- or lose him. He anteed up.

Now the two meet again, on hockey's grandest stage. And little has changed between them. "They hate each other," Chris Coury, a longtime organizer in the Little Caesars organization, told the Detroit Free Press earlier this month.

This week, Ilitch has stayed silent. And though Karmanos has tried to downplay the rivalry, reading between his carefully chosen words and his rosy cheeks suggests otherwise.

"If there's acrimony -- if -- we share it equally," he said.

And then there was this response, to question about whether or not he'd speak with Ilitch during the series.

"I will have as many conversations with Mr. Ilitch as I had with the owner of Toronto, the owner of Montreal and the owner of New Jersey, which is zero," he said.

Despite the soft jabs and the undeniable tension between Karmanos as the head of the Red Wings empire, people in Detroit don't seem to care.

On Wednesday, there was Meggee, the construction worker, taking a ribbing from one of his workers, a Hurricanes fan. The trash talking and name-calling echoed through the site. And though Meggee suffered a few low blows, he didn't entirely seem to mind.

"You know, there are worse teams and worse people that you could lose to," Meggee said. "With it being Mr. Karmanos, I'm not going to lose any sleep."

Wayne Drehs is a staff writer at ESPN.com.