By: Charity Meier | Novi Note | Published January 13, 2026
NOVI — A new year brought a new Vibe to the city of Novi.
The start of the new year ushered in a new era at the city’s convention center, as it was officially renamed the Vibe Credit Union Showplace on Jan. 1, after 15 years as the Suburban Collection Showplace.
According to a press release from the credit union, the renaming reflects the company’s “local commitment and its belief that major public venues should carry names tied to local identity, local accountability, and local investment.”
“Vibe Credit Union works to lead our industry in the credit union philosophy of ‘people helping people.’ Our purpose of ‘Elevating Community. Creating Opportunity’ are not just words on a wall but the guiding principle in all we do,” Chaz Rzewnicki, president & CEO of Vibe Credit Union, said in a prepared statement. “As a not-for-profit financial cooperative, our profits stay in the region. Growth drives our ability to make a bigger impact locally — and that is what this partnership offers — a way to inform the community about Vibe Credit Union and help people on a much larger scale.”
According to its website, the Showplace is the largest privately owned exposition, conference and banquet center in Michigan. The 580,000-square-foot venue sits on 55 acres directly off the Interstate 96 expressway in Novi. The facility features 300,000 square feet of flexible exhibition space that can be divided into three expansive halls.
The Showplace is a destination for public expositions, trade shows, conferences and social events. More than 2 million people come to the venue each year for various events such as the Motor City Comic Con, scheduled for May 15-17, and the Michigan State Fair, slated for Sept. 3-7.
“The Showplace, since really its conception, has really been a beacon of metro Detroit, as the biggest conference center, so they have been doing this for decades where they have been bringing a lot of revenue to the local area by throwing huge events, which stimulate local investment and things like that,” said Wadsworth Pilot, vice president of brand and growth at Vibe Credit Union. “So, that is what we really saw that said, ‘Hey, we are really aligned,’ because what we’re trying to do as well is to generate more revenue, more excitement around the metro Detroit area, more specifically in this instance Novi and that local area. But the best thing about the Showplace is that it really does pull people from all over the state to some of its shows. When you think about comic con and the State Fair and some of their bigger events, there are people traveling an hour or two from parts of Michigan to come into Novi for that.”
Pilot said a major factor in the decision for the member-owned credit union to purchase the naming rights was that the purchase would benefit the local community.
“The big thing for us is that we believe that local growth should equal local giveback,” Pilot said. “So, when Vibe grows, that growth should stay in our general area.”
According to Pilot, the profits generated from commercial naming rights deals typically don’t remain within the local community.
“So, we really wanted to look at what it would be like for a not-for-profit organization to own that, where all the revenue that is generated from the naming rights deal can be reinvested back into that local community,” Pilot said.
The Showplace conducted a yearlong search with the help of the Superlative Group to find a commercial naming partner. Blair Bowman, co-owner of the Vibe Credit Union Showplace, said that Vibe was selected from a large number of applicants.
“We were very fortunate, pleased, honored, all those things for having a number of extremely qualified potential partners approach us,” he said. “In the end, in the proverbial sense, it just seemed Vibe just checked so many boxes and had the mix, frankly; their organization’s culture and given their location, again, what they’re interested in to accomplish out of such a relationship so aligned with ours, it was really the best fit.”
Bowman said that they liked that Vibe is a credit union and as such is member owned and has a different motivation than some more traditional businesses that might consider buying the naming rights.
“Their approach to community involvement is, I think, what attracted us most,” Bowman said.
This is the third commercial naming partner for the Showplace, following Rock Financial and Suburban Collection.
Bowman said they have always had strong relationships with their commercial naming partners. The Suburban Collection originally purchased the naming rights for 10 years and then added a five-year extension, which went through Dec. 31, 2025. He said they chose to seek a new commercial naming partner after the Suburban Collection, which had been locally owned, was bought out by Lithia Motors.
“Their priorities were significantly different than Suburban with their number of dealerships that they had locally,” Bowman said.
“When they changed hands to Lithia, like I said, their priorities as this very large-scale international dealer group were much different than Suburban when they were a more local market, but very large. They were just different than Lithia’s approach to things,” Bowman said.
Bowman said that he didn’t consider naming the facility after himself or his family.
“Ego is not a part of our operations. I’ll just say that,” he said.
He said that commercial naming rights have had a “varied structure of success” and that it is something that many major facilities do. He said that it provides resources and correlative marketing efforts.
“(A commercial naming rights partnership) provides resources and correlative marketing efforts that just really allows us to extend our reach and provide resources for us to continue to provide what we do back into the community,” said Bowman.
Bowman said that the Showplace drives more than $1 billion into the local, state and regional economy, according to a recent third-party research study.
He said that the Showplace is the largest privately operated, non-casino-based facility of its kind in the area. He said that many other venues are subsidized fully at the taxpayers’ expense to attract visitors and have the same economic impact as the Showplace. He said that the commercial naming rights is one way that the Showplace can obtain other sources of revenue and resources to obtain viability to bring in all the events and provide a lot back into the community.
Bowman emphasized that Vibe is a naming partner only and as such has no say in the Showplace’s operations or anything that they do.
“We are as always trying to maintain a very cost-effective manner of operations and a place for folks to host their events, and certainly trying to be a cost-effective alternative particularly for those in the public event space for people to come and enjoy the Showplace,” Bowman said.
Vibe Credit Union has secured the naming rights through 2051. For more information on events at the Showplace, visit vibeshowplace.com.