Originally known as Hob's Bay, named after Elias Hob; an early Metropolis landowner, the area had been a prosperous, middle-class neighborhood at the turn of the twentieth century. With the beginning of the Great Depression, residents were encouraged to invest in Comet Arena, touted as a sports venue that "would bring fifty thousand people to the area every week of the year." Instead, the developer disappared with the contributed donations earmarked for the complex and the area began a descent into poverty and decay from which it never recovered. Now only City Hall and the chamber of commerce refer to the neighborhood as "Hob's Bay". To the rest of Metropolis, it is Suicide Slums.