Crews went to work on the United Artists building on Bagley this week, perhaps as part of many pre-Superbowl cover-ups of the city’s warts.

First they painted the entire lower-level boards black, providing a fresh canvas for white graffiti.

Then they took down the 1950s-era marquee, which had been suffering under the influence of gravity lately.

They also began undertaking the monumental task of removing or covering the innumberable graffiti paintings on the windows that made it one of the more stunning abandoned buildings in town.

Several years ago, someone basically set up shop in there and spent countless hours painting Mayan symbols on the windows, along with references to the year 2012, the end of the Mayan long-count calendar and an end-of-the-world date common in doomsday scenarios.

Of all the graffiti around town, this is perhaps the most tolerable. They didn’t paint over the pretty brickwork, but instead used the windows, which not only would be replaced with modern windows in any renovation, but are the most visible location for graffiti, since backlighting from the sun often makes them glow as if they’re fluorescent, creating a stained-glass effect.

The paintings were also a thumb in the eye of Mike Ilitch, the building’s owner, who purchased the building from the city and then left it wide open, as if to hasten its demise. Graffiti artists and vandals accepted his tacit invitation and basically moved in.

The elaborate and remarkable graffiti made his towering abandoned skyscraper a tourist attraction, drawing suburbanites and tourists to view a constant mockery of his neglect.

That’s the thing about Ilitch – he restored the Fox Theater and did a beautiful job, but he owns many other old buildings in the area that he’s left abandoned for years, allowing them to rot, including the Fine Arts Building, the Adams theater, the United Artists Building, the Madison-Lenox Hotel (recently demolished after years of neglect), the Detroit Building, the Hotel Vermont and the Blenheim Apartments. That number pretty much outweighs his renovation of the Fox Theater. In fact, Ilitch owns more vacant buildings in the city than any other entity except the City itself.

Longtime rumor has it he accumulated some of those properties to demolish and build a new hockey stadium to the southwest of the Fox. If so, he should get on with it; if not, sell the damn buildings. Some of them are quite developable and architecturally beautiful, and their ailing presence and continuing neglect counter the improvements he’s made elsewhere in the city.