District Detroit Preview Center Gives Sneak Peek At New Red Wings Arena
CBS DETROIT - Olympia Entertainment has announced the District Detroit Preview Center, which gives visitors a first look at detailed scale models of the new Detroit Red Wings arena and the surrounding developments.
Joe Louis Arena, the current home of the Red Wings, opened in 1979. "The Joe," as the arena is commonly known, is one of the oldest in the NHL and is located in an area without restaurants, bars or other entertainment within walking distance. When the Red Wings move into the new arena in 2017, fans will have much more incentive to spend time downtown before and after games, with blocks and blocks of development planned for the area around the arena.
Olympia president and CEO Tom Wilson, speaking live on WWJ, says when the new venue opens in two years, hockey will be one of many reasons to go there.
"It's going to be so much more than that - it's going to be family shows and it's going to be a lot of concerts and a lot of other events so we're looking for between 150 - 200 events," said Wilson.
He says they have about 5,000 suite holders and season ticket holders and sponsors to bring through to understand the vision of what will happen within the new arena. "At the same time, we've got a lot of people coming in that are looking at building apartments and commercial buildings ... the whole idea is let's connect the city in a way that it hasn't been since its early, early days.
"That's the driver in terms of design but before that I think the driver was - how do we connect all the great things that are going on in downtown Detroit and all the terrific things that are going on in Midtown -
in the middle of that is this sort of 40 block area that has been ignored largely for the last two, three or four decades," said Wilson.
During its planning process for the design of the arena and the district as a whole, Olympia studied and applied the best practices employed in the construction of other arenas around the country. Along with including innovations pioneered in the construction of other arenas, however, the new home of the Red Wings will feature a few innovations of its own.
Most notably, spaces conventionally housed inside the arena - box offices, concession areas, restaurants, apparel shops and more - will be moved to buildings along the outside of the arena. The idea of this deconstruction, as the technique has been termed, is to open up the concourses and also to integrate the arena with the surrounding areas.
Between that unique element and the fact the arena is built 40 feet into the ground - making it much less imposing than it would be otherwise - the arena should blend with other nearby buildings rather than overwhelm them.
In addition to striving to make the arena mesh well with the surrounding area, Olympia also queried Red Wings general manager Ken Holland about what arena features would be help give the Red Wings a stronger home ice advantage. After hearing Holland's feedback, Olympia aimed to make the bowl of the arena as steep as possible, with the intent that opposing players feel as though fans are right on top of them.
Another unusual feature of the arena will be a glass roof over the upper and lower concourses. Outside the arena, there will be a large plaza area that can hold about 3,500 people, and those in that area will be able to see the Red Wings on a large video screen. The steel dome of the arena can be programmed as an enormous screen and will display different images depending on the occasion.
The arena will include fewer suites than Joe Louis Arena because sight lines from all seats were a higher priority than the overall number of suites, but the 52 suites that are planned will lack for nothing.
Suites - a full-size model of one is included in the preview center - are approximately 600 square feet and have space for 30 or more people.
Each suite includes a fireplace and a branding wall, which includes several screens that can be set up for Power Point presentations or for display of the logo of the party occupying the suite. The suites are designed to be functional for business as well as entertainment.
The arena will also include gondola seating and can seat about 250 guests in a "Players Club" area - similar to the Tunnel Club that is under construction at Ford Field - through which Red Wings players will walk on their way from the locker room to the ice.
The preview center, which is located in Comerica Park, is not currently open to the public, but Red Wings season-ticket holders will be able to go through the center at some point in the future.