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Red Wings believe Little Caesars Arena will be envy of NHL |
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The ambience of Montreal.
The creature comforts of Pittsburgh.
The up close and personal touches of Dallas.
When the Detroit Red Wings set out to design Little Caesars Arena, the rink that will become home to the team to start the 2017-18 NHL season, they sought to create a home that would be the envy of all.
In order to do that, they set out to all points to study what had already been done in the industry, and glean from their travels the must-have items that would make their new rink a state-of-the-art facility like no other.
“We’ve borrowed the best ideas from everybody, so hopefully when we open, this will be the best of the best of the best ideas in the country, all rolled into one place,” Tom Wilson, president and CEO of Olympia Entertainment, explained as he offered a private tour of all the rink and surrounding 50-block Detroit District will have to offer when it opens for business in just over a year’s time.
They felt Montreal’s Bell Centre offered the best sightlines and atmosphere of any rink in the NHL.
“There’s no light coming in from any place,” Wilson said. “It’s just a bunch of red jerseys everywhere you look, screaming at you in French.”
As much as they admire Montreal’s rink, the Wings are convinced their facility will take things to the next level.
“This building is tighter than Montreal,” Wilson said. “Even though it’s big and even though it has 20,000 seats, it’s going to feel as small as it could physically feel and make the experience as good for everyone as it could be.”
The objective with Little Caesars Arena is to create the gold standard of stadium experiences and they believe the timing of its construction offers up the ideal opportunity to make it so.
“(Joe Louis Arena’s) best features are the memories,” Wilson said of Detroit’s current home. “We were all there for a Stanley Cup game, or we were all there with our mom or our dad, or we took our kids.
“It was the last of a generation (when it opened in 1979), so it doesn’t have any fan amenities, any experiences, or anything like that other than memories. It has tight seats, no legroom, restroom challenges, stuff like that. That was a disadvantage of being the last of a generation.
“The advantage is by being the last one, we’ve been able to go out to every building in the country and take everybody’s best or second-best idea. We’ve been to New York and Dallas and Chicago and Miami, or Pittsburgh with the latest new one.”
Seats in the new rink will be 21 inches wide, instead of the 17-inch JLA seating. Legroom will be increased and the 60 suites will be situated just 24 rows from the ice. And because the lower bowl of the arena is actually situated below ground level, no one will be required to climb any stairs to gain entry to the building.
“No more Joe Louis Arena stairs,” Wilson said.
From Dallas, they took the idea to have the players walk to the ice directly through fans situated in a members-only club seating area.
“The players come right through the players’ club on to the ice,” Wilson said. “What’s different here is that the visiting club will come out through the south end – they’ll be behind glass but you’ll have a chance to see both teams.
“So if you’ve got a guest in from Pittsburgh, they’ll have a chance to see (Sidney) Crosby up pretty close.”
It was Pittsburgh’s spacious dressing-room facilities that the Wings sought to emulate. There will also be a 6,000-square foot lounge area available to players’ families. Adjacent to the rink, an outdoor plaza with room for 4,000 spectators will offer views of games on a giant video board, will serve as a smaller concert venue and during the cooler months, feature an outdoor ice pad for pleasure skating.
And if you decide to go grab a cold one in the midst of the action, modern technology will ensure you don’t miss a second of the game.
“The (outer) skin (of the arena bowl) becomes interesting because it’s all aluminum,” Wilson said. “It allows us to do some pretty cool things.
“We can change the colour, which allows us to change the attitude. But the cool thing is you’re able to project on it so you can actually put the game on there and you can put the game on all the way around the concourse. You could do the same with a concert.
“If you’re going out grab a pop or a beer, you can still see the show, except that it’s bigger than life. You’ve got to look at it. It’s so big you have to watch it, you have to take it all in.
“You won’t see anything like this in Vegas, or Times Square, or Disney. It’s hopefully sensory overload that’s happening here.”
It’s all about creating the ultimate fan experience.
“The fans were a real key point to this,” Wilson said. “This building has really been designed for hockey fans, to put them as close as they can be.”
“The sightlines are literally the best in hockey, which means that if they’re great for hockey, they’re going to be great for basketball, the they’re going to be great for family shows, they’re going to be great for concerts.”
It was also important to the Wings that as much attention be devoted to the upper bowl of the arena, and that there be affordable opportunities for everyone to attend a game.
“It’s different price points for people,” Wilson said. “There’s some things for average fans and there’s some things for people that want a different kind of experience.
“It’s just some things that every other building offers that we’ve never been able to do that.
“Now we can.”
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