New Little Caesars Arena, Detroit, opens its doors to its neighborhood.
Detroit’s Little Caesars Arena has turned toward the neighborhood built around it. This “deconstructed” style of design puts a focus on blurring the lines between arena and neighborhood, even potentially opening the main concourse to the public on nonevent days.
Designed by HOK with the insight of Street-Works Development, the leaders of the larger The District Detroit that surrounds an arena that opened Sept. 12, the concept relies on dropping the main concourse to street level and facing tenants to both the street and the concourse.
In what will play home to both the National Hockey League’s Detroit Red Wings and the National Basketball Association’s Detroit Pistons, the Ilitch family’s Olympia Entertainment, owners of the team, operators of the arena and the developers behind the district, wanted to revitalize a section of downtown, bringing in a mixed-use neighborhood of restaurants, offices and residential. And instead of making the new arena stand apart, Richard Heapes, Street-Works co-founder, said they first envisioned what the arena felt like from the street.
“We always knew we wanted this to be the heart of a whole new district,” Heapes said. “We had to be the antithesis of Joe Louis Arena (the Red Wings’ former home), a big solid box only open during the event and where you had to walk up 50 feet just to get into it. It had to be the opposite.”
Ryan Gedney, project designer for HOK, said they first dropped the playing surface floor 37 feet below grade, which allows the main concourse—dubbed the via—to run at ground level. To keep the arena in line with the district, a four-story office building serves as the main exterior, with mostly restaurant space on the ground floor and offices—both team and leased space—above. In all, just over 50 percent of the venue’s street frontage is made up of uses active during nonevent times.
“It was important to bring the main concourse to at-grade to blur the lines between the main concourse activity and the district,” Gedney said. That main concourse, though, has a dual-facing opportunity, open out at all times and also in onto the concourse.
Designing so low also allowed for a practice rink under the plaza and the space for up to 30 trucks and buses to park, which Heapes said can speed up the load and unload time of a major concert an entire day, key for an arena expecting about 235 events annually.
Each tenant space will play with the blurred line differently, some opening portions of their space to each side when an event is going and some closing off to one. But all will remain open to the street side when an event isn’t on. Gedney said to expect the concourse to open at nonevent times, turning into another pedestrian passage between the spaces, akin to an indoor connection next to Woodward Square, the main outdoor plaza connecting the multiple uses in the district along Woodward Avenue.
Traditionally, arena outer walls serve as the secure perimeter of the arena in non-use times, but Gedney said the seating bowl now becomes the secure perimeter, a physical design that came from creating an entire district rather than just an arena. “That is how we approached it, a district first and arena functions that happen to live in it,” he said. “From an architectural point, when you stand outside and look at the building, you don’t see arena, you see district.”
Part of that comes in having so much office space moved outside the arena into the exterior buildings. Heapes said that not only is it less expensive to build office space in a typical office building rather than inside an arena, but it also provides the opportunity for more daylight into the offices.
“How can each piece be the best of its kind,” he asked about moving offices and retail outside. “Now I have a team store on the street with its own door, own sign and own parking. It is the same with the team offices. On the flip side, I now have a bowl that is designed almost as a pure sports and concert venue. The bowl is better; the amenities are better. Mix it all together, and it creates a wonderful space in between.”
The identity of the closed-off seating bowl has a sudden reveal, as the concourse via features ETFE roofing to bring daylight into the galleria-style space. “We are blurring the line between traditionally separate building types,” Gedney said. “Tenant and arena spaces are blurred.”
Architecturally, the design allows fans to feel like they are in a street or alleyway while in the main concourse and then once they pass through the vomitory into the closed-off seating bowl—it was designed closed as a way to increase crowd noise during games, a happy circumstance that helped enhance the via design—it “heightens the transition from concourse to bowl with such a stark, wonderful transition.”
Instead of the gradual rise from street to parks to entries to open concourses and to seats, Little Caesars Arena offers an immediate change.
The benefit for the district comes in more restaurant and retail space open at more times. But the fan also has a “richer environment” come game time, Gedney said, as each restaurant must come with real character and authenticity to allow them to stand alone beyond game day. That also means the eateries, such as the new Kid Rock-themed southern style restaurant, will each have a unique experience during events, whether a sit-down option or a belly-up approach.
The other half of the main concourse without outward-facing tenants resembles more of a traditional in-arena concession experience.
The compilation of the arena-district design, Heapes said, gives the arena a positive influence on the district rather than a negative, a district that includes both residential living for a true natural neighborhood feel and the Ilitch family donating $40 million to bring Wayne State University’s school of business into the district.
“We have real retail at the street level all around this thing,” Heapes said. “Not just one bar, but four or five restaurants. It is a part of the city as if the arena was never there. It is almost like a great wonderful piece of the city, and you dropped a bowl into it. There is no dark hole.”