Wings’ new rink designed to comfort fans, intimidate foes
Little Caesars Arena aiming for ambience of Montreal’s Bell Centre
The first time you walk into Little Caesars Arena, the new home for the Detroit Red Wings slated to open next year, it might ring a bell if you’ve ever been to Montreal.
As team officials worked to design the arena, they visited all of the current NHL rinks, as well as the new stadiums in the NFL, MLB and NBA, to borrow — some might say steal — the top ideas from those venues.
When it came to ambience, the Wings sought to copy Montreal’s Bell Centre because quite simply, they felt it was the NHL’s most intimidating rink.
“(Detroit GM) Kenny (Holland) thought it was Montreal because there’s no light coming in from any place,” Tom Wilson, president and CEO of Olympia Entertainment, explained Tuesday as he offered an exclusive tour of what to expect when the facility opens in time for the 2017-18 NHL season.
“It’s just a bunch of red jerseys everywhere you look, screaming at you in French. (Holland) said, ‘I’m the GM and I’m intimidated when we play there.’”
They liked the sightlines in Montreal.
“People are right on top of you,” Wilson said.
The Wings believed as great as the atmosphere is in Montreal, their new building will trump it.
“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 perfect storm 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, 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 secondbest idea.
“We’ve been to New York and Dallas and Chicago and Miami, or Pittsburgh with the latest new one.
“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.”
The new rink will contain 9,000 seats in the lower bowl, 3,000 more than at the JLA. Suites are situated just 24 rows from ice level.
“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, they’re going to be great for family shows, they’re going to be great for concerts.”
Detroit players will walk to and from the ice through a membersonly players’ club, something the Wings copied from Dallas. The dressing room design was borrowed from Pittsburgh.
They will be able to broadcast sold-out games and concerts on a giant video screen situated in an outdoor plaza adjacent to the facility with room for 4,000 spectators.
“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.”
The advantage is ... we’ve be able to go out to every building in the country and take everybody’s best or secondbest idea.