[LMich]

To be clear, this isn't really a question of "if" this time. The project agreement requires Olympia to build $200 million worth of the surrounding neighborhoods within five years of the opening of the arena, and this is apart from the hundreds of millions being spent to build the arena and the immediate development around it.

Ambitious? Yes. The architecture may change for the surrounding developments are different architects are hired for the different projects and neighborhoods, but the layout isn't going to change, significantly.

I think this plan is particularly impressive given that they did this in the face of a mass transit system that doesn't exactly incentize this kind of dense neighborhood development in Detroit. Really, they didn't have to hide the parking, and they could have just thrown up a few towers with some retail in the base and called it a day. Instead, they decided to go for a full-on set of neighborhoods directly radiating from the arena site.

Other observations:

- Glad to see the streetcar stop rendered in at the northeast corner of the site at Sproat and Woodward. They even show the crossover just to the south. Also, looks like they'll be putting a median into Woodward for a few blocks in the area.

- Looks like they are going to extend the Woodward Avenue bridge over the Fisher to the west to support a structure to try and reduce the divide the freeway creates. Seems a bit weird it's just the west side of the bridge, and I'm not sure how a single extension of a bridge over this part of the freeway accomplishes that, but I guess it's better than nothing.

- It appears they changed lead architects for the arena from big names to someone less famous, but it doesn't seem to have hurt the finished product, at all. This is a sexy arena, no doubt, and that's even without a convention exterior. It also looks like after having said they were downsizing the size of the arena to 18,500 seats - presumably to accomodate more luxury boxes - they are backup to 20,000 seats like the Joe.