How StageRight Helps Little Caesars Arena Host Hockey and Basketball
How StageRight Helps Little Caesars Arena Host Hockey and Basketball
February 20, 2019
Little Caesars Arena opened in September of 2017 in Detroit, Michigan. It was a brand-new facility that is now home to the NHL’s Detroit Red Wings and the NBA’s Detroit Pistons. The Red Wings called Joe Louis Arena home for 38 years and the Pistons played hoops for almost 30 years at The Palace of Auburn Hills. The change in their home locations was a move by the teams to provide a new state of the art experience for their fans.
There are many differences between a venue that hosts only one sport and a venue that hosts two. The conversion of the space requires some special consideration and the building must not compromise the experience for either sport. Little Caesars chose to accomplish this with their seating system and employed dual rise telescopic risers. This was a good choice because it allowed them to meet the seating requirement for the different events easily. In addition to moving in and out, the dual rise risers can move up and down so events with different site line requirements can be met without replacing the system entirely. So, not only can they host two different sporting events, it also allows for a wide range of events from concerts to the circus to happen in the same venue.
The biggest conversion challenge they faced when designing this arena was having a system that allows a quick, efficient, and reliable conversion between events. When hockey and basketball games are being hosted on back to back nights or even the same day, the conversion needs to happen within a matter of hours. The system also needs to be reliable because there usually isn’t time to fix major issues if they were to arise during the conversion process. Having this quick and reliable system puts facility managers at ease because it’s one less thing they need to worry about.
Another thing that was important to Little Caesars Arena was having a minimal storage footprint. When building arenas in the downtown area, space is at a premium and giving up valuable retail and customer experience spaces are not a viable option. This is another reason why having the dual rise telescopic risers is beneficial because without them you’d need separate risers for each event which would take up a lot of storage space. The dual rise can be retracted against the wall when it’s not being used.
The specific products that Little Caesars Arena bought from us, in addition to the Dual Rise Telescopic Riser, were our Telematic 100, portable seating platforms for the event floor level, and demountable seating platforms for the entire bowl. They also added in a ME 3750 Portable Rolling Stage to help them support other non-sporting events.
When installing these products, we had to work around having multiple trades on the floor at one time because it was a brand-new construction. It took a lot of pre-planning and scheduling to make sure everything would be completed at one time. StageRight was able to ship most the of the risers already preassembled to minimize our impact and time on site.
Since the project is completed and Little Caesars Arena has been up and running for over one year now, they’re more than happy with the results. Being new to the dual sport conversion world, they have been thrilled with the operation and customer support that we’ve been able to provide them.
Every facility has its own unique challenges. That’s why our seating platforms and telescopic risers are made custom and are designed to meet the needs of the specific venue. This project was no different. Their system is unique to them.
We would like to thank the entire Little Caesars Arena team for the opportunity to work together on this brand-new, state of the art facility.
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