New Arena and Cass Park Village

A rendered picture of the planned new Red Wings hockey arena. Five areas near downtown Detroit will see transformation beginning in September. Including a new arena, apartments and office buildings, shops and restaurants, which spans 45 blocks. (Courtesy image/Dennis Allain Renderings)

Late last year, near the end of his term as mayor of Detroit, former Pistons star Dave Bing looked out his smudged City Hall window toward the renovated Cobo Arena where the basketball team used to play.

In discussing why the franchise left downtown Detroit for north suburban Oakland County in 1978, Bing said it came down to bad blood between Pistons owner Bill Davidson and Detroit Mayor Coleman Young.

Both men are dead now but Bing and other Detroit fans may live to see a Pistons' return to downtown Detroit. A new arena for the Red Wings – to open in 2017 – is the centerpiece of an ambitious $650 million downtown development plan outlined Sunday by the Ilitch family, which owns the Wings and the Tigers.

The Ilitches tried to buy the Pistons a few years ago. Many National Hockey League teams share arenas with National Basketball Association teams. They include Chicago, New York, Boston, Miami, Dallas and Los Angeles. Why not downtown Detroit?

Well, for one thing, the Pistons of owner Tom Gores are comfortably ensconced in the 26-year-old, recently-renovated Palace of Auburn Hills. But they have dropped a hint that that they might consider returning.

A Pistons spokesman – Mark Barnhill -- reiterated in an email Monday "We would never close the door on alternatives if they made good sense for our fans, for our team, for our business and for Michigan."

And this could be such a time. Even if they never build the commercial and residential buildings of the overall project, the Wings and the Pistons could share a $450 million arena in the same neighborhood with the Tigers at Comerica Park and the Lions at Ford Field.

This could create a critical mass for development of restaurant and entertainment businesses in the Grand Circus Park area because there would be major-league sports in the neighborhood at least 170 days a year.

Playoffs in any of the four sports (or all of them) along with concerts and other events could increase that total to well over 200 events per year. They could bid for NCAA and Big Ten tournaments in hockey and basketball. All could add up to a tipping point for viability.

That said, we know many governments have subsidized pro sports arenas without seeing all the ancillary benefits promised by team owners. And there will be considerable state taxpayer support behind the private investment of the Ilitch family.

But a civic booster could contend that it is in the enlightened self-interest of all parties, including the state and the Pistons, to partner on a deal in which the whole becomes greater than the sum of its parts.

In some ways, downtown Detroit is becoming as hip as Oakland County was in the 1970s. Residential rentals are in demand.

The new street car line (a 19th Century concept which is still useful) will link the sports district, the New Center, Wayne State University, the Medical Center, downtown and Cobo Center and will start up about the same time as the arena opens.

Optimists see this as a sturdy spine that will sprout ribs both east and west of Woodward.

"It's mind-blowing!" said Larry Alexander, president of the Detroit Metro Convention and Visitors Bureau and also the head of the Detroit Sports Commission.

Alexander, one of the executives supervising the rebuilding of Cobo, saw Christopher Ilitch's presentation last week.

"Forty-five square blocks," Alexander said. "That's gigantic."

Of course there are caveats to consider. Boosters say this is the biggest thing to hit downtown since the Renaissance Center in the late 1970s. Hmmmm. The RenCen, despite the presence of General Motors, was a deeply flawed project, a forbidding fortress whose interior architecture remains baffling.

The People Mover, touted as a business booster in the 1980s, is functional but goes around in circles, sometimes, with empty cars by empty buildings.

Some other issues to ponder:

Q – Should the Ilitches entice the Pistons to come, would basketball fans follow them back to Wayne County?

A – Probably. Suburbanites support the other three teams downtown already and there's plenty of crossover among those groups. If they feel safe, they'll come, especially to see a winner.

Q – What would happen to the Palace?

A – A concert venue, perhaps?

Q – What about Joe Louis Arena?

A – Knock it down, the sooner the better. Sell the seats as souvenirs and develop a valuable piece of riverfront real estate next to expanding Cobo Center.

Q – What should they name the new building?

A – Joe Louis Arena II, although most new places sell naming rights to financial corporations.

Q – Don't people care anymore about traditions in sports buildings?

A – Joe Louis was shabby the day it opened in 1979 and is deteriorating. The Pontiac Silverdome, opened in 1975, is in ruins. Some buildings change names every few years. The Atlanta Braves, in Turner Field only since the 1996 Olympics, have announced plans to move to the suburbs. There aren't many Fenway Parks anymore.

Q – But isn't it wrong to spend so much money -– private and public -- on bread and circuses in a bankrupt city that shuts off water to homes of the poor and can't afford street lights or enough police on its major roads?

A – Fair point. The boosters would argue that new development spurs new tax revenue that will pay for lights and social services. During that same conversation in Bing's office last year, he expressed optimism for middle-class development in the city but also shook his head sadly and said he worried about the poor who will be left with no place to go.

No matter your take on it, this ambitious project along Woodward Avenue is a crossroads moment that may help define the destiny of Detroit and Michigan for decades to come.

-- Joe Lapointe is a sports columnist for MLive.com. He is a 20-year veteran of the New York Times sports department, 11-year veteran of the Detroit Free Press, and a Detroit native.