Crain’s: Little Caesars Arena’s lower bowl’s seats will be fashionably black

From Crain’s Detroit Business’s Bill Shea:

Little Caesars Arena’s red seats to be swapped for black

The red seats at Detroit’s Little Caesars Arena will be swapped for black seats over several months beginning in December.
All of the red seats at Detroit’s Little Caesars Arena — which show up starkly on TV when they’re not filled during games — will be swapped for black seats over several months beginning in December, the venue’s operator said Monday evening.

The announcement comes 13 months after the building opened and its two primary tenants, the Detroit Red Wings and Detroit Pistons, were the subject of commentary about the unfilled bright red seats during games.

Seats in the entire lower bowl will be covered with temporary black fabric covers for all events during the replacement process, something that was done earlier this year during the 2017-18 Detroit Pistons season.

Olympia Entertainment, which manages the building, said in a statement that games and events won’t be affected because the seat replacement will be done in phases when there are no events at the arena.

“We evaluated every aspect of arena operations during the inaugural year, and after numerous discussions with the Pistons and other stakeholders, we have made the decision to install black seats at Little Caesars Arena,” said Chris Granger, group president for sports and entertainment at Ilitch Holdings Inc., in a statement. Ilitch Holdings is the umbrella company for the entities that built and operate the arena.

The original seat installation was a $3.5 million project contracted with Grand Rapids-based Irwin Seating Co., one of the country’s major manufacturers of stadium, arena and theater seating. The contract was for 18,600 seats.

Irwin will do the replacement job, Olympia confirmed to Crain’s. It wasn’t immediately clear what will happen with the current seats.

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