DETROIT – The first thing you notice when you walk into what’s left of Joe Louis Arena is how small it all looks.
The Olympia Room is gone, the locker rooms are no more and what was the ice looks like the bottom of a murky cave.
“Right now they’re removing all the concrete,” senior project manager Donna Rice said.
All the rubble is what’s left of the stairs you used to climb and the tiers where the seats were. The only real sign of what this used to be are the banners that remain.
So far, all the work has been done on the inside. The outside is coming.
“That’s when the public is really going to see The Joe coming down,” Rice said.
Expect to see chunks of building being removed in the second week of June. That should take several months.
Next up will be removing the structural steel. Conservatively, you can expect to see nothing left at the site by the end of fall.