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Wilson jumps from Palace Sports to Red Wings; new arena in works?

Five days after resigning as president and CEO of the Detroit Pistons and Palace Sports & Entertainment, Tom Wilson joins up with the Detroit Red Wings and the Ilitch family. The immediate question: how long will it take him to map out an arena plan for the franchise?

Five days after resigning as president and CEO of the Detroit Pistons and Palace Sports & Entertainment, Tom Wilson joins up with the Detroit Red Wings and the Ilitch family. The immediate question: how long will it take him to map out an arena plan for the franchise?

Granted, running Palace Sports & Entertainment probably wasn't as fulfilling as it was a few years ago: the company quietly shed most of its assets in the last few years (most recently a minor-league baseball team in Asheville) and is now basically the Pistons and the Palace. It's perhaps not the most challenging of situations for someone of Wilson's calibre.

So the move to the Ilitch family and the Red Wings, heading an as-yet-unannounced venture makes sense, particularly if arena planning is on the agenda. There really are only three choices on the table: staying in Joe Louis Arena as it is; renovating Joe Louis Arena, or building a new arena, perhaps on the Cobo Arena site. The Ilitch family seems very comfortable in operating in downtown Detroit, so we would not expect a flight to the suburbs. He put out the issues at the press conference announcing his hiring:

"Joe Louis was built 7-8 years before the Palace was and so to some degree, it's an old technology, with one concourse, everybody trying to meander his way around there, and that creates problems with rest rooms and that creates problems, space-wise, with concession stands and things like that," Wilson said. "So as you look at the new generation, they do have multiple concourses so you can divide people, they can be more comfortable, you have more serving points — it's just a different world today as people have gotten more ambitious."

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