The incremental creep of car culture in Detroit has been welldocumented with the plethora of parking garages and surface lots as opposed to retail and high-rises.

The most egregious visuals of the ills of parking come via the Ilitch property [parking] empire. Not too long ago there were acres of gravel lots where Pizzarena now stands. In the build up to the arena construction in the newly dubbed “Entertainment District” now branded as “The District Detroit” (anyone remember Tigertown?) it seems the biggest boom has been in parking garages with 3 newly constructed even before the arena opened.

Within the Ilitches newly defined “neighborhoods” parking plays a significant role especially when some of those neighborhoods are merely locations for entertainment adjacent to parking options.

	Total Acres	Parking Acres	Percent
Cass Park Village	72.5	8.9	12%
Wildcat Corner	63	13.13	21%
Woodward Square	39.3	2.93	07%
Columbia Street	10.8	1.02	09%
Columbia Park	35.1	14.51	41%

In many of these areas you will be entertained solely by a walk between stadiums and parking, in Wildcat Corner, the stadiums and parking lots take up 70% of the total acreage. Most notably Columbia Park is nearly half surface parking lots. It’s unclear if those will be new development opportunities or simply parking revenue as the Ilitches have paved and gated these parking lots when before they were simply gravel.