Luxury apartment tower on former Joe Louis Arena site opens

DETROIT – The transformation of Joe Louis Arena from stadium to luxury apartments is now complete.

City leaders gathered Tuesday, Feb. 6, to celebrate the opening of the Residences at Water Square, a 25-story apartment building and Detroit’s first all-glass residential high-rise.

It has 500 units and the building is pet-friendly. It was built in just under two years on the former site of the Joe Louis Arena.

Mayor Mike Duggan said it’s a symbol of how far the city has come since its bankruptcy.

“You had a soon-to-be-abandoned hockey arena on this site, and the city in 2014, the idea of building a new high-rise? You think about what you had here at the time -- the David Whitney Building sat empty, the David Stott Building sat empty, the Book Building sat empty, the train station sat empty,” Duggan said. “In 2014, nobody was thinking that this site was going to have any kind of short-term value.”

The high-end luxury apartments start at $2,000 a month. More information can be found on its official website.