I'm not going to debate what constitutes downtown Boston, but within a half mile / short walk of the TD Garden is Beacon Hill [[Boston's most upscale neighborhood) on one side and the North End [[one of its most interesting) on the other. And if it isn't downtown it's within a half mile of it in a third direction. It's a half mile from City Hall and roughly the same distance from Faneuil Hall as it is from Grand Circus Park to Hart Plaza. The neighborhood has access to some of the city's best transit. And it sits between Somerville [[one of metro Boston's hippest neighborhoods) and the city center.
Boston has been booming for decades. Maybe another way of looking at this is to consider what prevented the area around the Garden from participating in it for so long. Are you sure it's not that people didn't want to live near the Garden, the sports bars, the crowds, and the traffic that it attracts?
In any case Detroit has a chance to do it better. At least the marketing materials envision a thriving multi-purpose neighborhood that isn't totally limited to the Arena and related businesses. Whether or not it makes sense to build residences adjacent to an arena, the fact that they're building some means there's some hope it will actually take shape.
That said, I don't expect the dreams they want us to imagine on the
districtdetroit.com website will fully materialize. And if we do ever see art galleries and poetry slams in "Cass Park Village" it won't be because of the arena. Those things are more compatible with the Cass Corridor of old.
http://www.districtdetroit.com/neigh...s-park-village