Across the country, NBA teams have moved to or are seeking new facilities that – with luxury boxes, waiter service and giant scoreboards – enable them to compete in a megabucks league. “If Chicago, Portland, Seattle and Cleveland are out building new facilities and getting revenues from seats and suites, we need to be doing that too,” says Denver Nuggets president Tim Leiweke. In 1997 the Nuggets will abandon the city’s McNichols Arena for its own $132 million arena just a few miles away. The Washington Bullets plan to quit the USAir Arena in Maryland for a new $180 million home in their namesake city. And Dallas suburbs are wooing the Mavericks out of downtown Reunion Arena.
The new arenas may not be any bigger, but they sell the same amount of seats for more money. The luxury boxes and club seats planned for Denver’s new arena, for example, will pump some $7 million a year into the Nuggets’ coffers, seven times more than McNichols now generates. With the extra revenues, the Nuggets can go out and, at today’s NBA prices, sign one more star. By owning their own arena, the Nuggets won’t have to share parking and concession profits with the city. And they hope the fancy new digs will soon attract a National Hockey League tenant.
The only losers are local governments that built or subsidized arenas in the flusher ’60s and ’70s. If the Bullets and hockey Capitals depart Maryland’s Prince George’s County, the county will lose about $2.5 million in annual rent and taxes. “Cities can’t adjust as fast as the market changes,” says urban environment expert Mark Rosentraub.
Before the newer arenas are consigned to the junk heap, the scramble is on to find alternative uses. One proposal for Reunion is to convert it to a casino. The best bet for Richfield may be an outlet mall. At USAir Arena they’re already floating ideas for a new aquarium or even a velodrome. In some cities, the best use of the old arena may turn out to be the same as always-only with different clients. In 1992, after the basketball Suns abandoned the Veterans Memorial Coliseum outside Phoenix for the modern, downtown America West, the old arena began to rely on less glamorous clients such as minor-league hockey, rodeos and the Arizona State Fair.
It’s tempting to imagine discarded arenas filled to capacity for the kind of family entertainment – circuses, ice shows, tractor pulls – that is currently squeezed out by pro sports. But most old arenas, with their narrow concourses, uncomfortable seats and bad sight lines, were never fan favorites. Once folks get a taste – or even a glimpse on TV – of the new pleasure palaces, they’re hardly nostalgic for their drab predecessors. With technology changing so rapidly, all today’s glitter-domes have to worry about is becoming the white elephants of the early 21st century.
