Re: New UNO Arena Construction Thread---Facility to open for the start of '15-'16 Sea
In the video news story about the impending completion of Baxter Arena from KETV, the ABC affiliate here in Omaha, from a couple posts back:
www.ketv.com/news/exclusive-look-at-unos-baxter-arena/34450316
The story's reporter makes an entirely false assertion:
"...................this state-of-the-art facility will be a home to UNO Athletics and a community center to replace the old Omaha Civic Auditorium".
The Omaha Civic Auditorium was city owned. Baxter Arena is owned by the University of Nebraska at Omaha.
The Civic Auditorium was
never a "community center" in any way, shape, or form. It was a combination convention center/arena/music hall
commercial venue that housed a variety of sports teams, both collegiate and professional (hockey, basketball, arena football, and volleyball). Besides the arena, itself, there is an adjoining music hall that seats 2,453 people and two other exhibition spaces. Mancuso Hall (25,000 sq. ft) and the Exhibition Hall (43,400 sq. ft).
None of this space was ever made available for freebie public use, and that includes to any of the collegiate teams that used it. Ice-making capability was not even installed at the Civic until 1997 (for UNO hockey). Public skating at the arena has never occurred. The city even charged local high schools to hold graduations there (albeit, at a somewhat reduced, nominal fee).
The Qwest (now CenturyLink) Center was the facility the City of Omaha specifically built to replace the Civic Auditorium. For a time, consultants (in 2003) saw a continued need for both facilities. However, with the completion of Ralston Arena, to which both the Omaha Lancers (USHL) and the Omaha Beef (IFL Arena Football) departed to from the Civic in the fall of 2012, the building lost its last tenants. Other events that otherwise might have been hosted at the Civic were
also lost to Ralston Arena, as they had been as well as to the Mid-America Center across the river in Council Bluffs (completed in the fall of 2002).
The building has sat, unused, since it was abandoned by the Omaha Lancers and the Omaha Beef in 2012.
As an interesting aside, the co-existence of what was then the Qwest Center and the Omaha Civic Auditorium led the Omaha Chamber to pitch coincidental Men's/Women's Frozen Fours in Omaha to the NCAA right after the Qwest Center opened (possibly even making use of the Mid-America Center as well as Aksarben Coliseum for the purpose--it was still standing then--but, alas, the NCAA didn't sign off on it. That would have been great.
Further, it's pretty disingenuous to call Baxter Arena, a "community center". In fact, until Baxter bought the naming rights, it was even being referred to as the "UNO Community Arena".
The City of Omaha's financial contribution to this project (6 million dollars, all in infrastructure improvements necessary in the area of the arena) was a quid pro quo based on UNO committing to 33 percent of the arena’s ice time going for community purposes for things like youth hockey, adult hockey, figure skating and other events on the arena's 2nd rink, the "community ice sheet" (read: UNO's practice ice when the main arena is otherwise being used).
Trust me, if UNO had this additional 6 million dollars to allot to this project that the infrastructure needs cost, the interim name of this facility would have never been "UNO Community Arena" and if they had had any more money than that available, they would have built this facility to a capacity of
at least 9,000 seats, which Dean Blais has publicly said (as well as yours, truly--countless times) in the past few months that it should have been.
Which also brings me to a somewhat minor trifle with the news story. The arena
seats 7,500. With SRO, the capacity is 7,800, not 7,500, as the reporter in the story says. The school has made it clear there are 300 SRO tickets available for each game.
I say we also bring back Taco Girl.
