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 AEG, HOB Team Up To Run NextStage Naming Rights Trickle Down To High Schools |
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AEG, HOB Team Up To Run
NextStage
There’s a new next stage for the management and promotion of NextStage, the
indoor amphitheater in Grand Prairie, Texas, thanks to a recently formed
partnership between Anschutz Entertainment Group and House of Blues. In a
deal completed on September 18, Anschutz paid $200,000 to run NextStage,
which is owned by the city of Grand Prairie. The new deal came about after
NextStage Entertainment filed a Chapter 11 bankruptcy petition in August.
The facility has continued to offer its diverse fare of entertainment while
seeking a new buyer. Anschutz, incidentally, is developing a similar,
7,000-seat facility called L.A. Live, which will be similar to the sparkling
NextStage. The Rockford (IL) MetroCentre
will have a new look thanks to $3.8 million that has been approved in
funding for capital improvement projects at the 10,000-seat venue.
Improvements for the MetroCentre include restoration and renovation of the
building’s façade, arena lighting, seat replacement, retractable seating
riser replacement, HVAC/chiller updates, full arena and spotlight
replacement, telephone system replacement and accessibility seating
improvements. Naming Rights Trickle Down To High Schools Hardly a day goes by when
some type of naming rights deal isn’t completed at a professional or
collegiate stadium or arena. Now the big business is moving down into the
high school sector—and the momentum is picking up. A new all-purpose stadium
for two high schools in Nashua, NH, was named for the entrepreneur who
donated $500,000 to the $5.1 million project. High school basketball courts
and scorers’ tables bear corporate logos in Washington Terrace, UT. A girls’
basketball coach in Orem, UT, has a contract with Adidas that provides the
team with everything from shoes to sports bras. And last year a six-school
region in suburban Phoenix sold naming rights to a banking giant for two
school years. Members of the Class 4A Wells Fargo Region will get a total of
$6,000 per year to cover costs of everything from a golf tournament to
membership in the Arizona Athletic Association. As costs and budgets get
tighter even at the high school level, expect to see more of this activity
in the future. When the final one, two,
three count had been made on August 26 at a World Wrestling Entertainment
event at the New Haven Veterans Memorial Coliseum in New Haven, CT, it
marked the end of business for the venerable old building. That city’s mayor
said that as of September 1 the facility would be closed and that an
eventual date would be set with a wrecking ball. Mayor John DeStefano cited
increased competition and the facility’s age as a couple of good reasons for
his decision. A report prepared by an auditing firm estimated that
demolishing the coliseum would result in almost $29 million in taxpayer
savings over the next decade. A Coliseum Authority board appointed by the
mayor will make the final decision on the venue’s fate. The competition
comes from the Arena at Harbor Yard in Bridgeport and the Mohegan Sun Arena
in Uncasville, two 10,000-seat facilities that opened in 2001. A 20-year effort to build an arts center in
the Dallas suburb of Richardson came to fruition when the doors opened on
September 14 for the first performance at the $42 million Charles W.
Eisemann Center for Performing Arts. The 1,550-seat hall has already booked
277 performances for its first year of operation. The outside of the
facility is also spectacular, with fountains that shoot synchronized columns
of water in an oval-shaped pattern in the plaza. With facility shelf lives
becoming shorter and shorter, you would think that a 41-year-old venue would
qualify as a grand dame of sorts. You would think. Pittsburgh’s Historic
Review Commission apparently doesn’t buy into that notion with its decision
to vote against giving the city’s Mellon Arena historic status. Such a
designation would protect the home of the National Hockey League’s
Pittsburgh Penguins from demolition in the event a new arena is found for
the team. The fate of the league’s oldest arena now rests in the final
voting hands of the Pittsburgh City Council, which probably won’t have to
make a decision until the reality of a new facility draws closer. It was spitting out fumes, but now the tank
is clearly on empty. The National Car Rental Center in Sunrise, FL, will
have a new name after National’s parent company, ANC Rental Corp, declared
bankruptcy last year and the facility elected not to accept ANC’s
renegotiated offer to maintain its naming rights. With National Car Rental
out, Office Depot moved in faster than you can unhook two paper clips. While
the intent and agreement is being hammered (stapled?) out with Office Depot,
the name will stay National Car Rental. ANC’s original deal back in 1998 was
for 10 years and $2.2 annually. ANC wanted to lower that to $1.25 million
per year, but that request was rejected. When they are not helping
do-it-yourselfer’s with the latest kitchen remodeling project, Home Depot is
busy doing things like attaching its name to a 10-year partnership to build
the Home Depot National Training Center, an 85-acre sports campus scheduled
to open in June 2003. The partnership with Anschutz Entertainment Group on
the campus of California State University in Dominguez Hills will support
the construction of the training center and sports venue, as well as make
The Home Depot the facility’s naming rights holder. The $130 million project
includes a 27,000-seat soccer stadium and a 13,000-seat tennis stadium.
Naturally, The Home Depot is the preferred provider of construction
materials for this job.
This Train Needed When Hall F was completed as
the latest expansion at the Dallas Convention Center, it brought together
trains and engineers—but not train engineers. The challenge: the massive
five acre hall spans four heavy-rail tracks and two light-rail tracks used
by Dallas Area Rapid Transit trains, which required engineers to do
something about the vibrations from below. The solution: giant springs.
Thus, Hall F is built on 140 clusters of springs, four to six in each. The
building also rests on two-inch-thick neoprene pads that keep the hall from
vibrating. Add to that one-inch-thick acoustical glass that keeps the train
noise out, and you have a true engineering marvel. The hall is also
column-free, so the roof relies on two massive trusses for support. The
resultant pair of giant white arches adds a new dimension to the downtown
Dallas skyline. Ungerboeck Systems
Incorporated is now Ungerboeck Systems International after a recent name
change. The change was made to reflect the company’s flagship product—EBMS—serving
venue, event and destination managers on six continents. “In conjunction
with our growing international presence, and in order to give our five (soon
to be six) locations a more fitting global association, we find it
appropriate and necessary to change the meaning of the ‘I’ in USI,” said
Dieter Ungerboeck, president. Vancouver At The Apex Of The Industry The Board of Directors of the
Association Internationale des Palais de Congres (AIPC) announced that the
Vancouver Convention & Exhibition Centre has been named the winner of the
2002 Apex Award for “World’s Best Convention Centre.” The award at the AIPC
General Assembly in Tenerife, Spain, is made annually on the basis of a
comprehensive performance and customer satisfaction analysis carried out by
Professor Jerzy Jaworski of the University of Applied Sciences in Heilbronn,
Germany. Criteria include convention facilities, project management,
catering and technology. The award to Vancouver marks the first time the
Apex Award has been made to a North American facility. Devine deFlon Yaeger Joins Louis Berger Group Nicholas Masucci, president
of the Louis Berger Group, announced the merger of the Berger Group’s
growing Missouri transportation practice with Devine deFlon Yaeger, Inc, a
Kansas City-based architect/engineering firm. The new firm will be known as
Berger Devine Yaeger, Inc. The firm will remain headquartered in Kansas City
with offices in Blue Springs and Columbia, MO, and Minneapolis, MN. The
management team will remain with Carl Yaeger as president; R. Wayne
Whitehead, executive vice president; and Donald Eyberg and David Brown,
senior vice presidents. |
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© 2002
International Association of Assembly Managers |