Would a new Lincoln arena lure back some big events?
Lincoln Journal Star
February 28, 2010
By Todd Henrichs
You can build it, but will they come?
Or, in the case of the state's high school volleyball and wrestling tournaments, will they come back to Lincoln?
The arena proposed for the West Haymarket would be home to the University of Nebraska's basketball teams, and there's the promise of events to keep the lights burning inside and the joints jumping outside.
As executive director of Lincoln's Convention and Visitors Bureau -- the city's so-called meeting planner -- it's up to Jeff Maul to see that the calendar is busy. And with the public vote on the arena a little more than two months away, Maul has his pencil ready.
"We go to all of these trade shows, and the day that we can go with a signboard and an architectural rendering of our new arena and say, ‘Coming in 2013,' that's going to light up a lot of people," Maul said. "They're trying to find new communities, so they're pursuing us."
At the same time, the bureau's focus remains on the Nebraska School Activities Association and its headquarters, only blocks from where the arena would be built.
The NSAA's largest tournaments - girls and boys basketball, volleyball and wrestling - were Lincoln fixtures until Omaha built the Qwest Center and the state wrestling tournament moved there in 2006.
The Qwest Center offered more seats and more floor space, which was the overriding complaint during years of wrestling tournaments held at the Devaney Center.
But last year, when the NSAA voted to take state volleyball away, Lincoln was hit with a double whammy. Not only was Grand Island's bid better financially, but NSAA board members publicly called out Lincoln on its venues.
Pershing Center? The board member who represented Lincoln said the NSAA hears from schools that don't want to play in the aging facility.
And this zinger from Max Kroger of Ord, the board's current chairman: "Maybe if we give it to Grand Island ... it will get Lincoln's attention to get the arena done."
