Richfield Coliseum is among the better buildings in the NBA. It includes a spacious, comfortable arena, luxury suites and a fine sound system. But the 20-year-old home of the Cleveland Cavaliers won't be home much longer. Next year the Cavs will move from the affluent suburbs to a new arena downtown.
They aren't alone. From Seattle to Boston, San Antonio to Chicago, teams across the NBA are constructing new arenas at an explosive rate. There's a building boom going on which should continue as long as the NBA prospers.San Antonio, which hosts the Jazz Thursday night, just moved into the new Alamodome, a 21,372-seat arena that is walking distance from aging HemisFair Arena. The new building has a "banner system" in which the upper level - which seats another 14,000 fans if needed - is covered by drapes or banners that make the building more intimate. Though the Spurs play there, it is designed primarily for football.
Other NBA arenas on the way up, though, are being built with basketball squarely in mind. Portland is at work on a new 20,340-seat arena, next door to the old Memorial Coliseum. The new building will sit along the city's light rail system, which city officials hope will transport about a fourth of the fans to games. There will be retail stores and three full-scale restaurants, and the facility is adjacent to an existing major shopping area.
The list goes on. Boston is constructing the Shawmut Center, a 19,000-seat building which will replace legendary Boston Garden. The Seattle SuperSonics are tearing down most of the tacky Seattle Center Coliseum in favor of a new SuperSpectacular 17,800-seat arena on the same site.
In Miami, the five-year-old Miami Arena is fast becoming history. The basketball team is thinking of moving out of the depressed inner-city area to a newer building in a more affluent location. And in Philadelphia, the Sixers are talking of taking their game to nearby Camden, N.J., to play in a new building.
Actually, the building boom in the NBA has been going on for the past five years. Charlotte, Miami, Orlando and Minnesota built new arenas before joining the NBA. The Jazz built the Delta Center to be ready for the 1991-92 season - and did it in record time for a building of that type. Last year the Phoenix Suns moved into the stunning America West Arena, which includes retail shops, concessions, a full practice gymnasium and high-tech television monitors in the halls. The futuristic scoreboard screen features a whiz-bang computer-image lead-in for games, showing a fiery basketball roaring above downtown Phoenix and into the building. The facility also has a whopping 98 luxury suites.
"As nice as their building is, the nicest is always going to be the most recent one," said Portland Director of Sports Communications John Lashway. "Theirs is fantastic, but I think ours will be the next step."
"The next (arena) should always be better than the last," said Orlando General Manager Pat Williams. "We built our building (1988) for Orlando. It's an Orlando-looking building and Orlando-sized. But if you could have told us 10 years ago Shaq (Shaquille O'Neal) was going to be here and all the things that would happen, we probably would have built it differently."
As buildings go up, so do the cost. Two years ago the Jazz moved into the Delta Center - a functional, glistening building of steel, glass and concrete - for a total cost of $91 million. Now the Blazers are expecting to spend $232 million on their new home. That cost is more than double the price tag on America West Arena in Phoenix, generally considered the most extravagant building in the NBA.
The push to build comes from several factors, among them the ready demand for tickets to NBA games. Older arenas not only are sometimes too small, but they also weren't built with basketball in mind. Seats are bad. Movement is almost impossible. And the older buildings are seldom equipped to handle the crush of traffic in parking, concessions and retail areas.
The new Cleveland arena - named the Arena at Gateway, at least until a major corporate sponsor comes along - will be connected to shopping and transportation areas by a climate controlled tunnel stretching for up to a half-mile. There will be club seating, as well as luxury suites.
Ninety-two suites - the Delta Center has 56 - are on the Cleveland agenda, as well as a 350-seat restaurant, a sports bar, the world's largest NBA apparel retail store and a 40 X 100-foot bay window with a view of downtown Cleveland. There will also be automated teller machines, naturally, for quick access to cash.
"Everything in the world is becoming high tech," said Austin Carr, an ex-NBA player who is now the Director of Community Business Development. "The shoes these guys wear are high tech. The players are high tech. The new arenas have JumboTrons, Fanimation boards and all kinds of things. It's almost like a movie theater, as you're waiting for a game. If you bring your children, you are going to miss some plays, but if you look up at the JumboTron, you'll see what you missed."
What that all means to average fans is that though they will be getting a premier product - on and off the courts - they may also pay premium prices. Amenities will increase, especially for those who are willing to pay for them.
While ticket prices remain most arenas' main source of revenue, some of the biggest dollars coming in to teams and owners nowadays are from the luxury suites. The Delta Center suites are leased for three to five years and range in price from $60,000 to $100,000 per year. Phoenix's suites cost from $60,000 to $70,000, while luxury suites in Boston's new building will cost as much as $200,000 per year.
The Alamodome suites are typical of those found in all the newer arenas: wet bars, refrigerators, cabinet spaces, telephones, individual thermostats, furniture and a service captain to attend to food and drinks.
"People are demanding more services and amenities," said Target Center (Minnesota) Executive Director Dana Warg. "They want those comforts and are willing to pay for being comfortable."
With couches, bars, catered food, television monitors, priority parking and other amenities already being used at numerous arenas, one has to wonder what the newest luxury suites will bring. "Could be a La-z-boy (reclining) chair. Who knows?" said Warg.
He added most new arenas will have more club-level seating - prime seats with special privlileges but closer to the court than luxury suites. The Shawmut Center includes plans for 2,400 such seats, ranging in price from $5,500 to $9,500 per year.
"Things are just becoming more attuned to the corporate world," Warg added.
The Target center includes a large health club.
Timberwolves' co-owner Marv Wolfenson points out that building cavernous arenas isn't as profitable as selling suites. "The last three rows of a building are the most expensive to build and they bring in the least money," he said. "Building arenas with 23,000 seats and 21,000 seats is foolish. The money is made on the suites, not on the last three rows."
Whether the new buildings are all necessary, or simply a grand way of saying "my-house-is-bigger-than-your-house" is up to conjecture. But they're going up, nonetheless.
"There's a certain amount of ego involved," said Jazz owner Larry H. Miller. "But you also want to leave your mark in an artistic sort of way."
Jazz General Manager Tim Howells says one-upsmanship isn't the driving reason behind the increasingly extravagant buildings. "In an area of such an enormous investment, it's driven by much more rational motivation than ego," said Howells. "The building has to reflect the market and what the market will support and what its tastes are."
Besides luxury suites, another popular way to bring in money and pay bills is by selling the building's name to a corporate sponsor. Delta Airlines kicked in a reported $25 million - spread out over a number of years - to have its name sprawled across the top of the arena in Salt Lake. The United Center in Chicago, which will replace musty Chicago Stadium next year, is named after United Air Lines, and America West Airlines sponsors the Suns' building. The Shawmut Center is named after a prominent New England Bank.
Teams with older arenas are even discovering new ways to make money. The Los Angeles Forum is now the Great Western Forum, named after a bank, and the Capital Centre in Landover, Md., is now the USAir Arena.
"The reality of the business is that it costs more and more, not only to pay the player salaries, but just the cost of running the business is so much bigger," said David Allred, the Jazz's Vice President for Public Relations.
Allred said seeking corporate sponsors "isn't the wave of the future. It's here."
"We've arrived," said Allred, "and everyone else is doing it. Corporate sponsorships of buildings is here. Somebody who doesn't do it has got to have awfully deep pockets, or have a real strong reason not to do it."
Portland has a strong enough reason: owner Paul Allen is the founder of Microsoft and one of the richest men in America. Nearly all the costs of the Blazers' new arena are privately financed and, said Lashway, "not a penny of tax money goes in."
Officials have already announced the new home of the Blazers won't bear a sponsor's name.
"It's just something that didn't appeal for our people. It's something that was decided early on. We're fortunate to be able to get our revenue from other places," said Lashway.
Aside from making money, teams are also re-discovering the importance of keeping ties to their city. Most teams are opting to build in the inner cities, bringing fans downtown for an evening of dining and entertainment. Cleveland built it's home 20 years ago in suburban Richfield, thinking that was where the people wanted it to be. But now the Cavs are returning to downtown.
The Jazz, too, opted to stay downtown, as did Boston, Portland, Phoenix, Seattle and Chicago. Charlotte and Detroit, still relatively new arenas, remain in the suburbs.
Whatever the case, the building boom goes on as the old buildings age. As long there is money to build, the high tech palaces will continue to rise, each more impressive than the last.
"It's going to be entertainment," said Carr with a smile, "like you've never seen before."