I'm flattered West Valley City would name its new hockey arena after me.
OK, so the E in "E Center" - the name being attached to the place - really is supposed to stand for Event, as in Event Center. But that is the beauty of simply using a letter. Everyone whose name begins with it can feel a sense of ownership, and right now that includes about 15 pages of the phone book.Ownership is, of course, what discussions about the arena's name are about. City officials still want to sell the name of the 10,400-seat arena, which will open in September, to a corporate donor, but that effort isn't going well. In the meantime, arena manager Bob Cavalieri has decided the fifth letter of the alphabet will do just fine, which is raising a bit of a fuss.
To many, the arena is like a new, highly visible civic mail box. It is to West Valley City what a tall water tower is to towns that dot the Midwest. In a metropolitan area where communities meld together in a seamless tapestry of subdivisions and strip malls, a civic landmark won't mean anything unless the city actually can mark it.
It doesn't help that West Valley City suffers from municipal attention deficit, which is not too unusual in a state where people often seem overly concerned about how, and even if, they are perceived by the rest of the world. Utah is at times like the little kid tagging along with the group, hoping to belong, and West Valley City is its even smaller brother. The city is Utah's second largest. It has, according to estimates, passed the 100,000 population mark. Yet my guess is most residents, when they travel abroad, still tell people they live in Salt Lake City, just to avoid long explanations.
Still, those who want the city's name on the arena have a valid point. As this column has stated before, civic identity and image-enhancement were two of the stated reasons for building the thing in the first place. Corporate sponsorship would tend to defeat that purpose. And, after all, taxpayers in West Valley City will be paying for most of the construction.
The trouble is, ours is a single-syllable society. Americans prefer names to be short and memorable, something that won't expend too much energy or stop a conversation. And if a name is too long, people will shorten it anyway. Look at team nicknames, for instance. The Cowboys become the "'Boys" to the folks in Dallas; the Mariners are known in Seattle as the "M's"; and each of Utah's three double-z professional teams either are monosyllabic or can easily be shortened. This trend extends into other areas, as well. The Utah Transit Authority deliberately chose the simple acronym TRAX for its light-rail system. Trains, we are told, will one day carry passengers to the U.
Complex names pose a danger because the public tends to shorten them in ways never intended. When Salt Lake City built Franklin Quest Field, some city officials grimaced a little, although they were happy to accept the $1.4 million the company and its executives paid for the privilege. Privately, city officials said people probably would end up simply referring to the place as Franklin Field in casual conversation. But the public had other plans. Today, more often people refer to it as "the Quest."
How then, does one deal with West Valley City? Simply put, how can an arena manager make a silken syllable out of a sow's ear of a name?
The city could call it the WVC Center, but Europeans would be left wondering whether it has something to do with the water closet, and the letter W is fatally flawed because, despite being only one letter, it has three whopping syllables.
When the city first incorporated in 1980, many people criticized the name for lacking character and inviting the negative stereotypes sometimes falsely attached to the valley's west side. Now we have the first concrete example of why the name is wrong. If, as some suggested at the time, the place had become Oquirrh City, in honor of the mountains, the arena could be the Oquirrh Center, or just Oak for short.
Of course, the city has some options. If it is still serious about corporate sponsorship, it could simply erect a sign that says, "Your name here" with an enticement below, such as Reagan Outdoor Advertising's effective line, "Caught you looking." Or it could simply put the city's name on the building, knowing people will drop all but the E in casual conversation but that they will know where they are once they arrive.
In all, the city could do worse than the letter E. It invokes memories of the old "E" ticket at Disneyland and is devoid of any sentimental baggage that would complicate a name change some day. Visitors may well ask where the A, B and C centers are (Ogden has the Dee Center), but those of us who fill the 15 pages worth of E's in the phone book will have fun telling them we own the place.