New Arena a Tough Sell This Time

If you believe in omens, Tuesday was a dark day for Anaheim Arena.

It was a dark day. A rainy day. A muddy day. And the Orange County Sports Assn. was planning on loading university presidents and NCAA convention delegates onto a bus for a guided tour of the work in progress, the facility that is going to facilitate Orange County’s emergence as an NBA-NHL-NCAA basketball regional mecca--that is, if you believe everything you hear.

The bus made it to the construction site, about 20 aisles shy of a load. No one dared set foot outside--the organizers had prepared a lunch but no umbrellas--so it was left to Brad Mayne, Anaheim Arena project coordinator, to stand and point through the fogged windows at what was there and what was soon to come.

Over here is the club concourse, which will offer a spectacular view from a mere 17 rows above the arena floor.

Over there is the floor, which you can’t see right now, but it’s going to be a really good one.

And over here is where the South Coast Clippers are going to play basketball and the Anaheim Ice will play hockey and the 1997 NCAA Western Regionals will be held (cross fingers, rub shamrocks and pray for expansion).

Anaheim Arena is 30% complete, Mayne informed the huddled few. It will seat 19,000-plus for concerts, 18,000-plus for basketball. It is scheduled to open late in the summer of 1993 and be available for NBA and/or NHL tenancy by the ‘93-94 sports year. Any existing NBA and/or NHL franchise even the least bit curious about moving should inquire within and do it yesterday.

The line forms wherever you want it.

Timing, timing. According to Mayne, “we would have had a franchise this year if we were open this season. But they had to move immediately. We weren’t ready, so they stayed where they were and got a better deal from the arena there.”

Mayne said he couldn’t name names, but he’d just done a pretty fair outline of a year in the life of the Winnipeg Jets.

Mayne also said that the NBA will take another look at expansion during “a two-year study window” from 1995 to 1997, assessing the stability of the current membership and advising for or against addition. Of course, the NBA just completed a four-team round of expansion, but Anaheim Arena was still in the blueprint stage then.

“This building should have been built 10 years ago,” Mayne said.

As it stands now, and will probably stand in late 1993, Anaheim Arena stands to make its first athletic impression within the amateur realm. At Tuesday’s pre-tour luncheon at Anaheim Stadium, there was talk of United States Gymnastics Federation meets, NCAA indoor track and field championships, volleyball finals and rounds and rounds of NCAA basketball playoffs.

Billy Packer, the CBS commentator, got up behind the podium and spoke enthusiastically about Anaheim Arena helping swing the pendulum of national interest in college basketball back to the West Coast, from whence it left after John Wooden retired.

“In 1978,” Packer said, “there was a real problem with college basketball and the networks, and the problem was that there was nobody in the East, Philadelphia to Boston, that quadrant, who cared about college basketball. If UCLA was not on our game of the week, we wouldn’t get any ratings. People in New York wouldn’t watch college basketball. . . .

“Now, the Big East is where all the excitement’s at, that’s where all the players want to go. And your quadrant here, from San Francisco down to San Diego, has a lack of focus, with UCLA being somewhat down recently.

“But there’s nothing more energizing to an area than hosting a Final Four. You get one and the excitement filters down to the local universities to the local colleges to the junior colleges, all the way down to the high schools. I think that’s what this facility can do for this area.”

One problem, Billy. The NCAA refuses to hold a Final Four at any site that doesn’t seat at least 20,000. Anaheim Arena will max out at 18,700 for basketball. “A Final Four would be difficult. It may be impossible,” Mayne admitted. “We’re more interested in getting a regional or a sub-regional.”

Anaheim Arena will be Anaheim’s arena, all right. With its polished marble, cascading arched doorways and pleasant green and beige pastels, it could pass for Crystal Court North. Orange County already spends most of its leisure time inside malls. Why not all of it?

“That’s the area,” Mayne said with a shrug and a smile. “We’ll look a lot like the new John Wayne Airport--polished-marble finish, indirect lighting. It’s going to feel more like a hotel lobby than an arena.”

And that, Mayne concedes, “has its pros and cons. A kid coming to see Guns ‘N Roses is going to look around and say, ‘What the hell am I doing here?’ But for sporting events, Neil Diamond concerts, wholesome family entertainment, it displays the right kind of pride Orange County has in itself.”

Early on, Guns ‘N Roses and Neil Diamond could be holding down the fort. With no NBA team, no NHL team, Anaheim Arena will need all the heavy metal and heavy schmaltz it can book.

But an empty sports schedule at the outset shouldn’t be viewed as defeat, Mayne contends, already braced.

“Take St. Pete,” Mayne said. “The Seattle baseball franchise is now looking very seriously at moving to the SunCoast Dome. That building was built with baseball in mind, but when they didn’t get a team the first year, everybody went, ‘Ohhhhh.’

“People need to realize that if you don’t open with a franchise your first year, you’re still making progress. You prove you can hold events, you prove you can sell tickets.

“Nothing is forever in sports. The timing may not be today. It may not be tomorrow. It may not be one year or two years from now. But someday, it’s going to happen.”

So goes the Anaheim Arena parade. Rained on today, but not yet dampened.