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Reunion Arena/American Airlines Center Articles
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Reunion Arena/American Airlines Center Articles
Arena to be named American Airlines Center
March 16, 1999
By Robert Ingrassia / The Dallas Morning News
Dallas' new arena will bear the name of Fort-Worth based American Airlines under a deal struck between the airline and developers, sources familiar with the transaction said Monday.
The arena, tentatively set for completion in fall 2001, will be called American Airlines Center, the sources said. A ceremony announcing the name is set for Thursday.
Terms of the deal were unavailable Monday.
Dallas' arena will be the second major sports facility to bear the American Airlines name. The airline agreed to pay $40 million over 20 years to put its name on the American Airlines Arena in Miami, home of the National Basketball Association's Miami Heat.
American Airlines officials declined to comment about the deal Monday.
"We talk to a lot of people about a lot of things," spokesman Al Becker said.
Dallas Mavericks owner Ross Perot Jr. declined to comment Monday during a Mavericks game at Reunion Arena. Mr. Perot is chairman of Hillwood Development Corp., a real-estate development company building the new arena.
The naming contract won't be the first business relationship between Hillwood and American Airlines. The airline operates a major airplane maintenance center at Alliance, a Fort Worth business park created by Hillwood.
Arena officials have declined to discuss the naming-rights contract negotiations, saying only that they were speaking with "multiple" major corporations. Cellular phone maker Nokia, a Finnish company, was among those firms, sources have said.
Recent naming-rights deals have topped $100 million. Last month, Phillips Electronics signed a 20-year, $180 million deal for Phillips Arena in Atlanta. The Internet company PSINet is paying $104 million over 20 years for PSINet Stadium in Baltimore.
In Dallas, the sports teams and related firms will keep all the revenue from the naming contract. The city, which is paying $125 million toward the $230 million arena, waived any claim on such revenue in its arena agreement with the teams.
The announcement ceremony will be at the arena site, a former industrial tract along Stemmons Freeway north of downtown Dallas.
The naming deal means Dallas-based Southwest Airlines may be shut out of the new arena. Industry analysts said that under most naming contracts, the company paying for the name gets to block its rivals from advertising in the sports facility.
At Reunion, Southwest has its logo in several locations outside and inside the arena.
Mayor Ron Kirk said Monday night he would "not be surprised" if the American name was selected but declined to comment before getting a formal confirmation.
City Council member Donna Blumer, who helped lead a campaign against the city's arena plan, said the name is not important.
"I knew it was coming because the city gave away the naming rights to the owners, which I think was a crying shame," Ms. Blumer said. "That could have been the city's money and could have gone back to the taxpayers."
Staff writer Jason Sickles contributed to this report.
March 9, 1998 - DMore writes: The Mavericks and Stars have signed a new agreement with the City of Dallas to build a new sports arena about a mile north of existing Reunion Arena. The current projection is to open in Aug. 2000. It will have club seats and luxury boxes. Total cost about $230million, paid for $125 million by City and $105 from the two teams. Any and all cost overruns are responsibility of the Teams. Teams will co-lease from the City for $3.4m per year for 30 years. Teams keep all revenues and are responsible for all costs of operations and maintenance.
Dallas Citizens voted to approve two new taxes to support the project, a 2 percent hotel tax and a five percent car rental tax. The City will use these two sources of revenue, plus the rental payments for the teams, to issue bonds to pay its $125m. No property or sales taxes or any other source of City revenue is to be used.
Dallas gets first look at arena model
Designers, officials say style fits with historic West End
07/29/99
By Robert Ingrassia / The Dallas Morning News
Dallas took a first peek Wednesday at a model of its new sports arena, a brick-and-glass structure that designers said takes styling cues from the city's historic West End and other traditional architecture.
"We wanted a classic, beautiful building that people will love," said arena developer Ross Perot Jr., lead owner of the Dallas Mavericks basketball team. "That's what we believe we have with this building."
Washington, D.C., architect David Schwarz, who led a team that designed the building, said during a news conference that he aimed to please sports fans and others who will use American Airlines Center.
"What we try to do is create a style of architecture in which everyone can find something they recognize," said Mr. Schwarz, who designed The Ballpark in Arlington and Bass Performance Hall in Fort Worth.
The arena, set for completion in fall 2001, will seat 18,000 for hockey, 19,200 for basketball and 20,000 for concerts. It will include 1,600 club seats, 144 luxury suites, restaurants and a private club.
The building also will include a locker room for women. Mr. Perot said he anticipates that a Women's National Basketball Association team will make American Airlines Center its home.
The arena is being built on a 12-acre tract east of Stemmons Freeway and north of the West End and Woodall Rodgers Freeway. Mr. Perot and Dallas Stars hockey team owner Tom Hicks are planning to develop the surrounding 50 acres with hotels, stores, office towers and apartments.
Mr. Hicks and Mr. Perot said they plan to kick off the office development with two buildings south of the arena. One building will house corporate offices of the Mavericks and Mr. Perot's Hillwood Development Corp.; the other will be home to the Stars and the buyout firm Hicks, Muse, Tate & Furst.
The Arena Group plans to spend up to $325 million on the arena and nearby roads, a price tag nearly $100 million higher than expected last year.
"We rolled a lot of good ideas into this building, and that's why the cost continues to go up," Mr. Perot said.
Mr. Perot owns a 54 percent share of the Mavericks. At least seven minority partners, including the Belo Corp., which publishes The Dallas Morning News, collectively own the rest.
The city of Dallas is contributing $125 million to the arena's construction, plus $12.5 million to extend Houston Street from the West End to the arena site. A contract between the city and the Arena Group caps the public's contribution.
Mayor Ron Kirk, who led a campaign that narrowly won voter approval last year of higher hotel and car-rental taxes to pay the city's share of construction, said he liked the model's traditional style.
"They at least were trying to design a building that builds on the spirit of the West End," he said. "A steel-and-glass structure, at least to me, would have been out of place. This is a comfortable building. It's a handsome building."
When Mr. Perot and Mr. Hicks hired Mr. Schwarz last year, some local architects criticized the choice. They said the arena developers had reneged on their promise to build a progressive, bold structure for the 21st century.
Mr. Schwarz, whose buildings tend to mesh a variety of classic and traditional architectural features, said he anticipated that design critics who favor modern styles wouldn't like American Airlines Center.
"The most important thing is for people to love the building," he said. "It's not being designed for a series of architects or critics."
A tabletop arena model and renderings unveiled Wednesday show a rectangular building punctuated on all sides by a large arch. The exterior features reddish-brown brick and limestone accents, similar to The Ballpark in Arlington, home of the Texas Rangers.
Mr. Schwarz, who worked with Dallas-based HKS Architects, said the arena's concourses would be unique among arenas. The main-level concourse will feature a large room at each entryway, with those spaces connected by hallways.
"In most arenas, you have racetrack concourses where you never know where you are," he said. "This is going for a series of distinct rooms."
The building's corners will feature restaurants and stores. One will be reserved for an American Airlines members-only Admiral's Club. Concession areas will line each of the concourse levels.
Mr. Schwarz said the arena's interior will shine during the day with natural light. Concourses will offer views of the Dallas skyline to the south, he said.
The arena will encompass about 815,000 square feet, roughly the size of eight Home Depot stores combined. That's about 10 percent bigger than preliminary plans had projected.
American Airlines is paying $195 million over 30 years for the arena naming rights and marketing deals with the teams. The arena model showed American's logo atop an arch on all sides of the building. One drawing showed models of American planes suspended from a concourse roof.
Donald Carty, American's chairman and CEO, said American would enjoy huge advertising opportunities with the arena and the chance to show the company's commitment to the area.
"This is a watershed development of the proportions of D/FW Airport 25 years ago," he said.
Arena officials hope to hire a builder within days or weeks. Construction is scheduled to get under way this summer.
Commentary: Future arena mostly looks backward
Revised plan remains centered on nostalgia
07/29/99
By David Dillon / The Dallas Morning News
Hard as this may be to believe, the revised version of the new Dallas arena is even duller than the original.
After nearly two years of rethinking and refinement, Washington, D.C., architect David Schwarz has returned with a more ponderous assemblage of brick, stone, columns, vaults and arches. In a city that likes to boast of its vision and foresight, we are about to begin construction on a monument to 1930s nostalgia.
Mr. Schwarz describes his architecture as ''acting like a Rorschach test in which everyone can find something they recognize." Those who pore over the plans for the $325 million American Airlines Center may see a vintage American Airlines hangar, The Ballpark in Arlington, Woodrow Wilson High School in East Dallas, the facade of Union Station and other classic beaux-arts train terminals. It is less a style than a pastiche of easy and predictable details.
All of them have been arranged in an axial manner with grand entrances on all four sides, square towers on the corners - but not the Will Rogers Coliseum-inspired tower of the previous scheme - and frequent views out to the city.
In his remarks at Wednesday's news conference, Mr. Schwarz referred to a survey in which 76 percent of those interviewed preferred brick and stone to steel and glass. Focus group architecture..
Yet on the interior, Mr. Schwarz has made several unconventional moves that should please fans. He has pulled the ends of the seating bowl in 15 feet, bringing fans closer to the action than in most new arenas - and also making the luxury suites in those areas more salable. The interior concourses appear to have a grand scale and will be lined with shops and restaurants, more like an interior street than the usual racetrack in which fans wander round and round looking for their exit.
But as a piece of civic architecture, a critical statement about the city and its aspirations, the American Airlines Center remains a major disappointment.
In selling the idea of a new arena two years ago, city officials and developers used words such as bold, innovative, cutting edge and timeless. Dallas City Hall possesses some of those qualities. So does D/FW International Airport, the Morton H. Meyerson Symphony Center and, in its own way, DART. Each says that Dallas is focused on the future. The American Airlines Center says we prefer easy nostalgia.
TAX COLLECTIONS FOR NEW DALLAS ARENA AHEAD OF PROJECTIONS
August 19, 1999
Copyright 1999 MediaVenturesCollections on hotel and car rental taxes to fund a new arena for the Dallas Mavericks and Stars are ahead of schedule, leading city officials to consider ending the taxes sooner than expected. The car rental tax is performing 30% better than expected and the hotel room tax is 15% ahead of forecasts. Depending upon how long the trend continues, the city could lower the taxes before 2028 as previously planned.
Convention planners and tourist industry officials say the tax increase has apparently not hurt business in Dallas and they are unaware of any groups that changed their plans because of the tax increase.
The money is helping finance the new American Airlines Center which will open in 2001. The strong economy has also helped Arlington which increased its sales tax to help pay for the Rangers' Ballpark in Arlington. That debt is expected to be retired 10 years early in 2002.
On Monday, December 10, 2001 Alan Balthrop wrote: I discovered your excellent resource on the Web this evening, and was very surprised at the omission of the Dallas Sidekicks from the page about Reunion Arena. As I am certain this was not done intentionally, please find below the facts you might need to update the page:
Current Tenant: Dallas Sidekicks
Retired Numbers
#10 Kevin Smith
#22 Doc Lawson
#31 Krys Sobieski
Banner for Gordon Jago (Head Coach 1984-88, 90-97 and President/GM 1988-1990, 1998)Championships: 1986-87: Major Indoor Soccer League
1993: Continental Indoor Soccer League
1998: World Indoor Soccer League (then called "Premiere Soccer Alliance")Seating for Soccer: 16,652 (was 16,824 until Press Box added for hockey in 1994)
Price Range:
$10, $12, $18, $20, $27 (median-$17.40)I look forward to seeing your excellent site updated with the most current information. If there is something I can do to assist you in this regard, please do not hesitate to call upon me.
Respectfully,
Alan Balthrop
Webmaster, Dallas Sidekicks Historical Archive http://www.kicksfan.com
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