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 Thursday at the Argenta News
blog, host Scott Miller raised the question of what Alltel Arena might be
renamed now that Verizon has taken ownership of the company that originally
bought the naming rights.
Here’s a suggestion, if one
built on wishful thinking: Name the facility in a way that honors the folks who
put up the cash to build it — the taxpayers.
It could be as simple as Public
Arena. Or the Pulaski Center. Or Hall of Fame Arena, to acknowledge the
Arkansas sports greats whose shrine shares the building. Anything that clearly
identifies it as a public structure — perhaps supported by the slogan: “Your
tax dollars at play!”
It’s a nice thought. After all,
the vast majority of the arena’s cost was paid for by taxes. It’s owned by the
people and run by a public board. Everything about the arena just screams “I
belong to the taxpayers.”
Everything except the name, of
course.
Back when the arena opened in
1999, Alltel chipped in $7 million for naming rights. Selling naming rights to
public facilities certainly wasn’t a new idea back then. Rather, it was a
practice that had begun to spread like a plague over the country, with some
venues shedding venerable names in favor of (or clumsily sharing top billing
with) the logo of some deep-pocketed sponsor.
Public relations, it seems, had
trumped public purpose.
The reasoning by officials, both
here and elsewhere, was certainly practical: In the case of the Pulaski County
Multi-Purpose Civic Center (doesn’t that
name say it all?), that was $7 million it didn’t have to raise through loans or
bonds or additional tax revenue.
And for that sum, Alltel got to
plaster its name on the building for the next 20 years, which seems a little
out of proportion given the total cost of $83 million. By my math, they only
paid 8.4 percent of the total price, and a facility’s name is its single most
important identifying characteristic. If we assume the functional life of the
building is, say, 50 years, then that bought them naming rights for 40 percent
of its existence. Even if we assume the arena will still be viable a century
from now, that’s 20 percent of its lifespan.
For an investment of less than 9
percent? A bargain, to be sure.
Now Verizon owns that bargain,
and more than likely there will be a simple change of corporate graphics on the
side of the building and voila,
Verizon Arena. Maybe Verizon Center, if the new sponsor feels ... creative.
Either way, it will join any number of other facilities across the nation that
bear the Verizon name.
And that’s even more of a shame,
because a local name helps give character to both a facility and the city it’s
in. Think Camden Yards, or the Eiffel Tower, or Texas Stadium. Doesn’t it sound
positively romantic to say, “I’m going to catch the Travs game at Argenta
Yard?”
Actually, North Little Rock was
exceedingly lucky in the naming of its new baseball park. Financier Warren
Stephens, who donated land the park sits upon, could’ve just called it Stephens
Inc. Park. However, he imbued it with a sense of history by invoking both the
Stephens brothers (his father and uncle) and the Dickey brothers (baseball
greats who had ties to the Stephenses).
And Dickey-Stephens Park
certainly sounds better than, oh, America’s Car-Mart Stadium, don’t you think?
It may be a long time before
another public facility of similar scope to the arena or the ball park is built
here. But when it happens, I, for one, will be telling my elected
representatives to give the naming rights to the people who contributed the
most money, hands down: The public.
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