I usually don't like to blow my own horn, but darned if I didn’t call this one right! The city of Kansas City seems to have gotten it right for a change too, as our new arena is everything they said it would be. The Sprint Center is definitely a MAJOR upgrade over our outdated and aging dump with a hump in the Stockyards, Kemper Arena—talk about going from the outhouse to the penthouse! I could still smell the paint drying as I paid my first visit to the new joint, but I was quite impressed with what I saw during the big public open house last night. I'm very pleased to report that it doesn't suck...
It’s also rather sweet to be able to say that K.C. once again has something better than our neighbors to the east in St. Louis do, given our collective inferiority complex when it comes to the Gateway City. I actually did attend the open house for the Kiel/Savvis/ Scottrade/ScottTowels (or whatever it’s called now) Center in St. Louis (I just happened to be in town that weekend when it first opened in 1994) and I thought it was a nice arena (and still is), but it didn’t have the "wow" factor at first blush for me that Sprint Center does. The folks who designed this rascal definitely did their homework and integrated as many features and amenities as they could from other state-of-the-art sports arenas into this one.
Just as I had hoped, the layout of the seating bowl of Sprint is very similar to that of the St. Paul arena (home of the Minnesota Wild), the concourses are huge, the sightlines are excellent and the scoreboard and signage are a show in and of themselves. There are also three vast improvements over Kemper Arena here: The lighting over the arena floor doesn’t have that dark, shadowy coffee-house effect, the PA system doesn’t sound like a ’70s Kraco 8-track car stereo (SRV sure sounded sweet playing overhead), and—my personal favorite—we now have well-lit arena restrooms that don’t reek of old dirty mop bucket water! No more peeing into a trough with rusty pipes attached to them either, as the johns at Sprint have individual urinals and toilets for to relieve one’s self in. Hopefully the concert acoustics will be far superior to the murky ones at Kemper, too.
The College Basketball Experience and Coaches Hall of Fame—also part of the arena complex—looked impressive too, although not all of the interactive exhibits are open to the public just yet. Now the city just needs finish up the adjacent Power & Light entertainment district, and the future home of the Nashville Predators will be THE place to be in this long-moribund downtown, which has needed a kick in the caboose for about 30 years now. My overall impression of the Sprint Center: It's a killer!
Here’s a little pictorial essay of my tour yesterday:
Can you just imagine the Windex budget for this place?
My first view of the interior. Looks cool even with half a basketball court...
Right in the front rowwww! This pic was taken from the future location of the hockey penalty boxes.
And a view from the true Uecker seats, which actually weren't bad at all.
A word to the wise: Eat before you attend an event here—get a load of these concession prices! (Click pic to enlarge)
6 comments:
Given you background, I'll toss you a softball in the great big trivia game...
What makes KDKA unique?
No Googlng now...
Stop on over and write the comment here. Make sure you read the post before writing your answer in the comments.
Cheers!
Not sure what KDKA has to do with new sports arenas, but it was the first AM radio station in America on earth in this hemisphere, originating from the beautiful city of Pittsburgh, PA, and still broadcasting to this very day...
having lived in KC for about 52 years [ok, I took a couple of years off for my pilgrimage to Haight Ashbury and environs in 1968 or so--] and lately moved to florida-- this was an eye-opener.
acourse, it's not an extremely happy walk down memory lane, tho.
I voted against the arena as I wanted the money to go into the school system.
but, since they almost certainly wouldn't have spent the money on schools even if they hadn't bought the arena, I guess that's a moot point.
and, anything that gives KC bragging rights over SL, [though I never have understood the inferiority complex -- KC's an all round nicer city, imnsho] can't be all bad.
:)
I maybe mistaken, Brian, but I believe KDKA is the only radio station East of the Mississippi with call letters beginning with K...which would make that the trivia answer.
Thanks for playing.
I think there's at least one more - a small station in Michigan IIRC. THere might be some others, but I do remember reading that there was at least one other station east of the Mississippi with a "K" call sign.
I don't suppose there's a station east of the Mississippi called KAKA, is there?
Meantime, we do have this pretty new arena here in K.C., or did I fail to mention that?
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