BROWN COUNTY, WI (WTAQ) – As demolition is now underway on the Brown County Veterans Memorial Arena, some officials are experiencing nostalgia, relief, and excitement all at the same time.
For those that spent considerable time keeping the arena running, it’s exciting to imagine a new facility with all the modern bells and whistles.
It might even be just a little exciting to have equipment that’s from this century.
“I was in there on a Saturday and I had to turn the lights off,” Brad Toll, President and CEO of the Greater Green Bay Conventions and Visitors Burea, recalls. “There are all these dials and I’m turning these dials and lights are coming on in a different area.”
Toll says the sixty-plus-year-old venue definitely started to show its age.
On one hand, things like keeping the original seating could be seen as nostalgic to people that frequented the venue throughout the decades, while the original plumbing, lighting, and well… everything, was a bit of a headache for those that had to keep the arena running.
One major issue that kept popping up over time was the roof.
“We’d have a car show in here and people would have these priceless cars,” explains Kristie Haney, Vice President of Events and Booking with PMI Entertainment Group. “And it’d be like drip, drip.”
She says that was a bit of a problem, so some repair work was done to the roof, but in terms of updates, the list begins and ends there.
“Otherwise, everything else in that arena, as far as the plumbing fixtures and the seats, it’s all original equipment,” says Terry Charles with PMI Entertainment Group. “You know, we think it’s the oldest arena in the United States that has had basically nothing done to it.”
And because of that, the problems that started popping-up were generally unsurprising to Charles and his team.
“I mean things that you would expect to happen if you had a house that was sixty years old,” he explains. “You just can’t live in a house for sixty years and not expect to do something.”
And the folks from the visitor’s bureau weren’t just having a hard time turning the lights on and off, they were having a hard time convincing others to want to come there.
“We compete with Des Monies, and St. Louis, and St. Paul,” explains Toll. “We have a sixty-year-old building that most of their stuff doesn’t work in, because it’s so outdated.”
He says a great example is Antiques Roadshow.
They came to town, but the venue wasn’t big enough to house the entire production.
Additionally, producers had problems with the buzzing lights and the wiring simply wasn’t modern.
Their message was that the city’s great, the people are great, but we won’t be back until there’s somewhere else to put us.
Well, now a $93-million multi-purpose venue spanning 127,000 square feet will be taking its place.
“Antiques Roadshow told us they’ll be back, so, we’ll be making a call to them real soon,” says Toll.
For the people in charge of bringing entertainment to town and making sure visitors are staying in local hotels and eating at local restaurants, it’s like Christmas came early.
“Up until we knew we were going to have this building, we didn’t even bother pursuing that other business, because we knew we couldn’t host it and we couldn’t compete,” explains Beth Ulatowski, the Director of Destination Sales & Services with the Convention and Visitors Bureau.
She says that “other business” is still kind of a mystery.
Without having anything built yet and the new venue still somewhere on 2021 horizon, officials don’t really know what the ceiling is on what it could host.
For starters, there’s conventions and expos.
Often times a specific trade convention, like firefighting equipment, could draw from all over the state.
“Fire departments from all over everywhere come to see that expo and to talk to all these different vendors,” says Toll. “And they are all staying in hotels overnight because they’re not from the area.”
And unlike the old arena, it’ll have the space necessary to host more than one thing at a time.
“The new facility can be used as one large facility, it can be broken down to two buildings, or it can be broken into three facilities,” explains Charles.
And that should give the area a real boost in the state tourism landscape.
“It’s either Madison, Madison Dells, Milwaukee,” says Ulatowski. “There’s nothing northeast.”
So as the old arena starts to come down and the new expo hall takes its place, residents hope this venue also becomes a part of the community.
“The new facility is spectacular and we’re going to create new memories for kids that they will tell their kids and grandkids about,” explains Toll.
