Baltimore Arena

Barnum would have loved this gig.Muscle-bound men and women with names like "Thunder" and "Storm" dress up in red, white and blue and try to pulverize local mortals in front of the hometown crowd.Oh boy.It's your "American Gladiators," sort of the Roller Derby of the '90s, and they lumbered into the Baltimore Arena on tour last night to take on eight Marylanders who work as prison guards and financial analysts and Realtors when they're not fighting Gladiators.Said Joseph W. Garrison of Brooklyn Park: "We're rag dolls for them to throw around and make them look that much more powerful."

For a decade, 1st Mariner's name adorned the Baltimore arena, but now the bank's parent company says it does not plan to bid for naming rights that expired last year. The bank's parent company has talked about the price for naming rights with Legends Sales and Marketing, a New York-based company hired by arena manager SMG Holdings to manage the sale. "We talked some numbers. We weren't close to what they're suggesting," said Dennis Finnegan, executive vice president of retail banking at First Mariner Bancorp.

The site of the Baltimore Arena could be an ideal location for development of a major new hotel, office and theater complex should the arena itself ever be declared obsolete or replaced by a new facility in Camden Yards, according to a group of architecture students who have been studying the property as part of a semester-long design exercise.Eleven students from Cornell University presented possible strategies for redeveloping the 3.5-acre site at Baltimore Street and Hopkins Place during a meeting this week with representatives of Baltimore's planning and housing departments and Center City-Inner Harbor Development Inc.The budding architects had been asked to suggest ways the property could be reused if the state constructs a domed football stadium in Camden Yards that also could accommodate the indoor soccer and hockey teams that now use the Arena.

The Baltimore Civic Center opened on Oct. 23, 1962, with the hometown debut of the Baltimore Clippers hockey team. This week, it celebrates the beginning of its 50th year with nine performances of "Disney on Ice. " In between, the arena has hosted the Beatles and Bruce Springsteen, circuses and monster trucks, the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. and televangelist Joel Osteen. "The unique thing about our building: history," said Frank Remesch, the general manager of 1st Mariner Arena . Fifty years after it opened, Baltimore's arena is among the world's top-grossing in its class.

The Thunder is bolting to Pittsburgh with more of a whimper than a boom.Baltimore's professional indoor lacrosse team, which has played here since 1987, is moving 220 miles northwest because of apathetic fan support and an inadequate arena, club general manager Jim Ulman announced yesterday. Baltimore and Philadelphia are the only two cities in the country to have had indoor lacrosse teams for the past 13 years.The National Lacrosse League team failed this decade to restore the once-rabid following here, playing before a half-empty Baltimore Arena most nights.

"If you are afraid of crowds, this is not the job to have," said Charley Oberman, an ushers' supervisor at the Baltimore Arena.He ought to know. The former Baltimore Civic Center turned 30 years old last week. He and three other Arena employees have been at the ticket windows, turnstiles and aisles since opening night, Oct. 23, 1962, when the Baltimore Clippers took to the ice against the Providence Reds.The Arena, which Baltimoreans persist in calling the Civic Center, was never a stylish hall.

The Spirit's Mike Stankovic will coach the American Conference squad in the 10th annual National Professional Soccer League All-Star Game on Feb. 9 at 3: 05 p.m. at the Baltimore Arena.Stankovic earned the honor over the Philadelphia Kixx's Dave MacWilliams, based on the Spirit's 13-12 record through yesterday's games to 11-12 for the Kixx.The teams were tied for first place in the NPSL's East Division after the Spirit beat Philadelphia on Friday, but on Saturday the Spirit edged the Tampa Bay Terror while the Kixx bowed to the Buffalo Blizzard.

For hockey, the floor of the Baltimore Arena is a sheet of gleaming ice. A carpet of hay greets the circus and polished hardwood goes down when basketball comes to town.But for the roar of indoor motocross racing -- in which the topography of open fields, landfills and quarries is re-created inside concrete sports palaces -- you need Mother Earth.Lots of it.Tons of it.Yard upon rich, brown yard of it.More than 120 trucks teeming with local fill dirt lumbered into the Baltimore Arena this week in preparation for this weekend's PACE Motor Sports Arenacross series of indoor motorbike races.

Country music roadshows tend to come in two types -- exceptional and mediocre -- and with the current diversification of the genre, most of them fall into the latter category. Fortunately, those attending the first of the two-night Baltimore Arena residency for Brooks & Dunn and Reba McEntire were greeted with an in-the-round performance that transcended excellence."Are we doin' OK so far?" McEntire asked the sold-out crowd, and the audience, already drained from the rambunctious antics of opening act Brooks & Dunn, managed to muster a "yeah" rousing enough to be heard back in Nashville.

A Philadelphia-based arena manager is trying to buy the company that runs the Baltimore Arena, a move which could bring professional basketball and hockey teams as well as other high-profile entertainment to the city.SMG, which manages almost 65 convention and athletic complexes worldwide, is expected to close on the deal within the next few days. The company had submitted a bid last March to operate the Baltimore Arena, but lost to Washington Sports & Entertainment owner Abe Pollin, who has held the contract with the city since 1989.

A little more than a decade ago, a group of business executives and civic leaders envisioned a moment when the world's eyes would be riveted by events in the Baltimore-Washington area: the lighting of a cauldron followed by two weeks of elite athletic competition. The group hoped to bring the 2012 Summer Olympics to the region — and with it, billions of dollars in revenue and tens of thousands of new jobs. Baltimore would be the scene for soccer, gymnastics, triathlon, cycling and field hockey.

Proposals to build a new indoor sports and entertainment arena in Baltimore — an arena worthy of a "major league" city —- have been studied, hashed over and rehashed for years. The city seemed poised to move ahead a few years ago. Baltimore and state leaders wanted to knock down the aging 1st Mariner Arena — the old Baltimore Civic Center — and build a, bigger, cutting-edge facility in its place, something to enliven the struggling west side and maybe attract a professional basketball or hockey team.

An attorney who had been part of a development team that proposed plans for a new Baltimore arena has been named the chief of staff for incoming mayor Stephanie C. Rawlings-Blake. Sophie Dagenais, 43, a public finance attorney with Ballard Spahr who serves on the boards of the nonprofit Live Baltimore and the Park Heights Renaissance group, will become chief of staff when Rawlings-Blake is sworn in on Thursday. "She will have a fresh perspective. She's smart. She has a lot of energy, a lot of ideas," said Rawlings-Blake.

Don't trash arena, memories it holds I think Dan Rodricks' column calling the 1st Mariner Arena "dumpy" is an insult to all the great memories and tradition that the arena holds ("Quit thinking small, people of Baltimore," July 25). The 1st Mariner Arena (still the Baltimore Arena or Civic Center to me) may not be a high-tech, state-of-the-art arena by today's standards, but so what? Can't we have anything old-fashioned anymore? Some of my fondest memories as a child are of my dad taking me to Baltimore Blast and Skipjacks games in the 1980s and 1990s.

As Baltimore officials and sports fans bask in the promise a new arena could bring to the city, a familiar battle is already taking shape among the state lawmakers who may be charged with finding a way to pay for it. Arena boosters say it's not certain the project would need state support. But the scope of the project - which by some estimates could cost more than $300 million to build - is nonetheless likely to stimulate debate in Annapolis. Lawmakers played a significant role in crafting financing plans for the Camden Yards sports complex.

THE 52ND Atlantic Coast Conference men's basketball tournament was the first without Marvin "Skeeter" Francis, its longtime publicist who died last summer at age 82. Skeeter delivered a thousand stories in a Piedmont drawl, and one of his last lines may have been his best. A year ago, Skeeter remarked, "I've seen a lot of teams shoot themselves in the foot, but I've never seen anyone shoot themselves in the ass." The joke came at the expense of the off-duty Baltimore police officer whose handgun accidentally discharged at the Greensboro Coliseum while Maryland was beginning its surprise run to the 2004 championship.

THE INAUGURATION of downtown Washington's MCI Center has prompted planners to start seeking alternatives to Baltimore's antiquated Arena. They have come up with 10 possible sites, most of them totally unrealistic for a 20,000-seat facility and the traffic it generates.Baltimore surely needs a better multipurpose sports and entertainment venue than the 34-year-old Arena, where so many of the 13,000 seats have obstructed views and there are no luxury suites or club seats, amenities any facility hoping to attract a National Basketball Association or National Hockey League franchise must have.

PEOPLE OF the Greater Patapsco Drainage Basin have had some good ideas over the years -- Bromo Seltzer, the steamed crab, Columbia, Camden Yards (and saving the warehouse), our metropolitan reservoir system, the blue-baby surgical procedure, Smart Growth, Shock Trauma, Drug Treatment Court, and the Army-Navy game in downtown Baltimore. We've had some bad ideas, too -- quarter-only parking meters, the Glenn Davis trade, the west-side Interstate 70 highway to nowhere, putting a stage in the Baltimore Arena (nee Civic Center)

Taking the first official step toward replacing the 42-year-old 1st Mariner Arena, the Maryland Stadium Authority is soliciting proposals for a study on the feasibility of building an arena in downtown Baltimore. The new building would be on the site of the 1st Mariner Arena and would have a smaller seating capacity than would be required for an NHL or NBA team, according to the request for proposals, which are due Nov. 1. The current arena, built in 1962 as the Baltimore Civic Center, seats between 11,000 and 14,000, depending on the configuration.