Rogers Arena

Not to be confused with Rogers Centre.

Rogers Arena

File:Rogers Arena logo.png
Rogers Arena
Former names	General Motors Place (1995–2010) Canada Hockey Place (February 2010)
Location	800 Griffiths Way Vancouver, British Columbia V6B 6G1, Canada
Coordinates	49°16′40″N 123°6′32″W
Owner	Canucks Sports & Entertainment
Operator	Canucks Sports & Entertainment
Capacity	Ice hockey: 18,422 (1995–2002) 18,514 (2002–2003) 18,630 (2003–2009) 18,810 (2009–2010) 18,860 (2010–2011) 18,890 (2011–present) Basketball: 19,193 (1995–2003) 19,700 (2003–present) Concert: 19,000
Construction
Broke ground	July 13, 1993
Opened	September 21, 1995
Construction cost	C$160 million ($287 million in 2024 dollars)
Architect	Brisbin, Brook and Beynon
Structural engineer	Stuart Olson Dominion
Services engineer	The Mitchell Partnership Inc.
General contractor	Huber, Hunt & Nichols/Dominion Construction Joint Venture
Tenants
Vancouver Canucks (NHL) (1995–present) Vancouver Grizzlies (NBA) (1995–2001) Vancouver Ravens (NLL) (2001–2004) Vancouver Voodoo (RHI) (1996) 1998 NHL All-Star Game 1998 NBA Draft 2006 NHL Entry Draft 2010 Winter Olympics (ice hockey venue)

Rogers Arena, nicknamed "The Phone Booth" and "The Cable Box" (even though Rogers no longer provides cable television service in western Canada) and also "The Garage" (when it was called GM Place), is an indoor sports arena located at 800 Griffiths Way in the downtown area of Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Opened in 1995, the arena was known as General Motors Place (GM Place) from its opening until July 6, 2010, when General Motors Canada ended its naming rights sponsorship and a new agreement for those rights was reached with Rogers Communications. Rogers Arena was built to replace Pacific Coliseum as Vancouver's primary indoor sports facility and in part due to the National Basketball Association's 1995 expansion into Canada, where Vancouver and Toronto were given expansion teams.

The arena seats 18,890 for ice hockey and 19,700 for basketball, with 88 luxury suites, 12 hospitality suites and 2,195 club seats.

It is home to the Vancouver Canucks of the National Hockey League and was the site for the ice hockey events at the 2010 Winter Olympics. The name of the arena temporarily became Canada Hockey Place during the Olympics. It was previously home to the Vancouver Grizzlies of the National Basketball Association from 1995 to 2001.

History

The arena was completed in 1995 at a cost of C$160 million in private financing to replace the aging Pacific Coliseum as the main venue for events in Vancouver and to serve as the home arena to the Vancouver Canucks of the National Hockey League and the Vancouver Grizzlies of the National Basketball Association. The Grizzlies spent six seasons in Vancouver before relocating to Memphis, Tennessee, for the 2001–02 season.

The arena was briefly home to the Vancouver Ravens of the National Lacrosse League from 2002 to 2004. The operations of the team have since been suspended. Attempts were made to revive the team in 2007 and again in 2008.

The employees of the arena belong to a trade union. In 2007, they chose to change their union affiliation from UNITE HERE – Local 40 to the Christian Labour Association of Canada. After many months of struggle the British Columbia Labour Relations Board declared the employees choice of a new union. The employee group includes hosts, housekeeping, security and various event staff at the venue. UNITE-HERE local 40 still represents food service workers in the arena, they are employed by Aramark. The stadium's event technical employees, provided through Riggit Services Inc.

Entertainment upgrades

The scoreboard and ring displays during the Canucks 2007 playoffs game.

In mid-2006 the arena was upgraded with a ProAd LED ribbon board encircling the upper bowl and shortly thereafter with a $5 million Daktronics ProStar LED scoreboard. The original Mitsubishi Mark IV displays needed to be removed since the worldwide supply of replacement parts was not large enough to keep them operating throughout the 2006–2007 hockey season.

The new LED scoreboard is built around four widescreen video displays that were the largest in the NHL until Bell Centre's upgrades two years later. Measuring 4.13 by 7.3 metres (13.5 by 24.0 ft) they are capable of displaying images in 4.4 trillion colours. Their size combined with their 10 mm pixel spacing gives them an image that is, when viewed from the first row of the upper section at the red line, comparable to watching a 34-inch (860 mm) television at 3.1 metres (10 ft). The corners hold 1.67-by-4.13-metre (5.5 by 13.5 ft) displays with two ring displays each capping the top and bottom. The entire scoreboard weighs 22 tonnes (49,000 lb), 2% less than the one it replaced. The normally three-week assembly period was completed in only one week and as a result there were some minor technical difficulties during the first home game.

The arena received further upgrades in October 2008 but this time it was in the audio department. The 13-year-old Bose sound system was replaced with a newer, more powerful one. As with the original system, the designers used audio modeling software to verify that the design's clarity and power requirements were acceptable.

The system consists of L-Acoustics speakers and amplified controllers and is mixed through a Soundcraft Vi6 digital console. The console and controllers are linked through a redundant fibre network allowing the console to be moved to various places around the building within minutes.

Suspended from the roof are 78 full-range line source cabinets, 12 woofers, 16 subwoofers and 6 full-range cabinets in the scoreboard for additional on-ice coverage. These are driven by 23 LA8 amplifiers providing 165,600 watts of available power at 4 ohms. It is the largest L-Acoustics installation in North America.

The speaker breakdown is as follows.

	Speaker groupings
	Full-range array	Subwoofer array	Scoreboard
Components	2 × dV-SUB (1,200 W) 13 × dV-DOSC (447 W)	8 × SB28 (1,225 W)	6 × ARCS (475 W)
Power (RMS)	8,211 W	9,800 W	2,850 W
Quantity	6	2	1
Total power (RMS)	71,716 W

The system was designed by Canucks Sports & Entertainment in partnership with Sennheiser Canada and was installed by Vancouver-based Rocky Mountain Production Services.

Naming rights

The arena was originally named "General Motors Place" as part of a sponsorship arrangement with General Motors Canada, and was commonly known as "GM Place" or "The Garage." It was temporarily renamed "Canada Hockey Place" for a two week period during the 2010 Winter Olympics due to Olympics regulations regarding corporate sponsorship of event sites. On July 6, 2010 it was announced that General Motors would relinquish the naming rights for the arena and that Rogers Communications had agreed to terms on a ten-year sponsorship deal. The arena was subsequently rebranded as Rogers Arena.

Proposed expansion

In July 2012, Aquilini Investment Group, the owner of the Rogers Arena and the narrow strip of surrounding land, received approval to build three new highrise towers around the existing arena. The towers would consist primarily of 614 rental units and would be the largest rental project built in Vancouver during the last 30 years. The 650,000-square-foot project includes 753 parking spaces and 216,000 square feet of commercial space. Aquilini had originally planned to build the towers with condo units. The switch to rental units provides the City with much-needed rental units. However, The City will lose about $35-million in developer contributions to community facilities in the Northeast False Creek area that would have been collected if the buildings had been condos.

Notable events

• September 19, 1995 – The first event is hosted, a Bryan Adams concert.
• August 29, 1996 – Hosted the Canada–Russia match during the 1996 World Cup of Hockey.
• January 18, 1998 – Host of the 1998 NHL All-Star Game.
• June 24, 1998 – Host of the 1998 NBA Draft.
• June 2001: – Rented for a month by Janet Jackson for rehearsals. The longest time a promotion has booked the arena.
• March 17–25, 2001 – Host of the 2001 World Figure Skating Championships.
• October 6, 2002 – Queen Elizabeth II dropped the ceremonial first puck in an NHL exhibition game between the San Jose Sharks and the Vancouver Canucks.
• November 7, 2002 – Riot when Axl Rose failed to show for Guns N' Roses show.
• January 2 – 5, 2006 – Served as the venue for the Medal Round of the 2006 World Junior Ice Hockey Championships.
• June 24–25, 2006 – Hosted the 2006 NHL Entry Draft.
• September 9, 2007: – Hosted Game 8 of the 2007 Super Series between Canada and Russia junior hockey teams.
• October 26, 2007 – Hosted a NBA pre-season game, the first NBA game held in Vancouver since April 2001, between the Phoenix Suns and the Seattle SuperSonics.
• December 2, 2007 - The debut performance of the Return of the Spice Girls reunion tour.
• March 29, 2009 – Hosted the 38th annual Juno Awards.
• April 8, 2009 - Pop singer Britney Spears performed a sold-out concert as a part of her The Circus Starring Britney Spears tour. The concert was halted after the performance of Radar due to ventilation issues.
• July 28, 2009 - Blink-182 performed the third date of their comeback summer tour.
• February 13–28, 2010: Ice hockey venue for the 2010 Winter Olympics while rebranded as Canada Hockey Place. These were the first Olympic games to use NHL-sized ice. This decision was made in order to maximize potential crowds and revenue, instead of building a smaller, temporary venue with the international-size ice surface as has been done for most other Winter Games.
• June 12, 2010 – Hosted UFC 115.
• July 6, 2010 – Name changed to "Rogers Arena".

• December 10, 2010 - Hosted Roger Waters who performed The Wall.
• June 11, 2011 – Hosted UFC 131
• June 1, 4, 10, 15, 2011 – 2011 Stanley Cup Finals
• September 29, 30, 2012 - American entertainer Madonna performed two sold-out shows at the arena during her MDNA Tour in front of 28,500 people.
• November 17, 2012 - Hosted the Red Hot Chili Peppers who played a sold out show in front of 19,000 people

External links

• Rogers Arena Home Page
• General Motors Place at Hockeyarenas.net