Alltel Arena officials announced Thursday that the ECHL
Arkansas RiverBlades game scheduled for tomorrow "will not
take place because a new set of construction problems [that]
need attention," according to Kim McGuire of the ARKANSAS
DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE. Further tests "revealed that five of the
buildings 23 cantilevers, which are balcony-type structures
extending over the lower seats, have internal steel
reinforcement bars that are an inch lower than where they
should be." Arena crews "have been working around the clock
since Saturday to repair the upper-deck raker beams by
attaching external stirrups at the correct angle and steel
tension plates along the beams' sides." Arena Board Chair
Bob Russell said Thursday that the "public still has
confidence in the arena, pointing to 2,000 tickets sold
Wednesday and Thursday for coming arena events" (ARKANSAS
DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE, 10/22). In AR, Wally Hall writes that
"the problem now is about perception ... and the perception
is something is wrong. Basically, Alltel Arena has become a
[PR] nightmare." But Hall writes that the arena "is a big,
beautiful, multi-functional facility with every amenity that
has unfairly been tagged unsafe" (DEMOCRAT-GAZETTE, 10/22).
ANY FALLOUT FROM ARENA? In Columbus, Nationwide Arena
officials said that they "are not concerned" about
structural problems at Alltel Arena even though both
facilities have the same contractor, Turner Construction.
Nationwide Realty Investors President & COO Brian Ellis: "We
do not have an issue here at all" (COL. DISPATCH, 10/22).
