Thanks for the memories

The Charlotte Coliseum will close its doors tonight after an exhibition game betwen the NBA's Charlotte Bobcats and the Indiana Pacers. Tom Sorenson writes a nice retrospective piece in today's Charlotte Observer about the place, and includes his list of top-10 moments in the building's short history.

Though I'm not a Charlottean, the building holds some fond memories for me as well. It's where I saw the original expansion Charlotte Hornets play several games in their first few seasons beginning in 1988. The Hornets weren't a good team and didn't win much in those days, but that's when going to an NBA game was a novelty and was still fun.

It's where I attended my first Atlantic Coast Conference basketball tournament and witnessed my beloved North Carolina Tar Heels beat Virginia in the Sunday afternoon championship game to win the 1994 conference crown. The win certainly made the ride back to Chapel Hill a sweet one.

It's where I attended the first home game for the Charlotte Sting of the WNBA in the summer of 1997. I arrived at the arena so early that day I beat the parking attendants and was interviewed for the local evening newscast.

So now a building that's not even 20 years old will sit empty on a plot of land off Tyvola Road in south Charlotte with only memories left inside. It's sad, really, because the facility is still usable. Yet just a few years after George Shinn used the building to bring the Hornets to town, he claimed he was losing money because the facility didn't have enough luxury boxes and sky suites. So he threatened to move the team unless the city built him a new uptown arena with luxury boxes and sky suites.

The city balked and Shinn eventually took the Hornets with him to New Orleans. Though I don't really care about the NBA anymore, I still hated to see Hornets go. But the NBA decided it still wanted a team in Charlotte, so it gave them one, and now the Bobcats are moving into the uptown arena that Shinn always wanted.

I'm sure the new place is nice, and I hope the Bobcats do well, but give me the old Coliseum and the original Hornets any day. Like former Observer columnist Ron Green Sr. once wrote, the old Colisuem had game.