Rogers Arena

Not to be confused with Rogers Centre in Toronto or Rogers Place in Edmonton.
Rogers Arena

Rogers Arena

Rogers Arena in 2011
Former names General Motors Place (1995–2010)
Canada Hockey Place (February 2010)
Address 800 Griffiths Way
Location Vancouver, British Columbia
Coordinates 49°16′40″N 123°6′32″W / 49.27778°N 123.10889°W / 49.27778; -123.10889Coordinates: 49°16′40″N 123°6′32″W / 49.27778°N 123.10889°W / 49.27778; -123.10889
Public transit Stadium–Chinatown
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 (2011–2012)
18,910 (2012–present)
Basketball:
19,193 (1995–2003)
19,700 (2003–present)
Concert: 19,000
Field size 475,000 square feet (44,100 m2)
Construction
Broke ground July 13, 1993[1]
Opened September 21, 1995
Construction cost C$160 million
($232 million in 2016 dollars)[2]
Architect Brisbin, Brook and Beynon
Structural engineer Stuart Olson Dominion[3]
Services engineer The Mitchell Partnership Inc.[4]
General contractor Huber, Hunt & Nichols/Dominion Construction Joint Venture[5]
Tenants
Vancouver Canucks (NHL) (1995–present)
Vancouver Grizzlies (NBA) (1995–2001)
Vancouver Ravens (NLL) (2001–2004)
Vancouver Voodoo (RHI) (1996)
2010 Winter Olympics (ice hockey venue)

Rogers Arena[6][7] 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, when Vancouver and Toronto were given expansion teams.

It is home to the Vancouver Canucks of the National Hockey League and hosted the ice hockey events at the 2010 Winter Olympics.[8] 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, employed by Aramark. The stadium's event technical employees are 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.[9] 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.

Another look of the jumbotron scoreboard in Rogers Arena.

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.[10]

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.[11]

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.[12]

Proposed expansion

In July 2012, Aquilini Investment Group, the owners of 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.[13] Aquilini Investment Group had originally planned to build the towers with condo units. The switch to rental units provides the City with much-needed rental space. However, the city lost 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.[14] As of June 2016, the first tower is completed, with the second tower nearing completion.[15]

Entertainment

See also: List of entertainment events held at Rogers Arena

Sporting events

See also

References

  1. ↑ "General Motors Place". Basketball.ballparks.com. Retrieved February 18, 2013.
  2. ↑ Canadian inflation numbers based on Statistics Canada. "Consumer Price Index, historical summary". CANSIM, table (for fee) 326-0021 and Catalogue nos. 62-001-X, 62-010-X and 62-557-X. And Consumer Price Index, by province (monthly) (Canada) Last modified 2016-01-22. Retrieved March 2, 2016
  3. ↑ Archived April 25, 2012, at the Wayback Machine.
  4. ↑ "GM Place - TMP Toronto" (PDF). Retrieved February 18, 2013.
  5. ↑ "Rogers Arena". Hockey.ballparks.com. Retrieved February 18, 2013.
  6. ↑ CBC Sports (July 6, 2010). "GM Place renamed Rogers Arena". CBC News.
  7. ↑ Zeimer, Brad (July 7, 2010). "Rogers Arena new name for former General Motors Place". Vancouver Sun.
  8. ↑ "Canada Hockey Place". Vancouver 2010.
  9. ↑ Lanaway, Jeremy. "Show Time". Canucks Sports & Entertainment. Retrieved May 12, 2010.
  10. ↑ "General Motors Place Hot-Rodded With dV-DOSC Under The Hood". L-ACOUSTICS. Retrieved July 15, 2010.
  11. ↑ "Vancouver's General Motors Place Maximizes Audio Capabilities With The Soundcraft Vi6". Soundcraft. Retrieved July 15, 2010.
  12. ↑ Canadian Press (July 6, 2010). "GM Place to be renamed Rogers Arena". TSN. Retrieved July 6, 2010.
  13. ↑ Hager, Mike (July 19, 2012). "Vancouver city council approves Aquilini's three new highrise towers beside Rogers Arena". Vancouversun.com. Retrieved February 18, 2013.
  14. ↑ Frances Bula (July 15, 2012). "Rental units proposed for Rogers Arena". The Globe and Mail. Retrieved February 18, 2013.
  15. ↑ Meiszner, Peter (2016-04-27). "Second tower of rental apartments at Rogers Arena takes shape - urbanYVR.com". Retrieved 2016-08-10.
  16. ↑ "Queen visits GM Place to drop ceremonial puck". Archived from the original on November 22, 2005. Retrieved October 5, 2010.
  17. ↑ Cohen, Jonathan (November 8, 2002). "Axl's No–show Sparks Vancouver Riot". Billboard. Retrieved February 22, 2010.
  18. ↑ "UFC 115". The Vancouver Sun. Retrieved August 17, 2010.
  19. ↑ "profile". Vancouver2010.com. Retrieved February 18, 2013.
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