Rose Garden Arena

The Rose Garden Arena is the main sports arena in Portland, Oregon, USA and is currently managed by Global Spectrum, a company which manages sports facilities (and which also owns several sports franchises). The arena, which opened on October 12, 1995 with a ceremony to honor Blazers’ fans and the construction workers who built it, was originally capable of seating 20,340 spectators for NBA basketball. Its capacity has since been reduced to 19,980 by subsequent modifications. At the time of its construction, the arena was considered a state-of-the-art facility; newer facilties have since surpassed the Rose Garden in amenities. The first regular season game to be played at the Rose Garden was the Trail Blazers hosting the then-Vancouver Grizzlies on November 3, 1995.

	Capacity		Basketball: 19,980, Lacrosse:17,544
	Opened		October, 1995
	Owner		Portland Arena Management, LLC
	Operator		Global Spectrum
	Construction cost		$262 million USD
	Architect		Ellerbe Becket

The arena’s current primary tenant is the Portland TrailBlazers of the NBA. It is also home to the junior hockey team Portland Winter Hawks of the WHL and the Portland Lumberjax, an NLL expansion team that began play in January, 2006. Both the Trail Blazers and Winter Hawks played in the Memorial Coliseum and moved to the Rose Garden when it was completed in 1995. However, the Rose Garden and the Memorial Coliseum split Winter Hawks home games during the season.

The arena was also built to accommodate a NHL franchise and there has been speculation over the years about Portland landing a team. However, this has not yet occurred.

In 1997, an AFL team landed in Portland from Memphis as the Portland Forest Dragons. Two seasons later, they relocated to Oklahoma City.

The Rose Garden did host the 2000 WNBA expansion team Portland Fire. But due to low attendance and a bleak financial outlook, the team folded in 2002.

The Rose Garden and Portland Winter Hawks hold the Western Hockey League’s record for single game attendance with a crowd of 19,103 on March 15, 1997. The Winter Hawks tied the visiting Seattle Thunderbirds, 6-6.

The venue hosted several WWE events, a rarity in Oregon, including WWE Unforgiven in 2004 and a RAW show in Fall 2005. Smackdown! came to Portland for the first time in late-May 2006.

In the Winter of 2005, the Rose Garden hosted the U.S. Figure Skating Championships.

In 2004, Portland, Oregon was selected as one of 5 cities in the U.S. to host the Dew Action Sports Tour, a new extreme sports francise to start in 2005. Titled the Vans Invitational, the event was held at the Rose Quarter from August 17-21. The Rose Garden hosted BMX: Dirt and Freestyle Motocross. The Dew Action Sports will return to Portland for year 2.

A number of rock concerts have also occurred at the venue. The first concert held in the Rose Garden was David Bowie with Nine Inch Nails. In November 2005 alone, the Rolling Stones and Paul McCartney both played the arena respectively.

(source .. wikipedia) reproduced under GFDL

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Rose Garden Arena website
Rose Garden Arena wikipedia entry
Portland TrailBlazers website
BlazersNews Fansite
Portland Lumberjax website

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