If you build it, they will come

Eau Claire is a city of 65,000 people, the biggest by far in a 90-mile radius. It is the focal point of northwestern Wisconsin, and a lot of keynote events and public figures want to gain recognition in the area, making Eau Claire the place to go to make that happen.

In just my time at UW-Eau Claire, I’ve seen the likes of Bon Iver, Joe Biden and Bill Clinton make stops in the city, and that’s just over a three-year span.

However, I think the Sawdust City, Eau Claire’s nickname, could host many, many more events that would bring nothing but more recognition to not only the city, but the area.

And here’s how that could happen.

There is enough space downtown somewhere to build an arena, probably with a seating capacity between 5,000 to 8,000 people. This could attract so many events.

If you were at either the Joe Biden or Bon Iver event in Zorn Arena, you probably were packed in like a tin of sardines on the old bleachers. At least, I sure felt that way.

Zorn Arena is a great venue for hosting a Blugold basketball game, but not for a concert or a speech from the Vice President of the United States of America.

On Feb. 16, 2008, then-Senator Barack Obama, in the midst of running for president, was forced to speak outside of Zorn Arena because the fire marshall said there would be too many people in the building.

As we all know far too well, it can be very cold in February, and the fact that someone who is now the president was forced to stand outside in that cold is a tad bit embarrassing.

And my last point of emphasis, literally thousands of people were turned away last Halloween when Bill Clinton spoke at the former Ramada Hotel downtown.

If the city invested in a small arena with chairback seats, we would eliminate so many of those problems.

With a seating capacity anywhere from 5,000 to 8,000, everybody would fit comfortably and it would allow more people to get to such events, which would only make prominent people, groups and teams want to come.

And when it is not being used for a concert or speech? Get a minor league hockey team. The Eau Claire Express baseball team averaged almost 2,000 fans a game in the summer of 2013 over the span of a 35-game season with the largest crowd topping out at 4,127. Clearly, people in the city have shown interest in a sports franchise. Eau Claire has become a hockey town. If you don’t believe me, go find out who the defending Division III National Champions (UW-Eau Claire) are as well as the defending Wisconsin Interscholastic Athletic Association state champions (Eau Claire Memorial High School).

Just to give you a comparison, the city of La Crosse has a smaller population than Eau Claire at 51,000.  Yet they have the La Crosse Center to boast, a 7,500 capacity arena that has hosted things Eau Claire never has.

They’ve had concerts such as Aerosmith, Elton John and have hosted events like the WWE, a Milwaukee Bucks’ exhibition game and various exhibits throughout the year.

I understand the cost of building one might make some people skeptical, especially with the Confluence Project underway in the downtown area.

But the Mystique Ice Center, a hockey and multi-purpose arena built in Dubuque, Iowa, in 2010, cost $7.1 million, according to its Web page.

However, they got a lot of private donations from various companies throughout its area, and Eau Claire has shown with the Confluence Project it too thrives off private donations. Zach Halmstad of JAMF Software donated $500,000 to it last spring.  This shows me people in the community are receptive to this kind of thing.

Dubuque has seen the arena bring people from all over the area. I know this from experience, because I am from the nearby town of Platteville on Wisconsin’s southwest corner. So many people I know have made a trip to the Mystique Ice Center since its opening in 2010 that never talked about going to Dubuque for skating or watching an event before. It brought publicity to the city.

The exact same thing can be done for Eau Claire. An empty lot now could be a booming place for famous figures and events in the near future. It just needs to be built first.