Philips Arena
Gunby Construction was instrumental in the construction of one of USA's most visited multi purpose facilities, Philips Arena.
Philips Facts:
Completed in 1999 to replace (and occupying the former site of) The Omni, at a cost of $213.5 million, it is home to the Atlanta Hawks, of the National Basketball Association, and the Atlanta Dream, of the Women's National Basketball Association. It is owned by the Atlanta Fulton County Recreation Authority and operated by Atlanta Spirit, LLC, the group of investors that also owns the Hawks.
The arena seats 18,729 for basketball and 18,545 for ice hockey. The largest crowd ever for an Atlanta Hawks basketball game was in the 2010 NBA regular season (against the Los Angeles Lakers), where there was an approximate number of people of about 21,000. The arena includes 96 luxury suites and 2,893 club seats. For concerts and other entertainment events, the arena can seat 21,000.
The arena is laid out in a rather unusual manner, with the club seats and luxury boxes aligned solely along one side of the playing surface, and the general admission seating along the other three sides (the arrangement was later emulated at the Detroit Lions' home, Ford Field, and UCF Arena in Orlando, FL). This unique layout is a vast contrast to many of its contemporaries, which have their revenue-generating luxury boxes and club seats located in the 'belly' of the arena, thus causing the upper deck to be 2–4 stories higher. The layout at Philips was done so as to be able to bring the bulk of the seats closer to the playing surface while still making available a sufficient number of revenue-raising club seats and loges.
On the exterior, angled steel columns supporting the roof facing downtown spell out "ATLANTA" and the side facing the Georgia World Congress Center spells out "CNN." The arena adjoins the CNN Center. The Dome/GWCC/Philips Arena/CNN Center rail station below the arena provides access to MARTA public transportation.
The first playoff game in Philips Arena was in 2007, the Thrashers' first appearance in the 2007 Stanley Cup Playoffs. The first NBA playoff game in Philips Arena was in 2008, when the Hawks made the 2008 NBA Playoffs after an eight-season drought of missing the playoffs.
The venue had been named the site of the 2005 Southeastern Conference Women's Basketball Tournament; however, when the NHL announced in early 2004 that the 55th NHL All-Star Game, scheduled for February 2005 would be held in Atlanta, arena officials withdrew the Southeastern Conference Women's Basketball Tournament - which was then moved 140 miles to the northeast along Interstate 85 to the BI-LO Center in Greenville, South Carolina.
Oddly, the arena would not even be the host of that planned All-Star Game due to the 2004–05 NHL lockout. As a result, Atlanta became the second (San Jose being the first) city to lose a planned All-Star Game because of a labor dispute. Philips Arena would later be announced as home to the 56th NHL All-Star Game in 2008. Also, Philips Arena hosted game three of the 2010 WNBA Finals, where the Seattle Storm defeated the Atlanta Dream.
Info courtesy: www.wikipedia.org
