History
The arena was opened on October 1, 1988 with an exhibition hockey game between the Chicago Blackhawks and the Edmonton Oilers. At $90 million, it was meant to be a modern replacement of its current cross-street neighbor, The MECCA (currently named the U.S. Cellular Arena), which was built in 1950. The MECCA, during much of its time operating as a NBA facility, had the league's smallest seating capacity, holding just over 11,000 people. Funds to build the Bradley Center were donated as a gift to the State of Wisconsin by philanthropists Jane Pettit and Lloyd Pettit in memory of Jane's late father, Harry Lynde Bradley of the Allen-Bradley company.
Despite being one of the premier NBA facilities when completed in 1988, the BMO Harris Bradley Center is currently one of the oldest active NBA arenas (The Palace of Auburn Hills in suburban Detroit and ARCO Arena (now Sleep Train Arena) in Sacramento, California also opened in 1988), only behind Madison Square Garden in New York City (which was renovated in 2011), and Oracle Arena in Oakland (which was significantly remodeled during the mid-1990s). The BMO Harris Bradley Center is unique in that it was a gift from a family without any provision for the building's long-term capital needs or annual operating expenses. While the facility is self-sufficient, the BMO Harris Bradley Center tenants such as the Bucks are at a disadvantage compared with other NBA teams due to the arrangement.
Building a new, state-of-the-art downtown arena has been proposed by Bucks owner, U.S. Senator Herb Kohl, but the community reaction to the idea of a publicly funded arena has been mostly negative. In 2009, Wisconsin Governor Jim Doyle included a provision in the state's capital budget seeking $5 million in state bonding support to renovate the Bradley Center. The Bradley Center's board of directors told state officials that the building needs $23 million in renovations, so they reportedly agreed to raise the remaining $18 million on their own.
Over the summer of 2010 the arena's longtime Sony Jumbotron scoreboard was replaced with a new 3.5 million pixel LED unit manufactured by TS Sports and Lighthouse Technologies, and was put into service in October 2010 at the start of the Admirals season. Unlike many other NBA and NHL scoreboards however, the bottom panel also has an LED screen, allowing display of many images above the floor itself rather than a static image of a sponsor or team logo.
On May 21, 2012, the Bucks, owner Herb Kohl and representatives from BMO Harris Bank announced that the bank had officially purchased the naming rights for the Bradley Center and it would now be called the "BMO Harris Bradley Center".
Read more about this topic: BMO Harris Bradley Center
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