Construction of The Summit
In 1971, the National Basketball Association's San Diego Rockets were purchased by new ownership group Texas Sports Investments that moved the franchise to Houston. The city, however, lacked an indoor arena suitable to host a major sports franchise, so plans were immediately undertaken to construct the new venue that would become The Summit. The Rockets played their home games in various local facilities such as Hofheinz Pavilion and the Astrodome during the interim.
Completed in 1975 at a cost of $18 million, The Summit represented a lavish new breed of sports arena, replete with amenities, that would help the NBA grow from a second-tier professional sport into the multi-billion dollar entertainment industry that it is today. The Omni in Atlanta (now the site of Philips Arena), McNichols Sports Arena in Denver (now a parking lot for Sports Authority Field), and the Coliseum at Richfield in Cleveland (now an open meadow in the process of being reclaimed by forest) were all constructed during this period and remained in service until the continued growth of the NBA sparked a new arena construction boom in the late 1990s.
Read more about this topic: Lakewood Church Central Campus
Famous quotes containing the words construction of the, construction of, construction and/or summit:
“When the leaders choose to make themselves bidders at an auction of popularity, their talents, in the construction of the state, will be of no service. They will become flatterers instead of legislators; the instruments, not the guides, of the people.”
—Edmund Burke (1729–1797)
“No real “vital” character in fiction is altogether a conscious construction of the author. On the contrary, it may be a sort of parasitic growth upon the author’s personality, developing by internal necessity as much as by external addition.”
—T.S. (Thomas Stearns)
“No construction stiff working overtime takes more stress and straining than we did just to stay high.”
—Gus Van Sant, U.S. screenwriter and director, and Dan Yost. Bob Hughes (Matt Dillon)
“The light that shined upon the summit now seems almost to shine at our feet.”
—Woodrow Wilson (1856–1924)