Editorial, 8/24: Arena’s big weekend is promise kept | Editorial

When Lincoln voters were faced in 2010 with a $25 million ballot question on whether to build a new arena in the West Haymarket, proponents of the measure promised the moon to skeptics.

The best concerts. Big-time sporting events. Transforming a forgotten area into a prime attraction.

All in Lincoln.

Those claims may have seemed far-fetched as the arena was approved in 2010, broke ground in 2011 and opened its doors in 2013. But the recent string of high-profile events, culminating last weekend with a top-tier concert and an international boxing match, confirmed Lincoln would indeed experience all that was promised.

Officials with Pinnacle Bank Arena have publicly called 2017 their biggest year for concerts – even though it’s only August and other dates have yet to be announced.

Kendrick Lamar’s “DAMN” tour, which electrified a near-sellout crowd in Lincoln on Friday night, was the most in-demand concert of the summer. The hip-hop artist currently has the No. 1 album in the country and was featured on the cover of last week’s “Rolling Stone” magazine – and he played Lincoln, by far the smallest city on his national tour – largely because of its strong crowds for concerts.

Other top entertainers have taken notice, too: Four of the six candidates for artist of the year at MTV’s Video Music Awards recently performed (Kendrick Lamar, Bruno Mars) or are soon scheduled to take the stage (The Weeknd, Lorde) at Pinnacle Bank Arena.

In a market this size, snaring such big names means Lincoln punches far above its weight.

To that end, landing Saturday night’s boxing match between Omaha’s Terence “Bud” Crawford and Namibian Julius Indongo was also a major coup for the arena. Boxing may not be the draw it was in decades past, but the unification bout seen by more than 12,000 in attendance, outdrawing previous fights in his hometown – and hundreds of thousands more on national TV – was a rare occasion.

Though Crawford’s third-round knockout win on a wicked body blow prematurely ended the fight, he won all four major belts in his weight class – the first time any boxer has been an “undisputed” champion at any weight in 12 years – in Lincoln.

All the while, the area outside the arena played host to Ribfest, a three-day festival that drew thousands into the surrounding streets. Since the arena’s construction, the nearby region has been reinvented, drawing investments into restaurants, bars, hotels, apartments and office buildings.

Such a scene in what was a dead end to downtown in 2010 would have been merely fantasy within the last decade. Yet, here Lincoln is in 2017 – with an arena that has proved it could live up to the sky-high promises pitched to voters seven years ago.