Michael Jordan — whose statue has been a major tourist draw first outside and now inside the United Center tor years — not only wasn’t the building’s opening act, he didn’t even play in the first Bulls game there.
Bret “Hit Man” Hart, Lex Luger and their motley crew christened the arena, plying their shenanigans for a crowd of 18,468 on Aug. 29, 1994, in an event dubbed SummerSlam by the World Wrestling Federation.
Six weeks later, on Oct. 17, 1994, the Bulls lost an exhibition game to the Jazz. And then on Nov. 4, 1994, Scottie Pippen scored 22 points to help lead the Bulls to an 89-83 victory over the Hornets before a franchise-record crowd of 22,313 in the building’s first regular-season NBA game.
The United Center, which turns 25 on Sunday, has played host to three NBA Finals, three Stanley Cup Finals and the 1996 Democratic National Convention. It has blasted beats ranging from Kanye West to Madonna and amplified voices as famous as Frank Sinatra’s and Luciano Pavarotti’s.
It has housed tigers and elephants at the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, a book event for Michelle Obama and Oprah Winfrey’s final shows. It has featured skaters ranging from Disney On Ice to the NCAA’s “Frozen Four” NCAA Tournament to the 2017 NHL draft. Hoopsters chasing Big Ten tournament and NCAA regional titles and McDonald’s All-American high school dreams have graced the hardwood. Tennis, with the Laver Cup, has stopped by.
There really isn’t an event it can’t handle, which is why it’s approaching 60 million visitors over its quarter-century of existence. Following the Jennifer Lopez concert on June 30, the close of the building’s fiscal year, attendance stood at 59.3 million, according to United Center officials. Annually, it typically plays host to approximately 200 events.
“Absolutely,” Bulls Chairman Jerry Reinsdorf said, when asked if the building has exceeded his expectations. “I don’t think that I contemplated the usage we get out of it, the steady stream of concerts and world-class events we host.”
Mindful that the venerable Chicago Stadium, which the United Center replaced, didn’t possess suites and opportunities for revenue streams in modern arenas, Reinsdorf and Bill Wirtz, the late Blackhawks owner, formed a joint venture in 1988 that culminated in the Aug. 18, 1994, ribbon-cutting ceremony and black-tie gala.
Wirtz’s grandson, Danny, won the 1995 state hockey championship in the building with Loyola Academy. “He’s 42 now,” said Rocky Wirtz, Danny’s father, who succeeded his father, Bill, as Blackhawks chairman. “That seems just like yesterday.”
Part of the reason for the seemingly quick passage of time is how well-maintained the building is and the consistent modernization. According to Terry Savarise, the building’s executive vice president and chief operating officer, Reinsdorf and Wirtz “put a pretty significant annual capital expenditure in our budget” for upgrades and improvements, typically for the building’s infrastructure. Rocky Wirtz pegged it at “$3 to $5 million regardless.”
And that’s separate from the major expenditures, which included a full renovation — without the building closing — over the last five years to redo the Bulls and Blackhawks locker rooms, suites and seating and to add clubs and restaurants on the concourse levels; the addition of the atrium that now houses the Jordan statue, the box office, restaurants and a team gift store; and a new scoreboard that’s almost four times larger than the previous one with higher resolution and a new sound system.
Reinsdorf said NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman recently told him he couldn’t believe the building is nearing its 25th birthday.
“We generally spend more time in that building than we do at home. Why shouldn’t it be as clean and up to date as your home?” Wirtz said. “We charge you a buck to get in there. It has to be value received. Hopefully, the fans feel the money is well spent with the food and the creature comforts and clubs and amenities.
“Generally, buildings are never as good as they were the day they opened. This one is better. It was state of the art 25 years ago. It’s state of the art today. Besides having a whole campus with the Fifth Third Arena and the Advocate Center and the atrium and team store, it’s a classic example of urban development.”
In a 2009 interview with the Tribune, Earnest Gates, then the executive director of the Near West Side Community Development Corporation, a nonprofit organization he helped create in 1988, addressed the area’s transformation that continues today.
“They got the United Center,” Gates, who worked closely with Reinsdorf and Wirtz during the building’s planning stages, said then. “We got the first new single-family housing in about 45 years. We got an economic development fund. We got a library. We got the (James R.) Jordan (Boys & Girls Club). We got a computer center. We got a health center, a drug store.
“We got a host of community amenities that we probably otherwise wouldn’t have. And we have a great relationship with the Wirtz family and (White Sox executive and United Center CEO) Howard Pizer and Jerry Reinsdorf. It’s a real relationship. And I don’t use that term loosely.”
Said Reinsdorf: “We know we’ve been a good neighbor. We’ve exceeded every commitment we made to the community. We provide employment for so many people from the neighborhood. It’s been a catalyst for redevelopment. And it’s going to keep going. It’s going to jump the United Center and start moving west of Damen. It’s not going to stop.”
The first changeover from a Bulls to a Blackhawks game never seemed to stop either, Savarise said jokingly. A process that took roughly 21/2 hours at the old Stadium grew to eight hours when the United Center first opened because of the additional floor seating inside the hockey boards and new retractable seating in the end zones. Then-Blackhawks coach Darryl Sutter even lamented the altering of some of his practice plans in the building’s infancy.
Now, Savarise said it takes the crew of 45 workers about two hours to convert from hockey to basketball and about 11/2 hours to convert back to a hockey rink. Converting to basketball takes longer because of all the tech and TV demands placed in the flooring.
“Those first few conversions, we were looking at each other like, ‘Do we know what we’re doing?'” Savarise said, laughing. “We knew once we practiced and got to know the building, we’d be able to get those conversions down.”
Indeed, the early memories of the building are a heady mix of nostalgia, excitement and white-knuckle nights for many principals, tenants as famous as Chris Chelios and Scottie Pippen to instrumental behind-the-scenes people such as James Koehler. The building’s vice president and general manager, whose master key opens every door in the building, might know the structure better than anyone. He navigates terrain as precarious as the metallic catwalk connected to the ceiling and as prestigious as the private owner rooms with equal aplomb.
Koehler once granted the request of a starstruck Bono, U2’s lead singer, to see the inside of the Blackhawks locker room between the band’s soundcheck and performance.
The building’s walls have some stories. Who can forget Dennis Rodman’s “walk of shame,” dubbed by the courageous media members who dutifully covered Rodman’s MTV-like “press conferences,” in which he only talked to reporters while walking down the building’s hallways to the loading dock instead of the customary stationary approach inside the locker room, the pack tripping on TV camera cords all the way? Or LeBron James walking down those same hallways in a full Cubs uniform to pay off a World Series bet to his buddy Dwyane Wade? Or Chelios taking a stationary bike into a sauna to punish himself with a postgame workout after a tough loss?
“I grew up here so I loved the old Stadium,” Chelios said. “It’s pretty tough to match the level of the noise in the old Stadium. The Stadium was known for that — opposing teams hated going in there. The United Center was more of a friendly atmosphere, brand new. We still had a really competitive team back at the time, so we had great crowds. The tradition of the national anthem really was the big thing that I remember at the United Center. Not quite as loud as the old Stadium but pretty impressive for a big building.
“And the locker room, the warm showers. The ice in the old Stadium, the atmosphere with the crowd right on top of you, you couldn’t beat that with the United Center. But as far as the amenities, the weight room and all that stuff, that was way ahead of what the old Stadium was.”
Pippen holds similar warm memories.
“Everybody felt comfortable,” Pippen said. “Even the opponent didn’t complain about the cold showers anymore. We just had to be better on the court, which we had been for a number of years. We had to keep up the tradition. It was a smooth transition. We were excited about moving into a new crib. The Stadium was definitely very special and we felt like we had a huge advantage there. But the United Center’s amenities were great. The locker room was great. I think the only sad part about it was Michael didn’t play that entire first season. We had a great season that first season. But we weren’t going to go that far without our main man.”
Jordan ended his baseball experiment and first retirement to make his United Center debut on March 24, 1995, in a 106-99 loss to the Magic in which Horace Grant dropped a double-double on his former team and His Airness shot a pedestrian 7-for-23. That began Jordan’s occasional gripes about adjusting to the harder rims and sightlines of the United Center.
But it didn’t stop Jordan, Pippen and the Bulls from clinching the first two championships of the second three-peat at the United Center.
“You embrace winning on another team’s home court and shutting their building down. But there’s nothing better than winning in front of your home crowd and celebrating with them, knowing you’re going to enjoy that night with your friends and family,” Pippen said. “It just makes the party that much better.”
Similarly, both Reinsdorf and Wirtz cite clinching championships — the Blackhawks defeated the Lightning at home in 2015 — as their favorite United Center memories.
“That night was a horrible storm. All the underpasses leading to the arena were flooded,” Wirtz said. “They couldn’t even get the Stanley Cup to the building on time. But it was still special.”
“What a night,” Reinsdorf said.
When the Bulls defeated the Seattle SuperSonics in 1996, Savarise had another reaction.
“There was still confetti coming down out of the ceiling and our staff was getting forklifts fired up because we had to take the entire building apart to start building for the (Democratic National) convention,” Savarise said. “Watching how that building transformed, there was so much excitement because you had a sitting president and there was so much security protocol.”
That intense 66-day build, which Savarise called “as big as anything we’ve done,” turned the United Center into almost its own city, complete with several TV studios for the major networks and an office that Koehler built a year in advance for Secret Service agents.
When the Democratic Party concluded by renominating Bill Clinton for president, Savarise, Pizer, Koehler and crew had 10 days to convert the United Center back to shape for a Neil Diamond concert.
“We worked almost 24 hours a day,” Savarise said. “We’re constantly running an event, then turning that event over to the next event.”
This year, Savarise said the building will be used for an event every day from early September until Christmas Eve.
“We’re getting the job done today, but we’re planning for what’s coming next week and next month and next year,” Savarise said. “The major events are almost a year out of planning. We’re in a constant stage of what’s coming next and making sure we’re allocating all the resources the right way. I don’t think there’s an event we can’t host. Over 25 years, that’s a pretty good legacy for a building.”
So are the tourists who stream in daily to take pictures by the Jordan statue. And the Terrazzo tiles — with their mixture of marble, quartz and granite — that Bill Wirtz insisted be placed in the concourses over concrete, the ones that are washed and waxed constantly to look new.
Still, Blair Kamin, the Tribune’s Pulitzer Prize-winning architecture critic, didn’t love the United Center’s exterior upon its opening. Writing for the newspaper in 1994, Kamin bemoaned the loss of the Stadium’s “robust classicism.” But Kamin liked the interior, particularly the two grand lobbies that are 46 feet tall and the plush seating that featured cast-iron Bulls and Blackhawks logos set into the plastic portion at each row’s end. He also noted no obstructed views.
The 950,000-square-foot building, which has 1,850 doors, was designed by Hellmuth, Obata & Kassabaum of Kansas City, Mo., a sports architecture firm. Privately financed, it originally cost $175 million. But with its original 216 suites, twice as many concession stands as the Stadium upon opening, increased wall space for advertising and selling the naming rights to United Airlines, Kamin reported upon the building’s opening that the owners’ construction loan would be paid off in 61/2 years.
Money is a big part of the building. So are memories. You may say it’s just a stone structure, but those indelible moments give it a heart.
Savarise remembers an emotional U2 concert just after the Sept. 11 attacks, one in which crowd and band joined in a cathartic moment of healing. He remembers guitarist Eric Clapton celebrating a birthday on stage, Clinton giving a rousing acceptance speech and, yes, the Bulls and Blackhawks championship nights.
“You always try to walk out into the arena and say, ‘OK, this is what all that work resulted in,'” Savarise said. “Take a look at the crowd or the people coming in or the smiles on people’s faces. Building the building was the easy part. Building the organization is the challenging part. And combining a building and an organization that can stand the test of time and do what that building has done in 25 years — and we’re confident it can do in the next 25 years — that’s the challenge.
“Being able to host special events that can showcase the city is something that takes not only a brick-and-mortar building, but it takes a dedicated and talented organization to do it. Watching how those two have melded together has been a source of pride for all of us.”
Here’s to the next quarter-century.
Chicago Tribune’s Jimmy Greenfield contributed.
