Office Depot Center Becomes BankAtlantic Center

The Office Depot Center has a new name, and west Broward will have to get used to saying it.

The Sunrise arena that houses the Florida Panthers is now the BankAtlantic Center, beginning a new naming-rights era for the building at 1 Panther Parkway. The change gives one of Broward County’s most visible sports and entertainment landmarks a new identity just as the school year gets underway.

For fans, concertgoers and drivers passing the Sawgrass Mills area, the switch will be hard to miss. The building remains the Panthers’ home ice and the same large arena that pulls cars toward Panther Parkway on game and concert nights. What changes is the name printed on tickets, listed in radio ads, repeated in traffic reports and used by parents giving directions before a show.

The building has already gone through several public identities. Before the Office Depot Center name, the arena was known as National Car Rental Center. Now BankAtlantic takes over the sign, putting a local financial brand on a venue that has become part of Broward’s daily geography.

The change arrives at a time when the arena’s reach extends well beyond hockey. Major tours, family shows and special events regularly bring crowds to Sunrise, with the venue sitting beside one of the country’s best-known shopping destinations. On event nights, the building announces itself before anyone reaches the parking lot: lines of headlights, lit signs and traffic patterns that tell nearby students and families something big is happening.

For Piper High students, the name change is the sort of local shift that becomes normal quickly. Freshmen may hear parents still call it Office Depot Center out of habit. Seniors will likely graduate with BankAtlantic Center already sounding familiar. The building itself is unchanged, but the words attached to it are now part of the school-year vocabulary.

The arena’s current history identifies the Office Depot Center period ending in 2005 and the BankAtlantic naming period beginning that same year. That makes this fall the start of a new chapter for the Sunrise landmark, even if the Panthers, the mall traffic and the big-event buzz remain right where Broward expects them.