BankAtlantic Center Closes Out a Marquee Year as Broward's Front-Door Arena

The easiest way to know something is happening at BankAtlantic Center is to look at the roads around Sawgrass Mills. By the first week of May, the parking field on the east side of the arena has been turned over for hockey playoffs, then for two arena rock tours, then for a pair of weeknight concerts, and Pat Salerno Drive has been holding the same slow exit pattern out to Sunrise Boulevard since the building opened in 1998.

The arena, owned by the City of Sunrise and operated for the Florida Panthers, has spent the 2006-07 season hosting one of its most visible runs of programming to date. The Rolling Stones brought A Bigger Bang to Sunrise in late January. Justin Timberlake's FutureSex/LoveShow stopped in February. Mary J. Blige headlined a hot August date last summer. Nickelback and the Red Hot Chili Peppers played the building four days apart in late March and early April. Barbra Streisand sold the place out twice in October. The Panthers, the building's primary tenant, finished the regular season just outside the playoff line.

For west Broward residents, the arena is less a formal sports facility than a landmark. It is the building near Sawgrass. It is where the Panthers play. It is where major concerts land. The BSO traffic patrols, the long stretch of Pat Salerno Drive, the tailgate parking on the open lots, the on-ramp back to Sawgrass Expressway — all of it has, in nine seasons, become the same shared rhythm whether the night involves hockey, an arena rock tour or a pop spectacle.

The naming-rights deal with BankAtlantic, the Fort Lauderdale-based bank, has held since 2005 and has put the arena's name onto South Florida billboards, AM radio sports updates and the side of every printed Panthers ticket. The Office Depot Center name that preceded it, the National Car Rental Center name before that, and the years-long debate over what to actually call the place are still part of how locals describe it ("the Panthers' arena," "the new arena," "the one out by the mall") even when the corporate sign on the side of the building has changed.

For the class of 2007, BankAtlantic Center is the Broward concert venue that landed in the senior-year column. The Heat play in Miami. The Dolphins and Marlins are even further south. Sunrise is the Broward team, the Broward arena, and — for the high school seniors who will graduate next month — the Broward building most likely to come up in a "where were you when" conversation about the year.