#3: Facilities Upgrades

It’s no secret that Long Beach’s primary sports venues aren’t looking their best.  Vet’s hasn’t had a paint job since the authors were born, Belmont Plaza is practically falling down , and without a regular resident, and the Long Beach Arena has fallen into disarray (which is why one commenter pointed out that they need a regular team playing there to help keep it looking nice).  Even the Pyramid seems unfinished with all the dead space around the walkways.  With the economy in its current state, the construction of any new large facilities lives somewhere between improbable and impossible, but that doesn’t mean we can’t focus smaller-scale efforts on renovating or improving our existing facilities, restoring them to their former glory.

Obviously, even renovating facilities can be massively expensive—Green Bay spent nearly $300 million upgrading Lambeau a few years ago, and that was without doing any heavy grade construction.  So to help offset costs, as distasteful as it might seem, it would probably be a good idea to try and find some generous members of the community (the way Long Beach State found the Walters when they wanted to build the Pyramid), and ask for their help.  It would be worth it to have Vet’s get some new seats and a fresh coat of paint, to have Belmont renovated to allow it to hold the top-tier events it used to host (and maybe get the locker rooms de-funked a little), and to have the Arena fit for new occupants.  If there aren’t any takers, we’d love to see more high school games held there—there’s no reason a Nike or Reebok couldn’t be coaxed into hosting a top-flight national tourney in Long Beach.

Of course, it would be amazing if half a million dollars for a new multi-use sports facility (which one commenter pined for), but that’s unlikely to happen—in the meantime, let’s make sure our historic venues don’t continue to slope towards disrepair, that they instead reflect the luster of their pasts.