The long anticipated opening of the Enmarket Arena on Savannah’s westside has been pushed back due to several COVID-related issues, including supply chain disruptions. The city announced the delay on Tuesday morning, four days ahead of when the venue’s first ticketed event was to take place.
While an exact opening date wasn’t announced, the arena is now expected to open in early February. The city had scheduled a ribbon cutting for Thursday, a day ahead of the venture’s first public event, a Riley Green concert. The concert will now take place on Feb. 6.
“Frankly, I think that we over-promised a little bit and in our anticipation of over-promising, we ignored the realities of the time that we are living in,” Mayor Van Johnson said Tuesday morning during his weekly press conference.
“Construction and management teams are working to navigate these disruptions as they have throughout the pandemic to find the items necessary to meet all local and state inspections that are required before the arena can host events.”
Currently, there are no plans to postpone any other events. The next scheduled event, a two-day “For the Love of Music” concert on Feb. 11 and 12, is still on track as is the highly anticipated Eagles’ “Hotel California” tour kickoff concert on Feb. 19.
Johnson said crews have been working around the clock and the majority of the necessary work needed for the arena to open should be completed within the next few weeks, which would be followed by the required inspections.
“It is disappointing to have to take a step back and hit the pause button on the opening of Savannah’s new Enmarket Arena after having announced a scheduled opening date late last year,” he said. “However, that disappointment does not eclipse the necessity of being sure we have a complete, safe facility, with all the necessary inspections in-hand, that is ready to welcome Savannahians for music, laughs and memories in the years to come.”
Parking, or lack thereof, was another concern. In December the city announced that while the venue would open to the public on Jan. 14 the two main road projects at Stiles Avenue and Gwinnett Street, along with construction of some of the parking lots, wouldn’t be ready in time.
The city released a plan to mitigate traffic concerns and keep visitors out of the surrounding neighborhoods late last month.
Despite the delay, Johnson said the project remains on time and on budget from a contractual standpoint.
“The effective completion date is mid-February. That is the contract date. Again, what we were acting out of was based on the anticipation that we will be able to finish early because we would not have any obstacles to occur. We were running down this path and we saw a clear path. Then you go around a curve, and then you have omicron , which now changed everything for us,” he said.
“… I want us to do this right. Again, the infrastructure is related but separate and again, we’ve made plans for that. This buys time for everything and it helps us get a little bit further down the road. So this is delayed but not denied.”
Crews first broke ground on the 149,000-square-foot facility in September 2019, but conversations around the new arena have been brewing for two decades. Johnson said despite the delay it will be worth the wait.
“We will open this brand new Enmarket Arena for our citizens to enjoy and we’ll all agree that it was well worth the wait and that two weeks after 20 years is a bargain,” he said.
The arena will accommodate 9,500 attendees at maximum capacity and include club seats and more than a dozen suites. The $170 million arena project is being funded largely by $142 million in voter-approved special purpose local option sales tax revenues, known as SPLOST.
The arena along with improvements to the surrounding Canal District is one of the biggest projects ever taken on by the City of Savannah.
Katie Nussbaum is the city and county government reporter for the Savannah Morning News. Contact her at knussbaum@savannahnow.com. Twitter: KnussSMN
Credit: Original article published here.
You must be logged in to post a comment.
