Bruce Anderson first stepped into the Pershing Center as a nearly 6-foot-8 basketball player for Southeast High School.

The year: 1957. Or ’58 — he can’t remember, but he knows how many points he put up as the high scorer against Beatrice: 13.

Certainly the game took place in Pershing’s infancy; the city auditorium opened in 1957.

Players from other schools marveled at the cavernous auditorium.

“They said it would hold a lot of hay,” he said.

When Anderson stepped back into Pershing on Wednesday night, he was a little shorter and a lot grayer. And a winner again.

He was at an open house where the public was invited to learn about Pershing and consider what could be done with it if the city builds a new arena. City officials say it could be reused or razed.

Before Anderson was born, Lincoln went through a long, tortuous process to build Pershing.

After the Lincoln Auditorium burned at 13th and M in 1929, the city resolved to build another auditorium immediately. But it was a decade before voters approved a bond to build Pershing.

Then World War II slowed the process, and opponents thwarted progress. Then, as now, some people called the proposed auditorium a “white elephant” with inadequate parking.

One detractor at the time said Lincoln had “a pretty doleful record of a community dragging its feet, shuffling around undecided and confused.”

Two more voter approved-bonds ensued — the city couldn’t sell the bonds in one case. And then there was a lawsuit before the state Supreme Court over whether the auditorium could be built in a different location than the bond specified.

Some wanted it “out east,” where the city was growing, but the O Street Gang wanted it downtown.

Finally, 28 years after the old auditorium burned, Pershing opened in 1957.

Proponents of a new arena certainly hope it won’t take that long this time. But the most frequent question they receive from Lincolnites is: “What will become of Pershing?”

Which was the point of the open house Wednesday: To listen to ideas, which include converting it into a library, arts complex, museum or indoor farmer’s market. The possibilities are endless.

Another frequent question: “What will happen to the mural?”

The mural — a semiabstract depiction on the west wall of not-so-anatomically correct people playing hockey, dancing and rodeoing — was, for a time, the largest mosaic in North America.

There has been talk of taking apart the mosaic and reassembling it elsewhere if Pershing were razed.

Of course, no decisions have been made on anything, because  voters must decide in the spring whether to build a new arena.

For now, it’s all blue-skying.

And that’s why Anderson was at Pershing.

The architect and general contractor is 17 courses into his doctorate. He saw a poster in the elevator at UNL’s College of Architecture advertising a contest for architecture students to come up with a new plan for Pershing.

His plans to turn the building into offices, condos, restaurants and shops won the $500 first-place prize, handed to him by Mayor Chris Beutler in front of a crowd of about 100.

But he had a surprise for the mayor, too.

“I am here to lay a $25 million bill on you,” he told the mayor.

That’s how much his plan would cost.

Reach Deena Winter at 473-2642 or dwinter@journalstar.com.