You can build it, but will they come?
Or, in the case of the state's high school volleyball and wrestling tournaments, will they come back to Lincoln?
The arena proposed for the West Haymarket would be home to the University of Nebraska's basketball teams, and there's the promise of events to keep the lights burning inside and the joints jumping outside.
As executive director of Lincoln's Convention and Visitors Bureau -- the city's so-called meeting planner -- it's up to Jeff Maul to see that the calendar is busy. And with the public vote on the arena a little more than two months away, Maul has his pencil ready.
"We go to all of these trade shows, and the day that we can go with a signboard and an architectural rendering of our new arena and say, ‘Coming in 2013,' that's going to light up a lot of people," Maul said. "They're trying to find new communities, so they're pursuing us."
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At the same time, the bureau's focus remains on the Nebraska School Activities Association and its headquarters, only blocks from where the arena would be built.
The NSAA's largest tournaments - girls and boys basketball, volleyball and wrestling - were Lincoln fixtures until Omaha built the Qwest Center and the state wrestling tournament moved there in 2006.
The Qwest Center offered more seats and more floor space, which was the overriding complaint during years of wrestling tournaments held at the Devaney Center.
But last year, when the NSAA voted to take state volleyball away, Lincoln was hit with a double whammy. Not only was Grand Island's bid better financially, but NSAA board members publicly called out Lincoln on its venues.
Pershing Center? The board member who represented Lincoln said the NSAA hears from schools that don't want to play in the aging facility.
And this zinger from Max Kroger of Ord, the board's current chairman: "Maybe if we give it to Grand Island ... it will get Lincoln's attention to get the arena done."
One could read into that and assume that a new arena would pave the way for those events to return - and for events such as state basketball to withstand any future challenge.
If only it were that simple.
"What we've learned in the past is that it's sometimes a bigger equation than people see," Maul said. "The arena would play a big component in that, but we have to make sure that we're doing all the other things that the NSAA looks at."
Things such as hosting pizza parties for teams, covering the cost of hotel rooms for officials and lining up rent-free facilities when and where the NSAA wants them.
"We've got to make sure that we pass something along that fits within what they consider as affordable," Maul said. "Organizations want to eliminate risk in any community that they can go to for events."
The same is true for other groups that Lincoln's visitors bureau pursues, although their events may not be as high profile as a state tournament.
Maul said a Lincoln arena would be a good fit for religious conferences, and those events are out there. His staff came back from a recent ministry association meeting with seven requests for proposals on big events.
The proposed new arena offers exhibit space that Lincoln currently doesn't have. Visitors attending an agricultural conference at a downtown hotel could drop over to see equipment on display. And don't forget about the outdoor festival space perfect for art shows or the flat parking areas, where there could be weekends of kart races.
All are events that would fill hotel rooms and thus generate lodging tax money that funnels back to the visitors bureau's budget and in turn funds future bid proposals.
"There's a lot of possibilities in that arena," Maul said.
Reach Todd Henrichs at 473-7320
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