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I saw in the Democrat Gazette where Alltel Arena was ranked 29th in the US (49th internationally) in Pollstar's top 100 worldwide arena venues. 218,036 tickets were sold to Alltel events. Rankings don't include tickets sold to sporting events by franchises whose homes are the arenas. Alltel beat regional facilities like FedEx Forum in Memphis, AT&T Center in San Antonio and New Orleans Arena.

On another note, I hope they power wash the roof before the NCAA Tournament. It looks horrible.

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That's impressive. But if I'm not mistaken, Alltel was a Top 10 finisher a few years back. Pretty amazing, especially since they don't consider "home" games of tenant sports franchises (think Twisters, etc.). I find it funny that it beat out FedEx Forum!

Also, I concur about the roof!

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I saw in the Democrat Gazette where Alltel Arena was ranked 29th in the US (49th internationally) in Pollstar's top 100 worldwide arena venues. 218,036 tickets were sold to Alltel events. Rankings don't include tickets sold to sporting events by franchises whose homes are the arenas. Alltel beat regional facilities like FedEx Forum in Memphis, AT&T Center in San Antonio and New Orleans Arena.

On another note, I hope they power wash the roof before the NCAA Tournament. It looks horrible.

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  • 2 months later...
  • 2 weeks later...

Alltel Arena said their deal with CAT to provide shuttle service to Alltel Arena was off because of new Federal Transit Authority regulations that cause them to be forced to offer the service to private vendors. Therefore, no shuttle service at all for a while. I ALWAYS park in Little Rock and ride across on the bus. This is going to be terrible for traffic and will jack up parking prices near the arena and will adversely affect River Market businesses. We better get this fixed before the SEC Women's Tourney or it will affect our ability to get NCAA and SEC events in the future.

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Alltel Arena said their deal with CAT to provide shuttle service to Alltel Arena was off because of new Federal Transit Authority regulations that cause them to be forced to offer the service to private vendors. Therefore, no shuttle service at all for a while. I ALWAYS park in Little Rock and ride across on the bus. This is going to be terrible for traffic and will jack up parking prices near the arena and will adversely affect River Market businesses. We better get this fixed before the SEC Women's Tourney or it will affect our ability to get NCAA and SEC events in the future.
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Alltel Arena said their deal with CAT to provide shuttle service to Alltel Arena was off because of new Federal Transit Authority regulations that cause them to be forced to offer the service to private vendors. Therefore, no shuttle service at all for a while. I ALWAYS park in Little Rock and ride across on the bus. This is going to be terrible for traffic and will jack up parking prices near the arena and will adversely affect River Market businesses. We better get this fixed before the SEC Women's Tourney or it will affect our ability to get NCAA and SEC events in the future.
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Alltel Arena said their deal with CAT to provide shuttle service to Alltel Arena was off because of new Federal Transit Authority regulations that cause them to be forced to offer the service to private vendors. Therefore, no shuttle service at all for a while. I ALWAYS park in Little Rock and ride across on the bus. This is going to be terrible for traffic and will jack up parking prices near the arena and will adversely affect River Market businesses. We better get this fixed before the SEC Women's Tourney or it will affect our ability to get NCAA and SEC events in the future.
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The Alltel Arena website has a statement about the issue. Alltel Arena issued a RFP for shuttle service and only Arrow Coachline submitted a bid that Alltel Arena rejected because the cost was nearly double that of CATA's and only a few of their buses were equiped to handle the handicapped. Their lawyers are looking into this and they may get the state's congressional delegation involved as well.

The change is also going to effect shuttles for Riverfest. I assume that got a private contractor to handle shuttle service.

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You can always take the short walk to the Alltel stop and ride the trolley back to the River Market. I would like to see a double trolley line built from the Alltel stop, down what was once 2nd Street, to Alltel Arena. This way when something is going on one line could connect to the NLR loop and the other to the LR loop. I think that would be about 600 feet. A covered stop could be built at Alltel.
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I'm sure they will get this worked out. Not in time for the sold out Carrie Underwood concert, but for future events. As Architect said River Rail is available and in a few weeks the pedestrian bridge will be open as well so that can be an option for those who go to bars and restaurants in the River Market before Alltel events.

When I go to Alltel I usually park a couple of blocks east of the arena on city steets and I have never had a problem finding a spot.

What I see happening is that the events with less than 10,000 may not have shuttle service, but those above that and events like the SEC Women's Tournament and the NCAA's would.

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I don't think the Junction Bridge will have many walkers during the winter or if it is raining. Don't be surprised if you don't hear the city of NLR talking about building a deck or two. One thing they could do to increase parking on the north side is to allow parking on Riverfront Dr.
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Unfortunately the trolley system is inadequate to handle that volume and we lack the additional trolley cars we would need to beef up the routes. I prefer the trolley, it's just not designed with that kind of capacity in mind.

I remember when the downtown site was chosen over the Crystal Hill site in a study there was a big fuss about lack of parking, that it would never work. It is the ability to run shuttles from Little Rock that made the whole thing functional and CAT has done an EXCELLENT job with this. I was shocked that the plan was adequate and efficient once the arena opened, I suspected it would at least have a few months of difficulty.

Without shuttles arena parking will be a major issue. The Carrie Underwood concert will be a major test, I don't know what attendance is supposed to be for that. Capacity events seemed to push the system a bit anyway.

I agree with architect, I can't believe they didn't fight it or didn't continue with the current system until competitive bidding could take place.

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  • 1 year later...
Just as I also noticed on their Riverdale campus, the Verizon lettering is NOT conducive to clear legibility...the type is too small and light relative to the scale of the logo. This is hard to read...not that I really care.
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