Broomfield's dream deferred.

• Author: Schley, Stewart
• Position: SPORTS biz

"If you build it, people will come," went the storied line from the movie "Field of Dreams." The theory worked wonders for a fictional Iowa farmer. But it hasn't come true in Broomfield, where a sporting-event arena conceived as part of an economic growth agenda has become a symbol of overextension.

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Hey, brother, can you spare a rescue plan?

With its professional teams failing to fill the building and losses mounting, the Broomfield Event Center is on the ropes. Developer Tim Wiens, who envisioned the building as a feature of Arista, a Broomfield residential development, wants out. Saying his "resources are limited," Wiens wrote a letter in January to the city and county of Broomfield indicating he can no longer run the place and will instead focus on his nearby real estate development. The city and county now are looking for a successor to take over management of the 6,000-seat building, where the Colorado 14ers professional basketball team has recently played to crowds of fewer than 700 fans.

Feel free to move down close, people.

It gets slightly better on the hockey end of things, where the Rocky Mountain Rage drew around 1,700 fans per game in December, according to a Rocky Mountain News report. But the cash flow drain has been serious enough that Wiens was unable to make a recent $43,000 insurance payment on the building. According to documents reported by the Rocky (geez, we'll miss those guys) the arena generated $2.5 million in revenue for its latest fiscal year, while expenses amounted to $4.9 million.

The deficit may have meant little in the go-go years before the recession, when financing was in fine supply. But a dried-up debt market and a souring outlook for recreation and entertainment spending means somebody with deep pockets and a willingness to tolerate losses must now step up. Broomfield, which raised $60 million through a special urban-renewal authority to build the Event Center, hopes to find a successor to Wiens by June, and has enlisted former Kroenke Sports Enterprises executive VP David Ehrlieh to recruit a new manager for the building and its teams. Ehrlich, who put together a partnership between Kroenke Sports and Clear Channel Communications to operate the Universal Lending Pavilion amphitheater in Denver, knows how to work with large, experienced event managers, which...