Safety Overrides Arena's Opening Event

From the first reports that concerns over structural integrity at Alltel Arena had forced cancellation of Tuesday night's Lakers-Wizards NBA matchup, questions in Little Rock centered on who knew what - and when.

Here's how long it took for the news to reach key officials and how plans to debut central Arkansas' premier sports/entertainment complex finally unraveled:

Sept. 23, 1999 - The Times of North Little Rock reports discovery of a crack 4 inches long and 1/8 of an inch wide in the cantilever section beneath the front rows in the upper deck at Alltel Arena. In response, engineers tell the Pulaski County Multipurpose Civic Center Facilities Board they've braced the raker beam beneath sections 207 and 208 with metal plates bolted together through the concrete and tested between April 30 and May 3.

Late September - Workers for Vratsinas Construction Co. of Little Rock discover cracks in the raker beam supporting section 209 of the arena about 50 feet away from the first cracked beam. Little Rock's Garver Engineers proposes another jacket of steel plates as a permanent fix. The plan is delayed because it can't be completed by Tuesday's opening. They build two temporary columns to shore up the beam.

Oct. 7 - Arena board members were apprised of the new cracks and assured that an "engineering fix" was at hand.

Oct. 8 - Engineers and contractors inspect and approve the temporary fix. Gus Vratsinas, chairman of Vratsinas Construction Co., goes home for the weekend convinced the arena is ready.

Oct. 12, 1:30 p.m. - Bob Russell, chairman of the Arena Board, and Michael Marion of Leisure Management International Inc. first learn of new concerns about the cracks in a meeting with Willard Reese of Garver Engineers and others.

"I had no earthly idea that they had any concern about the structural safety of the arena whatsoever until 1:30," Russell says. "They had called this morning saying they wanted to meet at 1:30. That's when Willard Reese says he and John [Watkins, the structural engineer for Garver] still weren't 100 percent comfortable. They had a game plan to have engineers there to observe. But once we found out there was a concern, there was no way we could let 8,000 people come sit upstairs. So we said, 'We've got to cancel this thing.' Because if the engineers have any concern whatsoever, we can't take the liability of putting people upstairs."

Oct. 12, 4:30 p.m. - Vratsinas learns the game has been canceled as he drives to downtown Little Rock. "I couldn't believe it."

Oct. 12, 5 p.m. - Art Hunkele, senior project manager for the arena, learns of the cancellation at the same time Little Rock hears the first reports on the evening news.

"I had a whole lot of emotions [upon hearing of the cancellation], none of them positive, obviously," says Hunkele, of New York's Turner Construction Co. "Everything from shock to anger to frustration."

Oct. 12, 5:05 p.m. - Keith Jones, executive director and general manager of the Central Arkansas Transit Authority, receives a message from LMI offices asking he attend an emergency meeting at the arena. CAT provides free shuttle service to arena-goers.

Jones says that by the time he arrived at the arena, the meeting hadn't taken place and the crowd had just learned of the problem. Officials began distributing fliers.

"It was like seeing somebody who lost their family in a car crash. They were just in shock, and I really felt for them."

Oct. 12, 5:15 p.m. - Ray Nabholz, owner of Nabholz Building and Management Co. of Greenbrier, hears of the cancellation on the radio.

"My initial reaction was that I knew it couldn't have been one of my beams," says Nabholz, whose firm did four of the beams before it was fired in 1998. The beam under 209 was built by Baker Concrete Co. of Monroe, Ohio.

Oct. 12, 11 p.m. - Vratsinas and engineers develop a novel approach to load test the upper deck with 15,000 bottles of spring water lowered by a crane into the seats and aisles.

Oct. 13 - Garver Engineers hires outside consulting firms from Houston and Little Rock to help analyze potential problems in other raker beams. Workers begin filling seats with the 42-pound bottles of water.

Oct. 14 - Equipment arrives to X-ray the concrete in every raker beam for placement of reinforcing steel known as rebar. Engineers make plans to analyze all 24 beams supporting the 8,000 seats in the upper deck.