Jobing.com Arena

About Jobing.com Arena

Jobing.com Arena is a sports and entertainment arena located in Glendale, Arizona. It is home to the Phoenix Coyotes of the National Hockey League (NHL) and was home to the Arizona Sting of the National Lacrosse League (NLL). Completed in 2003, the arena cost $180 million. It seats 17,799 for hockey and lacrosse. The arena sits across the street from University of Phoenix Stadium, the home of the NFL's Arizona Cardinals.

The arena is part of the much larger Westgate City Center development, which is going to be an entertainment and retail hub located around the arena; a 320-room Renaissance Hotel and Conference Center was recently completed.

The arena's construction broke ground in 2002, and the Coyotes moved into the arena a year later in late 2003. The team had spent its first several seasons since relocating from Winnipeg in 1996 in the America West Arena (now the US Airways Center) in downtown Phoenix. The AWA was not an old arena (it had made its debut as the new home of the NBA's Phoenix Suns only four years earlier, in 1992) but it was primarily designed for NBA basketball. It was quickly retrofitted for hockey. However, the arena floor was just barely large enough to fit a regulation hockey rink, and several seats had badly obstructed views. As a result, before the team's second season in Phoenix, it had to be cut down from over 18,000 seats to just over 16,000—the second-smallest capacity in the NHL at the time. After the Colorado Avalanche moved from the McNichols Sports Arena into the Pepsi Center in 1999, and the Toronto Maple Leafs moved from the Maple Leaf Gardens to Air Canada Centre later in the same season, America West Arena was the smallest NHL venue. A small section of seats on the lower level actually hung over the boards, obstructing the views for up to 3,000 spectators. In addition, an unfavorable lease caused financial problems from which the Coyotes have still not recovered.[citation needed]