{"id":58,"date":"2006-10-17T07:40:09","date_gmt":"2006-10-17T11:40:09","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gtech.com\/blog\/2006\/10\/17\/unsung-moments-in-van-andel-arena-history\/"},"modified":"2006-10-17T07:40:09","modified_gmt":"2006-10-17T11:40:09","slug":"unsung-moments-in-van-andel-arena-history","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/?p=58","title":{"rendered":"Unsung Moments in Van Andel Arena History"},"content":{"rendered":"<p align=\"center\"><img decoding=\"async\" title=\"GRBJ0569.gif\" alt=\"GRBJ0569.gif\" src=\"http:\/\/auchtoon.2gtech.com\/images\/grbj\/GRBJ0569.gif\" \/><\/p>\n<p align=\"center\">Originally published in the <em>Grand Rapids Business Journal,<\/em> October 9, 2006<\/p>\n<p>Alas, I don&#8217;t have time to write much this week. But then this week&#8217;s comic isn&#8217;t terribly controversial, so I&#8217;ll make it short: This month is the tenth anniversary of Grand Rapids&#8217; very own downtown sports\/events venue, the Van Andel arena. It&#8217;s quite a gem, really. Seats about 12,000, and is just a terrific place to see sports, concerts, and those &#8220;Sunday! Sunday! Sunday! BE THERE!&#8221; radio ad events.<\/p>\n<p>It&#8217;s nestled on the south side of downtown GR, and it has been a catalyst for growth and re-development all around it. At first there was some question whether Grand Rapidians with their conservative, Dutch heritage would support such a building. But before long, Cher was stopping by every other week having sold-out farewell concerts, and even those who warned that large public works projects are a communist threat and those who (for whatever reason) resented the hell out of hyper-wealthy entrepreneurs giving money back to their community, they all had to admit to the Van Andel&#8217;s success. Cheers!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>Originally published in the Grand Rapids Business Journal, October 9, 2006 Alas, I don&#8217;t have time to write much this week. But then this week&#8217;s comic isn&#8217;t terribly controversial, so I&#8217;ll make it short: This month is the tenth anniversary of Grand Rapids&#8217; very own downtown sports\/events venue, the Van Andel arena. It&#8217;s quite a [&hellip;]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[6],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-58","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-grand-rapids-business-journal"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=58"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/58\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=58"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=58"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/auchtoon.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=58"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}