Reunion Arena: Dallas Gets Major League

Just south of downtown Dallas, the footprint of Reunion Arena sits beneath what is now called Reunion Park. For nearly three decades, this was the beating heart of major-league sports in the city.

Reunion Arena opened on April twenty-eighth, nineteen eighty, built by the city of Dallas for twenty-seven million dollars and timed almost perfectly to receive a brand-new NBA franchise. The Dallas Mavericks had been awarded their expansion slot from the league on May first of that same year, with businessman Don Carter paying a twelve-and-a-half-million-dollar entry fee. Their first regular season home game, on October eleventh, nineteen eighty, produced a one-hundred-three-to-ninety-two victory over the San Antonio Spurs, one of only fifteen wins in a very long inaugural year. But the losses did not dampen enthusiasm. By the eighty-five to eighty-six season, the Mavericks were drawing crowds at ninety-nine-point-four percent of the arena's capacity, a record for the entire NBA at the time.

In nineteen ninety-three, the Dallas Stars arrived from Minnesota, and Reunion Arena became home to hockey as well. The building held eighteen thousand, one hundred eighty-seven for basketball and seventeen thousand for ice. It was also one of the premier concert venues in the American Southwest. Queen filmed parts of the music video for Another One Bites the Dust here in nineteen eighty. Motley Crue shot exterior footage for Home Sweet Home in nineteen eighty-five. Michael Jackson and U Two both performed here to sold-out crowds.

When the American Airlines Center opened in two thousand one, both the Mavericks and Stars moved to their gleaming new arena, and Reunion's days were numbered. The Dallas City Council voted unanimously to close it. The doors shut on June thirtieth, two thousand eight. Demolition crews finished pulling down the roof by November two thousand nine.

The site became outdoor green space, and the name Reunion lives on in the neighborhood that surrounds it, a reminder that for twenty-eight years this arena put Dallas on the national sports map.