Empty Arena

Los Angeles' Coliseum-adjacent Sports Arena was once home to the Lakers, the Kings and the Clippers. These days, it sits mostly empty -- save for an ocassional USC basketball game, or "Disney on Ice." This weekend's Downtown News looks at the arena and what it once was:

With the professional basketball season beginning last week at Staples Center, the Exposition Park arena is once again largely overlooked.

Elvis Presley didn't play there, but Elvis Costello did. The Sports Arena has hosted concerts by rock legends such as The Who, Pink Floyd, U2 and the Rolling Stones, and it even had a peripheral connection with the Beatles.

Today, however, the Sports Arena hosts such artists as Grupo Aventura, Hermanos Flores, Los Cocodrilos and La Maquina. Gospel concerts take place five or six times a year, a show called African Marketplace is held each summer, and Latino groups are booked roughly every two weeks.

Long-forgotten basketball and hockey teams played there. The Dalai Lama and the Rev. Martin Luther King Jr. addressed followers there, and the Harlem Globetrotters entertained fans many times.

Now, only USC basketball, the Disney on Ice show in January and the Ringling Bros. & Barnum & Bailey circus in July remain regular tenants. The Trojans will be moving out in 2006, when the Galen Center is completed adjacent to the campus.

JFK officially scored the 1960 Democratic nomination inside the Sports Arena, where he gave his famous "New Frontier" speech.