A look at the history of plans for a westside arena in Savannah | savannahnow.com

This fall, Chatham County voters will vote on a new round of the Special Purpose Local Option Sales tax.

One of the biggest ticket items to be funded by the multi-year tax would be Savannah’s long-planned new arena. That project was supposed to have been funded largely via the current SPLOST collection, but the economic downturn decimated expected revenues.

In future columns, I’ll recap some of the compelling arguments for building a new arena at all, despite the $120 million price tag. And I’ll probably have a lot more to say about various possible locations.

But I’ll confess to being puzzled by the degree to which officials have backed away from the previously chosen location off West Gwinnett Street — an easily accessible spot just west of the Historic District.

Recent public comments have noted there were “no promises” that a new arena would be built off West Gwinnett. That might technically be true, but the westside location was the only site voters knew about when they overwhelmingly approved the current SPLOST in a special election in 2006.

The site selection process was not transparent, but there seemed to be broad acceptance and support for the arena location chosen by City Manager Michael Brown’s competent team.

via A look at the history of plans for a westside arena in Savannah | savannahnow.com.