Former names | Aurora Events Center (pre-construction) |
---|---|
Address | 1200 S. 42nd Street |
Location | Grand Forks, North Dakota, U.S. |
Coordinates | 47°54′40″N97°05′28″W / 47.911°N 97.091°W |
Owner | City of Grand Forks |
Capacity | 21,000 Configurations
|
Field size | Overall: 447,000 square feet (41,500 m2) Ballroom: 26,000 square feet (2,400 m2) Arena floor dimensions: 415 feet (126 m) north to south 240 feet (73 m) east to west |
Construction | |
Broke ground | July 15, 1998 [2] |
Opened | February 10, 2001 |
Construction cost | $80 million ($144 million in 2022 [3] ) |
Architect | Ellerbe Becket JLG Architects Schoen & Associates |
Structural engineer | Simpson Gumpertz & Heger, Inc. [4] |
Services engineer | Obermiller Nelson Engineering, Inc. [5] |
General contractor | Mortenson Construction [6] |
Tenants | |
North Dakota Fighting Hawks football (NCAA) (2001–present) |
The Alerus Center is an indoor arena and convention center in the north central United States, located in Grand Forks, North Dakota. The facility is owned and operated by the city of Grand Forks and opened on February 10, 2001.
The arena's major tenant is the University of North Dakota football team, and also hosts many large concerts, sporting events, and trade shows. The seating capacity for football is 12,283, and up to 21,000 for other events. Located southwest of the UND campus, it is just east of Interstate 29 and south of its exit 140, the junction with state highway 297.
The convention center section of the facility includes a 26,000-square-foot (2,400 m2) ballroom and twelve meeting rooms. The convention center is used for conferences, seminars, banquets, parties, and smaller concerts. Directly adjacent to the Alerus Center is a large hotel and waterpark complex called the Canad Inns Destination Center.
Alerus Center is named after a local financial institution, Alerus Financial, which purchased the building's naming rights. Prior to opening, the facility had been referred to as the Aurora Events Center. Its approximate elevation at street level is 835 feet (255 m) above sea level.
After attempts going back to 1984 to fund expansion of the downtown civic center or construction of a new convention center (1992), in 1995 a vote to increase the local sales tax to build a new events center (dubbed The Aurora Events Center, costing $43 to $49 million) passed with 60% approval. Cost overruns required another vote in 1996 on an events center to cost $57 million which passed with 51% approval.
The Flood of 1997 delayed the project and led to redesigns to make the facility less susceptible to future flooding. Compass Management was hired to manage facility and in 2000 Aurora was renamed Alerus Center after Alerus Financial bought naming rights for twenty years. Alerus Center opened on February 10, 2001 with a final cost of $80 million. In 2006 construction started on Canad Inns hotel tower and water park, and was completed in 2007.
In 2007, the city ended its management contract with Compass Management but the same year rehired Compass Management, now renamed VenuWorks, with the provision they won't be paid if they lose taxpayer money. In 2009 Alerus Commission announced they lost $720,000 in the events fund due to Alerus operations. No accounting of that loss is made available to the public.
In July 2017, Spectra came in to take over the management contract for the Alerus Center. [7]
Date | Artist | Opening act(s) | Tour / Concert name | Attendance | Notes |
---|---|---|---|---|---|
February 17, 2001 | Backstreet Boys | Black & Blue Tour | |||
September 28, 2002 | Cher | Cyndi Lauper | Living Proof: The Farewell Tour | 19,351 / 19,351 | This concert was the largest [single night] audience the artist has performed for during her solo career. [8] Also, it is also the second largest event ever held at the arena. [9] |
August 19, 2003 | Fleetwood Mac | Say You Will Tour | |||
March 26, 2004 | Barenaked Ladies | Howie Day Butterfly Boucher | Everywhere for Everyone Tour | ||
April 8, 2005 | Mötley Crüe | Red, White & Crüe ... Better Live Than Dead | |||
August 23, 2006 | Cirque du Soleil | Delirium | |||
July 24, 2007 | Nickelback | All the Right Reasons Tour | |||
November 22, 2008 | Neil Diamond | Neil Diamond: Live in Concert | |||
September 12, 2009 | Britney Spears | The Circus Starring Britney Spears | |||
May 17, 2011 | Tim McGraw | Southern Voice Tour | |||
February 16, 2013 | George Strait | Martina McBride | The Cowboy Rides Away Tour | The largest event ever held at the arena. | |
May 8, 2015 | Luke Bryan | Randy Houser Dustin Lynch | Kick the Dust Up Tour | ||
June 5, 2015 | Eagles | History of the Eagles – Live in Concert | |||
January 28, 2016 | Jason Aldean | Thomas Rhett A Thousand Horses | We Were Here Tour | ||
September 8, 2018 | Metallica | Jim Breuer | WorldWired Tour | 16,970 [10] | |
February 22, 2020 | KISS | David Lee Roth | End of the Road World Tour | 7,812 / 7,812 [11] | |
May 29, 2022 | Hank Williams Jr. | Lainey Wilson | |||
May 9, 2023 | Kenny Chesney | Kelsea Ballerini | I Go Back Tour | ||
November 17, 2023 | Jonas BrothersCancelled | Lawrence | Five Albums. One Night. The World Tour | 0 | Cancelled |
Other events have also been held at Alerus Center including WWE Smackdown, Toughest Monster Truck Tour, and the 2008 North Dakota Democratic-NPL Convention featuring presidential candidates Barack Obama and Hillary Clinton speaking. [12]
Grand Forks is unique because it is a relatively small market with two major event centers, Alerus Center and the Ralph Engelstad Arena, both of which often bid to host the same events. To a lesser extent, the Chester Fritz Auditorium in Grand Forks also sometimes competes for these same events as well. Regionally, the Fargodome in nearby Fargo and the Canada Life Centre in Winnipeg, Manitoba are seen as competitors to Alerus Center.
Located directly north of Alerus Center sits the Canad Inns Destination Center, completed in 2007. [13] This $50 million complex, also designed by JLG Architects, is anchored by a 201-room, 13-story hotel tower which, at 126 feet (38 m), is the tallest building in Grand Forks and the tallest building constructed in North Dakota since the mid-1980s. [14] The Destination Center also includes the largest waterpark in the state, three restaurants, a "boutique" casino, and an arcade. This was the first facility in the United States for the Canadian hotel chain. [15]
Grand Forks is the 3rd most populous city in the U.S. state of North Dakota and the county seat of Grand Forks County. According to the 2020 census, the city's population was 59,166. Grand Forks, along with its twin city of East Grand Forks, Minnesota, forms the center of the Grand Forks, ND-MN Metropolitan Statistical Area, which is often called Greater Grand Forks or the Grand Cities.
Ralph Louis Engelstad was an American businessman who owned the Imperial Palace casino-hotels in Las Vegas and in Biloxi, Mississippi. He also owned the Kona Kai motel in Las Vegas, which later became the Klondike Hotel and Casino. He was also the donor for the construction of the $104 million Ralph Engelstad Arena for his alma mater, the University of North Dakota in Grand Forks, North Dakota, and another arena bearing his name in Thief River Falls, Minnesota. Engelstad was also a co-developer of the Las Vegas Motor Speedway. Engelstad was one of the very few independent casino-hotel owners in Las Vegas.
The University of North Dakota is a public research university in Grand Forks, North Dakota. It was established by the Dakota Territorial Assembly in 1883, six years before the establishment of the state of North Dakota.
Winnipeg Stadium was a multipurpose stadium in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
Ralph Engelstad Arena (REA), commonly called the Ralph, is an indoor arena located on the campus of the University of North Dakota (UND) in Grand Forks, North Dakota and serves as the home of UND men's ice hockey. The arena was built by controversial UND alumnus Ralph Engelstad. The North Dakota Fighting Hawks men's hockey team is the tenant. The arena formerly hosted the defunct North Dakota women's hockey team.
The Fort Worth Convention Center is a convention center and indoor arena located in downtown Fort Worth, Texas. The complex opened on September 30, 1968, and was expanded in 1983, 2002 and 2003.
The Betty Engelstad Sioux Center is an indoor arena located in Grand Forks, North Dakota. It is adjacent to the larger $100 million Ralph Engelstad Arena in the University Village development.
Fargodome is an indoor athletic stadium in the north central United States, located on the campus of North Dakota State University (NDSU) in Fargo, North Dakota. Opened 32 years ago in late 1992, the facility is owned by the City of Fargo and built on university land. Not an actual dome, its seating capacity is 18,700 for football and over 25,000 for full arena concerts. Its approximate elevation at street level is 900 feet (275 m) above sea level.
The Grand Harbor Resort and Waterpark is a resort hotel and indoor waterpark located in Dubuque, Iowa.
Columbia Mall is an enclosed regional shopping mall in Grand Forks, North Dakota located at the intersection of 32nd Avenue South and Columbia Road. The mall opened in 1978, and was developed by the Dayton Hudson Corporation at a cost of roughly $20 million. Today, Columbia Mall features the traditional retailers JCPenney and Scheels, and also currently features several prominent specialty retailers which are American Eagle, Bath and Body Works, Hot Topic, Maurices, Men's Warehouse, and Zumiez. GK Development, Inc. of Barrington, Illinois, is the current owner of the mall.
Alliant Energy PowerHouse is a multi-purpose arena located in the downtown area of Cedar Rapids, Iowa. It was financed by the approval of a voter referendum to allocate special municipal capital improvement bond monies, after several prior bond referendums to build a civic center failed between 1965 and 1977. The initial construction cost was approximately $7 million for the arena and facilities. The city approved an additional $1 million to build an adjacent multi-level parking facility connected to the center by a skywalk. The center is adjoined by a 16-story DoubleTree hotel facility built directly above the arena.
Alerus Financial Corporation, marketed as simply Alerus, is a chain of financial institutions headquartered in Grand Forks, North Dakota, with locations in North Dakota, Minnesota and Arizona. Alerus offers banking, mortgage, wealth management, and retirement services.
"Alerus" may refer to:
The recorded history of Grand Forks in the U.S. state of North Dakota, began with the trade between Native Americans and French fur trappers during the 19th century. About 60 buildings or other historic sites in Grand Forks survive and are recognized among the National Register of Historic Places listings in Grand Forks County.
Canad Inns is a chain of hotels headquartered in Winnipeg, Manitoba, Canada.
JLG Architects is an architecture firm that specializes in urban design, master planning and architectural design for sports/recreation facilities, universities, K-12 schools, aviation facilities, medical centers, and mixed-use/multi-family housing. JLG has offices in Minneapolis, St. Cloud, and Alexandria, Minnesota, and Grand Forks, Bismarck, Minot, Williston, and Fargo, North Dakota, Rapid City and Sioux Falls, South Dakota, and Boston, Massachusetts.
The First National Bank is a five-story building in Grand Forks, North Dakota, that was built in 1914–15 and listed on the National Register of Historic Places in 1982. It was built for the Scandinavian-American Bank, but has been identified as the First National Bank building since 1929.
Memorial Auditorium is a 6,000-seat indoor arena located in Moorhead, Minnesota. It was built in 1952 and dedicated to Moorhead-area residents who fought and served the United States during World War II and the Korean War, and until the Fargodome was built forty years later, was the largest indoor venue in the Fargo-Moorhead area. It remains the largest arena in the area to be used primarily for basketball, and has been the home of the Concordia College Cobbers basketball, volleyball and wrestling teams for decades.
The 2022 North Dakota Fighting Hawks football team represented the University of North Dakota as a member of the Missouri Valley Football Conference (MVFC) during the 2022 NCAA Division I FCS football season. Led by ninth-year head coach Bubba Schweigert, the Fighting Hawks compiling an overall record of 7–5 with a mark of 5–3 in conference play, placing in a three-way tie for third in the MVFC. North Dakota received an at-large bid to the NCAA Division I Football Championship playoff, losing to Weber State in the first round. The team played home games at Alerus Center in Grand Forks, North Dakota.