A construction crew member moves the seating during a media preview tour of The Dollar Loan Center, home of the Henderson Silver Knights and the Vegas Knight Hawks, Monday, Dec. 6, 2021.
Wednesday, Jan. 19, 2022 | 2 a.m.
The Big West Conference will be bringing its postseason basketball tournament to Southern Nevada in March.
That, in itself, isn’t the entire story.
After all, Las Vegas already hosts the Mountain West, Pac-12 Conference, Western Athletic Conference and West Coast Conference postseason basketball tournaments. Those events, coupled with college basketball viewing parties for the NCAA Tournament, pack the Strip with visitors and provide one of the best revenue bumps of the year for the Las Vegas economy.
But the Big West tournament isn’t being played in Las Vegas.
Rather, its event is pegged for Henderson at the almost-completed Dollar Loan Center on Green Valley and Paseo Verde parkways on the site of the old Henderson Pavilion near Green Valley Ranch resort.
If you talk to Big West Commissioner Dan Butterly, he’ll be sure to tell you the basketball postseason event is in Henderson — not Las Vegas. They are so sold on the community that the league joined the Henderson Chamber of Commerce. (Of the chamber’s 1,700 members, only 1% are from out of state.)
“This is Henderson’s basketball championship. It’s Henderson’s event,” Butterly said last week while in town to speak at a Henderson chamber event. “We want to be part of this community.”
The 6,000-seat arena is being built in a partnership between the city of Henderson and the Golden Knights, whose minor league affiliate, the Henderson Silver Knights, will play at the facility. Same for the Vegas Knight Hawks of the Indoor Football League, a team that is also owned by the Golden Knights’ Bill Foley.
But the first event at the $84 million, 200,000-square-foot building will be basketball played March 8-12 with the Big West.
“It’s a perfect scenario for the Big West,” Butterly said.
Members of the Big West for basketball are: Cal-State Bakersfield, Cal-State Fullerton, Cal Poly, Cal-State Northridge, Hawaii, Long Beach State, UC Davis, UC Irvine, UC Riverside, UC San Diego and UC Santa Barbara.
The Big West Tournament had been contested for years in Anaheim. Beginning in 2001, the games were played at the Anaheim Convention Center. Then from 2011 to 2019, it was at the Honda Center. Last March the tournament moved to Michelob Ultra Arena inside Mandalay Bay.
With nine of the 12 Big West institutions located in Southern California, traveling to the postseason tournament for fans was a relatively short daily commute for fans attending the games when they were in Anaheim. But now the tournament will be a destination event in Henderson, where supporters will make the four-hour drive on Interstate-15 and stay for a few days.
A spike in visitors to Henderson is exciting for chamber officials. Even if fans were to stay in Las Vegas, they would still find their way east to the Dollar Loan Center — and spend plenty of time at Henderson businesses.
It’s the same type of impact Las Vegas Ballpark had on Summerlin shops, as Downtown Summerlin usually gets an increase in foot traffic on game nights for the Las Vegas Aviators, or as when the venue last month hosted its popular holiday lights event.
The same theory rings true with the Silver Knights, who will begin play at their permanent home April 2. The franchise’s American Hockey League plays a 68-game regular season, meaning 34 home nights in Henderson to further boost the economy. Tickets for the Silver Knights start at $30 — a significant bargain in comparison to watching the NHL team at T-Mobile Arena.
“We have established a tremendous foundation of affordable, fun and family friendly sports programming at the Dollar Loan Center,” Golden Knights President Kerry Bubolz previously said in a statement.
It was Bubolz who helped recruit the Big West to Henderson, knowing the intimate setting of the new arena would be best-suited for the tournament. The cavernous Honda Center seats 18,336 — and often had empty seats for the tournament.
The area near the Dollar Loan Center has also been enhanced with a pedestrian trail leading to the arena plus an outdoor plaza. That’s where Butterly envisions pregame pep rallies led by the school bands, and postgame celebrations.
“The plaza will allow us to have a bigger footprint,” Butterly said.
Henderson business leaders are sure glad it’s a footprint happening near their shops.
“It was good vision on behalf of the (Big West) conference to bring it here,” said Scott Muelrath, the CEO of the chamber. “It won’t be lost in the backdrop of everything that is happening on the Strip. Henderson will put its arms around it.”
“Having this venue is a big win for the Henderson business community,” Muelrath said.
