It’s the thrillingly named “Sleep Train Arena” of Sacramento, Calif., completed in 1988, the same year as the Bradley Center, and if we want to get technical, it did undergo some minor remodeling in 2013. At the time, the Sacramento Bee referred to their home court as “the barn” and said it was getting some new VIP lounges, a new visitors’ locker room (which had been a “dungeon”) and 90 new Wi-Fi nodes dangling from the ceiling like spiders. Also: “The arena’s notoriously leaky roof has been patched, and the parking lot’s many potholes filled.”
The total cost of the upgrades was closely held but appeared to have been something north of $1 million. Sacramento is building a new arena, the Sacramento Entertainment and Sports Center (ESC), the name chosen over the Sacramento Ctrl-Alt-Del Center (not really). Its design is bright and airy compared to the Sleep Train’s low concrete bunker, reviewed as an “old school NBA experience” by stadiumjourney.com. “The wooden bleachers around the lower deck may even make you question if you’re in an NBA arena at all,” says the review. “The plastic seats are old and actually feel like they may collapse. But once the game starts, and the Sacramento crowd starts rocking, the age of the arena turns from strange nuance to charming hometown like-ability.”
We all hope to grow more charming as we age, right? The newfangled ESC opens in precisely 542 days, according to a counter on its website. A replacement for the Bradley Center is less definite and covered carefully by our Dan Shafer. Stadiumjourney.com ranked the Sleep Train dead last (30th) in a 2013 ranking of NBA stadiums (“It’s hard to believe that this arena was ever state of the art.”), and the Bradley Center 26th.
