Air Canada missed a naming-rights deadline by thirty minutes, so for fifteen years Vancouver's arena was The Garage. Rogers Arena at 800 Griffiths Way in downtown Vancouver opened on 21 September 1995 as General Motors Place, a 160-million-dollar, privately financed replacement for the Pacific Coliseum wedged between the Georgia and Dunsmuir viaducts. The building was the brainchild of Canucks owner Arthur Griffiths, built for the NHL club and the NBA's expansion Vancouver Grizzlies, who played here until decamping to Memphis in 2001; hometown rocker Bryan Adams opened the concert history with a sold-out show two days before the first hockey game. The name changed in July 2010 when General Motors ended its sponsorship and Rogers Communications took over - after a brief Olympic interlude as Canada Hockey Place, when the rink hosted the 2010 Winter Games ice hockey tournaments including the Crosby golden-goal final. Capacity runs about 18,900 for hockey and 19,000 for concerts across a bowl with 88 luxury suites and 2,195 club seats, and the touring ledger reads like a residency roster: Rod Stewart nine times, the Rolling Stones, Madonna, U2, Paul McCartney and Coldplay among more than 3,000 events and 27 million visitors in the building's first two decades. Non-music history has ranged from the Vancouver Ravens lacrosse era to visits by Queen Elizabeth II and the Dalai Lama - the building doubling as the city's default big room for anything requiring a roof and twenty thousand seats. The downtown site beside BC Place keeps it walkable: Stadium-Chinatown SkyTrain station sits a block away, and the viaduct location puts the arena ten minutes on foot from Gastown and Yaletown. The 2010 Olympic renaming was itself a story - sponsorship rules barred the GM name during the Games, so the building spent two weeks as Canada Hockey Place while hosting the most-watched hockey tournament ever played in the country.

Type: Stadium / Arena

Address: 800 Griffiths Way, Vancouver, Canada, V6B 6G1

Website: https://rogersarena.com

Capacity: 18871

Opening Date: 21/09/1995

Serves Food

Accessible