A DECADE OF SHOW ME CENTER SPECTACLES; VENUE CELEBRATES ITS 10TH ANNIVERSARY THIS MONTH

Ten years ago this month, Bob Hope hit a golf ball off the roof of the Show Me Center during its grand opening ceremonies. Since then, more than 3 million patrons have clicked through the turnstiles.

The Show Me Center is the largest indoor arena between St. Louis and Memphis and versatile enough to handle basketball, country music, ballet, rodeo and conventions.

It has been here long enough that many residents can't remember what Cape Girardeau was like without it. Kent Crider, the popular morning disc jockey on K103, has lived here seven years. He likes living in a town with a venue large enough to bring LeAnn Rimes and Alan Jackson to town.

He came here from Paducah. where the largest venue is the Executive Inn. The auditorium there holds "2,000, maybe 2,100," he said. "You take a place like the Show Me Center and put three times as many in it."

Ron Shumate, former coach of the Southeast Missouri State basketball team, said the school administration would not have even thought of moving the team from Division II to Division I without the Show Me Center. "It was a win situation for the university to have a facility to showcase our athletic program," Shumate said.

He said it is unlikely students would have such a fine recreation facility as the one at the Show Me Center without the arena.

Mary Miller, director of the Cape Girardeau Convention and Visitors Bureau, believes the center has been a magnet to patrons to local hotels. Last year, the Forest Products Show brought 5,000 people to Cape Girardeau. She worked a registration table and signed up someone from South America and another person from Spain.

The Show Me Center is preparing for another Midwest Forest Products Show this month.

Every January, the Show Me Center hosts an indoor soccer tournament that brings youths and their families to town from around the region. David Ross, the center director, decided to create the tournament because January was a slack time for local hotels, Miller said.

The city and Southeast Missouri State University built the Show Me Center together, funding it with a bond issue. Voters passed a 3 percent hotel tax and a 1 percent motel tax to pay off the bonds and fund the Convention and Visitors Bureau.

That tax drew more revenue than anticipated, and in 1991 city officials and the public debated whether to pay off the bonds early, expand the Show Me Center or do something else. The additional revenue is now used to pay off the bonds that built the Osage Community Centre and the Shawnee Park Softball Complex.

The decade has not been without incident.

At the first monster truck show, the steam from a truck's exhaust blew one of the arena's speakers out of its mounting.

At a rodeo in February 1992, a 1,500-pound Brahman bull jumped a six-foot barrier and terrorized the crowd for a few minutes. The cowboys corralled the bull before anyone was hurt.

Controversial figures like Oliver North and Anita Hill have spoken at the center.

The biggest single crowd -- more than 7,700 -- came in 1988 when President Ronald Reagan spoke there.

Not far behind was the 7,600 for a World Wrestling Federation card including Hulk Hogan.

Normal seating capacity is about 7,200, but with the small space taken up by a wrestling ring it was easier to fit in more for Hulk Hogan, said Greg Talbut, business manager at the Show Me Center.

Controversy dogged the center in one unlucky period in 1994 when two concerts -- Kenny G and the Pointer Sisters -- were canceled within a week.

At one point, center officials tried selling beer at a concert. Beer sales generate lots of money, Talbut said.

"The reaction of the community was not positive," Talbut said. "We have elected not to pursue that."

The center has criticized for favoring country music over other kinds. Although Aerosmith and Guns 'N Roses sold out the house in 1988, Talbot said the changing nature of the concert business has made it more difficult to book rock groups.

"The problem with rock is that they're either huge and go to a stadium or a Riverport with 20,000 seats, or they play Mississippi Nights (a St. Louis nightclub)," Talbut said. "There's nothing in between."

For the biggest names, rock promoters ask for higher guarantees than the Show Me Center can afford, Talbut said. With amphitheaters near every large city on Interstate 70, promoters have an easy time booking a tour.

In addition, competition for entertainment dollars has gotten fiercer in the last few years with the opening of riverboat casinos, he said.

The Show Me Center continues to book a ballet or a symphony concert every year. It is now negotiating with the Saint Louis Ballet for a concert this spring, he said.

One selling point the Show Me Center has is its physical layout. With its 10-inch-thick concrete floor, tractor-trailer trucks can drive directly into the stage area and unload.

Ross, who has been director of the Show Me Center since it opened, is particularly proud of the way his crew can convert the center from the site of a rodeo with a foot of dirt on the arena surface to a basketball arena or a concert site in less than a day.

Talbut said the concert schedule for the fall and winter is wide open. The rodeo returns in March. He said The Show Me Center is negotiating with a country star for October, but cannot disclose who it is.

With about 250,000 people in the area to draw from, having more than 3 million visitors means that everyone in the area has come to the Show Me Center 12 times on average.

The Show Me Center has finished in the black every year, Talbut said.