Show Me Center draws crowds to Sprigg

1333 North Sprigg Street. Probably the closest thing to a sports mecca for Southeast Missouri.

The Show Me Center likely is the best-known building on Sprigg, a 3.7-mile road that reflects Cape Girardeau with its mix of housing, residents and businesses.

"We'd like to think it's the most important building," joked David Ross, director of the Show Me Center.

One primary presence for Sprigg Street is Southeast Missouri State University, which, along with the city of Cape Girardeau, co-owns the Show Me Center.

The 7,000 seat facility, which will mark its 21st year in August, is the home of Southeast's men's and women's basketball teams, as well as several other sporting events of regional interest.

It also is the keystone in the university's sports complex on North Sprigg, which includes the Stuber Track Complex, the softball field, the tennis courts and intramural fields.

The track complex, which is accessed from Sprigg but sits west of the softball complex, opened in 1980, while other facilities opened in the late 1990s and early 2000s.

A local Chevy won the Tough Trucks course Jan. 19 at the Show Me Center. The Show Me Center hosts a variety of sporting events from monster truck rallies to basketball games to gun shows.

"Really, it was just cottonwood and us. That's all that was out here," said Ross, who came to Cape Girardeau in January 1987, months before the opening of the Show Me Center. "You didn't have all the buildings you have now."

Nor did you have a Sprigg Street that extended beyond Bertling to Lexington.

"Certainly, looking backward, it's had a huge impact," Ross said. "When I came here, the idea of the university having basketball games there and being able to attract outside events to this area was going to be big."

Ross estimates the facility entertains about 300,000 people per year with sporting events, entertainment and floor shows. He said the arena is used for about 160 dates per year.

The Show Me Center has hosted four crowds of more than 7,000 for Southeast men's basketball games, though none since Feb. 12, 2000, when the high-water mark of 7,241 was set in a game against Murray State.

The Show Me Center also hosts the Southeast Missourian Christmas Tournament, an annual high school boys basketball event that attracted 23,636 over four days in December; the B.A. Promotions volleyball tournament, which draws more than 40 high school teams from throughout eastern Missouri; the Saint Francis Medical Center Holiday Classic girls basketball tournament; and various high school games of note, such as Central-Notre Dame and Central-Jackson games.

Last year, the Show Me Center hosted its first Pepsi Showcase, a one-day high school basketball event with local and regional teams.

It also hosts the Saint Francis youth soccer invitational, an annual rodeo, an outdoors show, two gun shows per year and assorted other events such as motor sports, Harlem Globetrotters and WWE wrestling.

"The Show Me Center brings a lot to the campus and a lot to the city," Southeast president Dr. Kenneth Dobbins said. "It brings a lot of money to the area. With its location, people have to go through other parts of Cape Girardeau and they are going to see they have the opportunity to do more than one thing."

Ross agreed, saying, "We look at the Show Me Center as a catalyst for economic activity. Anytime you get people moving around, like molecules on an atom, it just creates energy and stimulates economic activity."

Ross, who came to Cape Girardeau after working with the university arena in Chattanooga, Tenn., recalled the discussion over the Show Me Center's location from more than 20 years ago.

"Now it's water under the bridge, but with any large project, there are different agendas," he said. "The hotel interest, and the city's interest, quite honestly, was to provide a convention center out by the interstate. If we had a facility located out there, there's no question it would provide additional room nights for the hotel properties. Unfortunately, it didn't serve the university and the students well."

Additions to the Show Me Center include the Student Recreation Center, which includes additional basketball/volleyball courts and hosts indoor track competitions, and the aquatics center that opened last year.

"One of the concerns we've always had for growing the university is, 'Are there enough activities for students to participate in?'" Dobbins said. "When you have 2,400 to 3,000 students in residence halls, you have to offer something because they're not all going to fit in the library."

Dobbins said the addition of intramural fields in the late 1990s marked an opportunity to meet the challenge of providing "an excellent women's softball field."

The university also owns more undeveloped property in the area at the southeast corner of the Sprigg and Bertling intersection. It is large enough for another Show Me Center and all of its parking, Dobbins noted.

"I really don't know what it's going to be used for," said Dobbins, who said the property was purchased while he was director of the University Foundation and executive vice president. "But one of these days, somebody is going to say, 'Boy, that was a good idea for them to buy that property and keep it.'"

tcarrig@semissourian.com

335-6611, extension 211