Once the object of a city’s ire and disappointment, Rockford’s downtown arena is enjoying a new lease on life. With a new name, a new team, a new attitude and some early successes, the former MetroCentre is well on its way toward a winning season.

The latest chapter in the saga of Rockford’s arena reads like one of those last-place-team-wins-the-championship sports stories: dissatisfied owner hires an innovative, unconventional new coach who recruits talented players, battles old conventions, converts cynics, establishes a new, can-do teamwork attitude and wins the day.

If this is a sports story, Mike Dunn might be that unconventional coach who re-energizes the team. As head of Rockford’s downtown venues board, Dunn has been one of the leading architects in the modern revival of the MetroCentre, or, as it’s now called, the BMO Harris Bank Center (aka The BEE-Mo). Over the past two years, he’s assembled a winning combination of players and helped to inspire a can-do attitude that’s breaking old conventions.

Reversing years of neglect, low morale and poor decisions, Dunn and his team are starting to turn things around at The BMO, slowly but surely. To be sure, it’s a team effort, with support from the mayor and city council, downtown venues board, professional arena management and community organizations. To cynics who don’t yet believe in this born-again story, Dunn is defiant.

“I would have been the same cynic, but there’s a big difference between 24 months ago and today,” he says. “Today, you have the advantage of hindsight, and you can see the changes that have been made, the new directions we’ve made, the results we’ve accomplished, and you can see activities that are happening downtown. You see the moms and dads and kids and grandparents all coming downtown for hockey or concerts, or music or ice skating, or movies or City Market. They’re all winners.”

You can read the rest of this Winter 2011/12 Feature story in our print edition. To obtain your own copy, visit any one of our Preferred Providers. Link to our directory here, or on the widget to the right.

Tags: arena, bmo harris bank center, downtown rockford, entertainment, larry morrissey, metrocentre, mike dunn, rave, venues

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