Folks have been musing over the opportunity for Nashville to host the NHL All-Star Weekend for several years now, but today’s article over at the Tennessean makes it sound like an official announcement could come soon:
Convention and Visitors Corp. President and CEO Butch Spyridon said there have been ongoing discussions with NHL Commissioner Gary Bettman about bringing the game to Music City.
Spyridon said the CVC has even set aside $100,000 in its event marketing fund for the All-Star game, which brings the league’s top players.
“I think if you ask the Predators, they would tell you I might be considered a relentless broken record,” Spyridon said. “We do not have an answer (yet), but every single person involved feels like it’s imminent.”
Given the continuing development and success of Bridgestone Arena and the entire downtown complex, most notably the new Music City Center and Omni Hotel, this is the natural next step in a parade of events coming to Nashville these days. You have the NCAA Women’s Final Four taking place this weekend, SEC mens basketball hosting their tournament here in years to come, to go along with conventions and concerts and all other sorts of special events on the way.
For someone like myself who grew up in an area (the suburbs of Detroit) defined by a long steady urban decline, it’s exciting to see the direction Nashville is headed in. As I’m typing this up, I’m watching Nashville: 20th Century in Photographs Volume 4 on PBS, in which you can see just how far things have come in the last few decades: