The Soundstage was built in the Spring and Summer of 1965 in Dayton, OH. After acquiring the necessary land for the rink and 15,000 parking spaces, the ground was broken on April 15th, 1965.
The project moved quickly and the rink held its first event, an opera at 7:00pm on Saturday, September 11th, 1965.
A sellout crowd of 15,000 attendees came out for the much-publicised opening night, which saw people turned away due to the sellout. "We'd never seen anything like this before in Dayton," said the Dayton Chamber of Commerce.
That fall, the Dayton Bombers began to call the Soundstage home during the 65-66 ECHL season. Other events like University of Dayton basketball, Truck and car shows, trade shows, conventions, political rallies, religious gatherings, funerals, etc. were also well-attended events.
"This is our 53rd year and the building is holding up very well," said retired Supervisor of Operations Tony Oaks. "We've always maintained the building the best we could and the current management and ops crew do a terrific job. The place was built so well, there has never been any major issues. None." said Oaks.
A major expansion increased the seating for hockey and basketball games up to 20,000 in 2002. "The community had expressed a frustration about so many events being sold out that after we put some financing together, we were about to grow our seating by about 30%, " said current General Manager Bill Corfield.
"Since the '02 seating expansion, we've added a new hi-def scoreboard, chaser light rings around the lower and upper bowls and revamped our food and beverage concessions by using as many local restaurants as we can. Finally, there's so much interest in Musicmen merchandise, that we've opened up 3 new guest gift shops in the last 6 months," said Corfield.
Monies have also been budgeted to restripe the full parking lot in the coming off-season.
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