It’s a sad, yet happy day in the City of Pittsburgh. Today is the last regular season game in the History of the 48 year-old Mellon Arena. Trust me when I say their will be some misty eyes and man tears tonight as the city says farewell to the oldest arena in the NHL.

            We know it’s not THE final game since the Penguins are in the play-off, but it’s the end of the regular season and yes there are concerts still to come during the summer but there will be no more shoot-outs, or overtimes fighting for 1 extra point. The time has come to start saying good-bye.

            For me this good-bye is hard. I was sad to see Three Rivers Stadium imploded to the ground. I was there on a cold and sunny day standing at the point looking across the Allegheny River at the cement slabs tumble into a pile of rubble. I was their for a class journalism assignment. There were 20 of us spread around the point interviewing people getting their stories of baseball and football games past and a couple of memories of concerts held there. But that was all. Some people became teary-eyed as the saw the cookie-cutter bowl fall, others, like myself, stood, watched and felt sad for a moment, but then moved about interviewing others and listening to their stories. Not one of them had an affect on me.

            Mellon Arena, or The Civic Arena has it was mostly called during it’s life, was more. It just didn’t host hockey. It hosted concerts, soccer, lacrosse, arena football, the circus, Sesame Street Live, Disney on Ice, Bass Master weigh-ins, boxing, WWE, college, semi-pro and pro basketball. It held everything!

Every Pittsburgher had to have been there at least once for something. With Three Rivers Stadium if you didn’t like football or baseball you might have never been there, but for the Mellon Arena you had a connection with it’s aluminum roof, tight walkways, limited view seats, chalk marks marking the rows and those orange seats.

It has a connection to everyone making saying good-bye hard. We are all excited about the new Consol Energy Center and the amenities it brings, but it’s hard leaving a place that you call home for so long. I hope they find a way to keep part of Mellon Arena, like maybe one aluminum panel being held as an art piece or something. Aren’t we trying to be a “Green City” can we find use for the space. I don’t mind if most of it is demolished as long as there is a little something left behind to look at and recall all the Mellon (Civic) Arena memories.

Mellon Arena 1961-2010