A slew of naysayers crawled out of the woodwork two decades ago to lambaste the City of Youngstown as it earnestly began efforts to build a $45 million 7,000-seat public arena on the banks of the Mahoning River at the site of an abandoned steel mill.

Some balked that the bulk of funding for the project — about $27 million in federal grants from the U.S. Department of Housing and Urban Development — resulted from sleazy political wheeling and dealing between notorious U.S. Rep. James Traficant Jr., D-Poland, and U.S. Rep. Dennis Hastert, R-Illinois.

As reported at the time, Traficant pledged to cross political lines in June 2000 to vote to retain Hastert as U.S. House speaker, the day after Hastert signed off on the grant to fund the Youngstown convention center.

Others bemoaned the very need for such a facility in the city in the first place, given its proximity to larger urban arenas in Cleveland and Pittsburgh. Many in this group foresaw nothing but gloom, doom and insurmountable and unnecessary debt ahead for a city whose finances were fragile at best.

Still others argued that a glitzy entertainment center was the last thing the city needed at a time when violent crime was skyrocketing and the

urban economy was in shatters.

To their credit, city leaders dodged attacks and proceeded full throttle toward the Youngstown Convocation Center’s 2004 groundbreaking and 2005 grand opening.

Sixteen years and two arena name changes later, the Covelli Centre has come of age — proving naysayers wrong.

The most recent evidence of the city’s success in its ownership of the concert and hockey arena came last month, when City Council authorized payment of $1.7 million on the principal of a

$12 million construction loan taken in 2005.

That is the largest principal payment Youngstown has on the facility in two decades. What’s more, the final two payments should be disbursed by 2024.

That’s a far cry from fears among some early critics that the center would be a mammoth drain on city finances for decades to come. The city’s payments have come from the building’s operating surplus (some years close to half a million dollars) and property taxes specifically targeted to the arena’s debt services. It therefore had little discernible impact on the city’s nearly $200 million budgets through the years.

Making that payment even less burdensome has been the successful and economically sound leadership of JAC Management Group, which took over arena management in 2008, following opening years that saw operating losses as high as $541,000.

JAC, under adept leadership of Eric Ryan, cleaned house, ended annual losses and implemented operational efficiencies, all while attracting some of the biggest names in show business, ranging from Carrie Underwood to Elton John and Stevie Nicks to Rod Stewart.

Even in the pandemic-draining year of 2021 when live entertainment venues suffered big hits, the Covelli Centre persevered. The center and its outdoor companion Youngstown Foundation Amphitheater had been projected to lose a whopping $458,137. Instead the facilities racked up a modest — but nonetheless impressive — operating surplus of revenue of about $20,000.

“We were able to navigate through the two most challenging years in the history of the entertainment industry without financial losses to the city,” Ryan said recently.

Now with the pandemic waning and live concerts gaining new steam, 2022 and beyond look promising for the immediate and long-term future of the center and the amphitheater.

What’s more, the center soon will be self-sufficient with its surplus operating revenue moving toward improvements and upkeep of the public arena and no longer on merely servicing debt. Other potential uses include improvements and expansion to Wean Park in the center’s backyard and other riverfront developments.

The city benefits, as well, by saving hundreds of thousands of dollars per year in payments on loan principal and interest. And lest we forget, the city will continue to enjoy the long-term fruits the Covelli Centre has wrought.

Not only does it enliven a previously dead section of the downtown, it also has served as a catalyst for the proliferation of bars, restaurants, retailers, apartment complexes, a major hotel and other development over the past 15 years that have transformed the center city into a destination of choice for tens of thousands. That, perhaps, will be the center’s greatest legacy when the early 21st century history of Youngstown is written.

editorial@vindy.com