June 23, 2010
Sandra Hawke, marketing director for the venue, was kind to take time from her busy schedule to update the status concerning the Rimrock Auto Arena and the full facility as of Tuesday night. Sandra’s update follows:
"Today (Tuesday), the insurance adjuster began the process of evaluating our loss at the Rimrock Auto Arena at MetraPark. They called in an additional structural engineer to help determine the soundness of the remaining structure. We await that evaluation. Of course it will be some time before the adjuster finishes his work.
"Meanwhile we are continuing with cleanup with staff and contracted labor. Heavy equipment, loaders, street sweepers, washers, and of course hand work are all being utilized to pick up debris. The arena is fenced off and secured and demolition inside the building will begin as soon as the adjuster gives us permission to begin. We have been inside to recover what records and equipment we could, but that in total would fill a 1,000 square foot room. We are proceeding to locate a temporary office building on site for a few offices and to provide box office services.
"We will need to cancel a number of major shows already on-sale: Carrie Underwood, Brad Paisley, for example. We hope to have our box office functional by July. There will be numerous others of course and we just hope our promoter friends will stick by us and return with their events once we rebuild and provide them with an even better venue.
"We are doing daily press briefings from the parking lot of the facility and these folks have been terrific about getting out important information. We are hosting the filming of Antiques Roadshow on Saturday in our Expo Center. It's a project I've personally worked towards for over eight years. They had planned to stage their ticketed guests in the arena, walk them over to the Expo Center for appraisals and filming of the three one-hour shows that will appear on PBS next January. They insist they will not cancel and have been marvelous professionals in the process. We will use our Montana Pavilion augmented by tenting to accommodate their staging needs. They arrive Thursday for the walk-through and set on Friday."