The now vacated Arlington Sheraton Hotel in the city’s vast Entertainment District is scheduled to be demolished next month.
When you see that happening, some may recall when we celebrated its opening in 1984 and look back on why it was built. Or, if not yet a resident then, here’s some interesting history that brings you up to date.
The origins of the hotel and the city’s first convention center, developed in a public-private partnership between Arlington and the Sheraton Corporation, trace back to 1972.
In March of that year, residents, political leaders, and the regional news media showed up in large numbers to witness then-Mayor Tom Vandergriff cutting through a bundle of fish netting in the ceremonial grand opening of the Seven Seas Marine Life park.
One month later, the mayor journeyed across the street. There, in the presence of 20,105 fans inside Arlington Stadium alongside the commissioner of Major League Baseball, he threw out the ceremonial first pitch on Opening Day, ushering Arlington and the Texas Rangers into the national spotlight.
Yes indeed – 1972 was a stellar year for our great city. So, how did those two events work out for us?
Today, the 2023 World Champion Texas Rangers are playing their 54th year in the third of three ballparks developed here since their first arrival.
Over on the old Seven Seas site, there’s only a large parking lot. The attraction, experiencing low attendance and skyrocketing operating costs, had become Arlington’s only major
failure of its kind and was permanently shut down by 1976.
That left the city, according to news reports, with $80 million of debt having built up in efforts to keep the project going, and there was no revenue source to cover that deep deficit.
After holding the mayor’s office for 26 years and transforming Arlington from a small agricultural economy into the third largest urban center in the region, Vandergriff stepped down in 1977.
S. J. Stovall moved into the mayor’s office with the task of managing the Seven Seas losses and began looking for solutions.
The first step was to sell some of the revenue streams from Arlington Stadium and the ball club to the Rangers owner and reap some immediate cash.
That move bought some time to develop a longer-term solution to ultimately cover the Seven Seas deficit.
At the time, Arlington had about 4,000 hotel and motel rooms, all mostly full during the summer months, housing visitors to Six Flags Over Texas, but not so much in the winter.
Looking at that resource, ideas to build a convention center to attract corporate meetings and events began to emerge. Soon, the realization arose that, if such an idea were fully developed and succeeded, the city would actually need more hotel rooms.
Discussions began in earnest with the Sheraton brain trusts to see what their interest might be in partnering with the city, each benefitting from the profits of both a hotel and a convention center.
A deal was worked out, subject to the approval of Arlington’s voters, to move forward with such a venture. They did, and the two new additions became a reality. Together with the city’s economic growth in the 1980s, the partnership accomplished its mission and more.
So, the Sheraton is coming down to be replaced by a third, much larger Loews Hotel, adding to the city’s capacity to keep building on the vitality of the city’s booming tourism economy.
The ‘old’ convention center, today houses the country’s largest Esports Stadium complex along with the Arlington Museum of Art.
The new convention center, with the largest ballroom in Texas, is on the ground floor of the Loews Arlington Hotel in the very center of the Entertainment District.
Richard Greene is a former mayor
of Arlington.
