RAPID CITY - Many stories have played out within the walls of the 150,000-square-foot Rushmore Plaza Civic Center in the past three decades.

Games have been won and lost, Broadway has been brought to the Midwest, cowboys have felt agony and glory, world leaders have spoken, and musical legends have taken the stage.

The original motivation behind the creation of the civic center has long been surpassed, and Rapid City is beginning a new era of economic development with the building of a second multi-purpose arena, according to officials.

Throughout the years, the facility at 444 Mount Rushmore Road North has been a major asset for the city, attracting presidents, a prime minister and even "The King."

But more than 30 years ago, residents and officials approved the civic center for one main reason - basketball.

In the beginning

"The No. 1 reason the Rushmore Plaza Civic Center was built was that the state of South Dakota had said Rapid City did not have a facility big enough to keep in the rotation to host the state basketball tournaments," Brian Maliske, general manager of the civic center, said. "State basketball was going to rotate out of here. It was going East River, and it was going to stay."

During the 1950s and '60s, state basketball tournaments were held in Huron and Mitchell, according to former Rapid City mayor Don Barnett. Sioux Falls built an arena in the '60s.

Rapid City officials knew they needed a facility to compete, Barnett said.

"That was an important part of our tourism in the winter," Barnett said in a phone interview from his Colorado office.

Aside from basketball, the city lacked an auditorium for larger events.

"We were not having big names, big acts - whether it was a national speaker or a concert," Maliske said. "One of the ways you keep people in the area is providing them with amenities - entertainment."

Although the Black Hills provide a beautiful landscape, residents also need things to do in the community, he said.

Before the civic center, the community had a city auditorium where the Dahl Arts Center is now. However, the facility, built in the 1920s, was old, dilapidated and had to be closed, Barnett said. "We needed a civic center to expand tourism year round as an economic tool. That was so critical," he said.

A long road

Residents voted down two civic center proposals, in 1958 and 1966. They did not want to fund the project with property taxes.

In 1971, Barnett ran for mayor, pledging that he would build a civic center without using property tax revenue.

Barnett won the election and, within a month, appointed committees to study funding and building a new venue.

In 1972, city officials devised the bed and booze tax to pay for the facility.

"We were able to put together a concept of sales tax," Barnett said. "We never used property taxes to pay off the debt or manage the civic center."

With a way to pay for the project, officials began designing and finding a location for the long-awaited building.

The original drawings for the civic center put the building on 10 acres on the corner of Omaha Street and West Boulevard, Maliske said. The land was owned by the school district and includes where Central High School now sits.

"We told (the school district) we'd buy the land for the civic center," Barnett said. "We'd build it north of the creek, and that was acceptable to the people."

Then, on June 9, 1972, extremely heavy rains produced record flooding of Rapid Creek and other Black Hills area streams. The floods wreaked havoc on the area, killed 238 people and slowed the civic center project by two years, Barnett said.

After the flood, the federal government condemned all land in the flood plain. As part of the recovery, the city decided to build a much-needed new Central High School. The school district kept the 10 acres previously planned for the civic center, and the city acquired land between Fifth and Eighth streets as part of the federal flood-recovery urban renewal program, Barnett said.

The city had $2.5 million reserved from the sales tax. Officials borrowed another $10 million, bringing the total cost of the original civic center to $12.5 million.

"We built it on time and finished on budget," Barnett said.

The city broke ground on Barnett's last weekend in office in 1975. Two years later, Mayor Art LaCroix asked Barnett to cut the ribbon on the new, state-of-the-art building.

Measure of success

Thirty years ago, when Rapid City opened Rushmore Plaza Civic Center, officials never imagined the success the facility would bring. "The civic center is the economic engine for Rapid City," Barnett said.

Today, the civic center hosts more than 750 events with 1,300 event days and more than 1 million people walking through the corridors each year.

"The state basketball tournament is not even our largest basketball tournament anymore," Maliske said, noting that the Lakota Nation Invitational is the largest, attracting 2,500 participants and an additional 5,000 spectators annually.

"It started off as, 'Let's build something and have an opportunity to broaden our horizons.' … It has gone from that to home shows, sport shows, stock shows, LNI, powwows, dog shows," Maliske said.

The civic center's largest event, the Black Hills Stock Show & Rodeo, was not even a thought when the facility was built.

"We never dreamed we would have a winter stock show with an indoor rodeo," Barnett said. "There are three big stock shows in America, and one of those is held in Rapid City."

The stock show has gone from a humble beginning of two rodeos attracting fewer than 1,000 people to a 10-day event with nearly 300,000 in attendance.

"It is 22 percent of our revenue for the year," he said.

During large events, such as the LNI tournament and the stock show, thousands of people patronize the city's shops, restaurants and hotels, Maliske said.

"You go to the mall and look at how busy it is; the civic center has worked well beyond what they dreamed of when they first built it."

"It has been a great investment," Maliske said, noting that the city would have to spend between $150 million and $175 million to rebuild what the civic center is today.

World leaders including President Ronald Reagan and former British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher have spoken at the civic center.

A new era

Construction now is under way for a second multi-purpose facility to provide more opportunities for the city, including a permanent sheet of ice, according to Maliske.

"We have struggled to get Ice Capades or Disney on Ice" because the civic center didn't have a permanent sheet of ice, he said. "It's not that you have a sheet of ice, but it provides an additional opportunity."

The new arena will also allow Maliske to book more events on any given day. "I turn away a lot of events because we already have something booked," he said.

A one-day event turns into a three-day event because of time needed to set up and tear down, Maliske said. With another facility, a hockey game could be played while crews tear down a home show, he said.

"The key is you have to have a space. Then, you can come up with creative ideas," Maliske said.