Continental Coliseum, Oklahoma City, OK (2026)

03/26/2026

Relive a historic day in OKC as we broke ground on Continental Coliseum 🎥

03/26/2026

Today, we broke ground on Continental Coliseum. The construction of our city’s new arena is officially underway. For the next two years, this reflection of our city’s ambitious aspirations will rise into the Oklahoma City skyline. Below are the comments I shared today at the ceremony.

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I certainly want to thank everyone who has led us to this day, many of whom are on stage. The City Council; the City Manager Craig Freeman; the many people on City staff managing the financing and construction; David Manica, TVS and everyone on the design team; Flintco, Mortenson and everyone on the construction team; the Oklahoma City Thunder, led by Clay Bennett, who are our friends and partners in this endeavor; and certainly of course, the people of Oklahoma City, who overwhelmingly approved this project and will largely fund it.

It was in 2022 that I first publicly broached the topic of our city’s need to address our relatively aging, small and underinvested downtown arena. For the next two years, we had a very public and transparent community conversation about the topic. The main thrust of my argument at the time could probably have been summed up in two points.

The first was that our city had long understood the central role that our arena plays in our identity and our quality of life. There have always been a tremendous number of events that happen in our downtown arena and our arena’s ability to compete for concerts and events defines our city in many ways. And so, we have invested in our downtown arena with almost perfect regularity across the span of a century.

As we stand here today, we are breaking ground on the city’s fourth downtown arena. Oklahoma City was founded in 1889, and history records that when the city was 48 years old, we opened our first arena - the Municipal Auditorium in 1937, what we now call the Civic Center. It’s somewhat hard for us to imagine now, but in 1937, the Civic Center was our arena, hosting basketball games, concerts and all those special entertainment events that elevate life in a city. Thirty-five years later, in 1972, city leaders and residents stood on this very site and cut the ribbon on the Myriad, our second arena. Thirty years later, in 2002, just behind you across the street, we opened what was then known as the Ford Center. And today, we break ground on the Continental Coliseum, which will open in 2028, 26 years after the Ford Center opened. Every three decades, for a century, the people of Oklahoma City have reinvested in this critical building, understanding that it is the centerpiece of our city’s identity.

During that time when we as a community discussed how to move forward on the arena question, my second main point was of course the importance of our arena to our status as a big league city. Being a big league city has changed us forever. We see it in everything that defines life in OKC. We see it in our population and our GDP. We see it in our economic diversification, cultural life and commercial development. Our city’s history will forever be told as before the Thunder and after the Thunder.

That status is not one we can take for granted. There are a finite number of major league professional sports franchises in the leagues that matter. Generally, 30 to 32. As the 42nd largest market, we have numerous competitors who want what we have. We cannot directly control the size of our market, but we can directly control the facility we offer. The downtown arena unlocks our ability to retain the NBA and remain a big league city. That status simply was not sustainable for much longer without this investment. But with this commitment, we achieved the renewal we sought. Our original 15-year agreement with the Thunder, which ended in 2023, has now been extended with a 25-year commitment that will commence when this new arena opens in 2028. That commitment preserves our status as a big league city till at least 2053. And in the meantime, we became more than a big league city; we became a championship city. Thank you, Sam.

And so, with the shovels we turn today, we are achieving the goals we set out to attain when we discussed this issue in 2022 and 2023. We are meeting our generational obligation to reinvest in our downtown arena, guaranteeing we will continue to host the many events that define a great city. And we have leveraged our arena to sustain our relationship with the Thunder and the NBA, securing our status as a big league city for another generation.

With those achievements secure, I want to submit to you that today, with the commencement of this ambitious and aspirational project, we are also doing something more.

Great cities build great buildings. The tendency of humans to organize ourselves into cities allows for collective achievement. Working together with thousands of our neighbors, we can do things we could never do alone, and urban places across the span of human history have used their collective power to build great buildings. What is Paris without the Eiffel Tower, New York City without the Empire State Building, or London without Big Ben. Travelers do not return home and regale their friends with tales of tent cities or two-story structures. The greatness of a city is expressed in its buildings.

The Continental Coliseum will be a great building. With the dirt we turn today, we are beginning our city’s greatest collective effort in its 137-year history. Continental Coliseum is making a statement to the world.

Let me just put the scale of this project into perspective for you. By budget size, this is the largest single public project in Oklahoma City’s history. That you probably already knew implicitly. But it is also one of the largest projects in anyone’s history.

Ranking arena budgets is not always an exact science, but the Continental Coliseum project appears to have the fifth-largest budget in the global history of arenas. Though I include the entire world in that comparison, it is worth noting that all of the top budgets are NBA arenas. The NBA is the greatest league on earth that stages its sport in an arena, and so the greatest arenas ever built anywhere are NBA arenas. And we are a part of the NBA, not a junior version of it. And we are not shying away from the competition.

And though I’m sure it won’t be long till a few more NBA arenas pass our budget, we shouldn’t fail to recognize this rarified air we find ourselves in. I remind you that for the last two decades, we have had the second-best arena in Oklahoma. Today, we break ground on what will be one of the greatest arenas on the planet.

Today, the people of Oklahoma City make a statement. It is the latest in a series of such statements. In 2008, we became a big league city. We used the next 17 years to build upon that platform. In 2025, our championship signaled our true arrival. The world turned its eyes to OKC and acknowledged that we had progressed into a great city in ways that went far beyond sports. And now, in 2026, we take another critical step. We break ground today on what will be one of the world’s great buildings.

This arena will be one of one. Its beauty and magnificence will speak to the city that we wish to be, the city that we are. Great cities build great buildings. Rome has the Coliseum. And now, so will Oklahoma City.

Congratulations to all of us, and we’ll see you back here in two years.

Thank you.