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By Tom Venesky tvenesky@timesleader.com
Sports Reporter
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The Pittsburgh Penguins and the arena authority each faced a dilemma.

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Dinosaurs roam the floor of the Wachovia Arena recently.

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The Pens cheer as the their team scores a goal in the first period of a playoff game with the Utah Grizzlies at the First Union Arena in 2003.

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Two years before the Wachovia Arena (then known as the Northeastern Pennsylvania Civic Arena and Convention Center) hosted its first American Hockey League game in 1999, Pittsburgh didn’t have a home for its minor league team and the arena authority didn’t have a tenant to anchor the yet-to-be-constructed building.

After playing in the International Hockey League as the Cleveland Lumberjacks, Pittsburgh hoped to move its top minor league team into the American Hockey League, which was geared more toward developing young players.

Initially Pittsburgh was on target to place the team in Hartford, Conn., but when the New York Rangers beat them to the punch by relocating its team from Binghamton, the AHL Penguins were left homeless.

Meanwhile, the Luzerne County Convention Center Authority was trying to attract an AHL team for the arena once it was built. Talks with two other franchises fell through, and soon the authority found itself in a similar predicament as the Penguins.

It was almost as if fate brought the Penguins and the arena together.

“We were both born at the same time,” said Kevin Blaum, who chaired the arena authority until 2008.

The road to a union was filled with potholes. Originally, the Detroit Red Wings and New York Rangers were in the running to locate their AHL franchises here.

But in 1997 negotiations with both organizations came to unsuccessful conclusions and the arena was left without a tenant.

“We didn’t know what we were going to do,” Blaum said.

Neither did the Penguins.

That changed for both sides when then Pittsburgh president Donn Patton contacted the authority and asked to meet.

“We just hit it off,” Blaum said. “It was a great fit right away.”

And it has continued to be for the last 10 years.

Even before the arena was built, Pittsburgh hit the ground running and named its vice president of ticket sales, Jeff Barrett, as president of the new AHL franchise.

Barrett moved to Wilkes-Barre in the middle of 1997 – two years before the arena was finished, and went to work promoting the first-ever professional hockey team in the Wilkes-Barre area.

“I was out here in advance trying to sell and establish the project,” Barrett said. “It was difficult to convince people this was a real sport.”

With the arena project mired in controversy, Barrett, who is now the team’s chief executive, faced one obstacle after another from a skeptical public. It wasn’t until the hurdles were cleared and construction began on the arena that people began to buy into the Penguins as Wilkes-Barre’s hockey team.

“When they saw the building going up, people bought tickets to be a part of the arena,” Barrett said. “And when they later actually saw the product on the ice it was different than anything they ever saw before.”

Rich Hixon, who has served as the WBS Penguins president for the last five years, said the move to Wilkes-Barre allowed the Pittsburgh organization to expand its footprint into Northeastern Pennsylvania.

But it was still a risky move considering that professional hockey was new to the region.

One thing that helped, Hixon said, was the arena, which was just as attractive as the team.

“It’s always easier to come and start from scratch,” he said. “You can form your own business model rather than have to change things that are already established.”

Hixon, who was in charge of premium seating for the Penguins before coming to Wilkes-Barre in 1999, recognized one strong sign that the new team and arena both would succeed.

“Before the arena was even built our season ticket base was the largest in the AHL,” Hixon said. “We sold around 3,000 season tickets in the first two weeks while we were just expecting hundreds. That told us this was going to be a special market and a special facility.”

So special that Barrett and Hixon are likely to stick around for another 10 years when the Penguins contract with the arena expires in 2019.

“I’ve had numerous opportunities to move on but I really like it here,” Barrett said. “It’s home for me and my family.”

“When I came here in 1999 I felt this might be a stepping stone,” Hixon said. “But now there’s no other place myself or my family would rather be.”

Blaum said the arena still feels brand new every time he walks inside.

“The most amazing part about the arena, to me, is that it’s there,” Blaum said. “I look back at the fight and the controversy we had to go through to build it and I wonder what it was all about. But the fact that we had to fight so hard for it has really made it a special place. I still get chills every time I walk in there.”

Tom Venesky, Times Leader staff writer, may be reached at 829-7230.