Editor’s note: This editorial was written by the Daily Camera.

Late last month, the Broomfield City Council voted to end the management and operations contract with the FirstBank Center. The arena will close its doors Nov. 30 and likely see a wrecking ball come spring. It is a swift and ignominious end to an event center that never lived up to its potential.

Since its opening in 2006, the 6,500-seat arena has failed to pull its weight. Owned by the Broomfield Urban Renewal Authority, the center was designed to be a hub for revitalization, but, financially speaking, it never managed to be anything more than a burden for taxpayers.

The signs were there from the start.

“In a competitive market, booking concerts, filling seats and giving sponsors bang for their buck turned out to be tougher than anticipated. The story should give pause to communities and aspiring team owners plotting their own forays into the sports and entertainment realm, especially as the economy slows,” a Camera story from 2009 reads.

At its peak, which was back in 2016, the FirstBank Center managed just 33 events. For more than 330 days that year, the FirstBank Center sat empty and unused.

This year, the picture is even more bleak: The center has been booked for just 10 events, with only three scheduled for the next six months. A publicly owned arena that costs some $1.2 million to operate annually is going to sit unused for more than 350 days and nights this year.

It is from this utter failure of management — the venue’s inability to compete with similarly sized arenas around the Front Range — that the FirstBank Center failed.

The venue was constructed in 2005 for $45 million and financed by nearly $60 million in municipal bonds, set to expire in 2029.

By the time the Broomfield Urban Renewal Authority pays off the event center’s debts, it will have paid about $135 million.

Because the FirstBank Center never made a profit, Broomfield often was forced into using money from other urban renewal areas to simply cover debts. In 2020, the Wadsworth Interchange urban renewal area finally generated enough revenue to pay the facility’s debts.

Thus the facility went from being a drain on all of Broomfield’s urban renewal areas to simply being a drain on its own neighborhood.

The question that remains, though, is did it have to be this way? Was this simply a failure of management? Or was it that a 6,500-seat arena in Broomfield was never going to be able to compete?

That was the thinking of Broomfield council member Todd Cohen. “If you have ever been to Mission Ballroom or the refreshed Fillmore Auditorium, you will see what we are up against,” Cohen lamented.

Still, the utter inability of the arena to even come close to the promised potential speaks to the need for Broomfield to approach the site’s redevelopment with caution.

The process of deciding what comes next for this land should be done in partnership with the public. Broomfield residents deserve to feel that, although they may be losing one local amenity, they have a seat at the table in determining what comes next for their community. It will be sad to see the FirstBank Center close for good, but if the venue simply can’t compete and will continue languishing dark and empty for 350-plus days each year, it is time to find a more suitable use of that land.

Gary Garrison for the Daily Camera editorial board