DCU Center Informations

The DCU Center (originally Centrum in Worcester, formerly Worcester's Centrum Centre and commonly Worcester Centrum) is an indoor arena and convention center complex in downtown Worcester, Massachusetts.

The facility hosts a variety of events, including concerts, sporting events, family shows, conventions, trade-shows and meetings. It is owned by the City of Worcester and managed by SMG, a private management firm for public assembly facilities.

The naming rights were purchased in 2004 by Digital Federal Credit Union (DCU) and went into effect January 2005.

The Centrum, or officially Centrum in Worcester as it was then known, opened in September 1982 after years of construction delays, with a capacity of roughly 12,000. The opening event was a Frank Sinatra concert. The arena was expanded to 14,800 seats in 1989 with the addition of the 300-level balconies. The convention center addition was completed along with a renovation of arena infrastructure in 1997. This upgrade resulted in the facility's name change to Worcester's Centrum Centre. The venue received further updates with the DCU naming rights purchase, including new signage both inside and outside the facility, and a new center-hung video scoreboard for the arena bowl.

Previously,[when?] the arena was managed by Rich Kreswick, who afterward spent a brief time at the FleetCenter (Boston), and in the mid-1990s, the general manager position transferred to Sandy Dunn, who is one of few women to manage an arena venue, and the DCU Center is one of the most stable of SMG's assets.

The arena is home to the Worcester Railers hockey team which began play in 2017 as a member of the ECHL. The arena was formerly home to the Worcester Sharks American Hockey League (AHL) team, owned and operated by its NHL affiliate San Jose Sharks, which moved its farm team to the west coast in 2015. Prior to this, the venue was home to the Worcester IceCats, also of the AHL. The arena also hosted the 2009 AHL All-Star Classic on January 29, 2009. The PlanetUSA All stars defeated Team Canada, 14–11, in the highest-scoring AHL All Star game in history.

Worcester has been host to the Boston Celtics every few years. They also hosted the first and second rounds of the 2005 Ncaa men’s Division I basketball tournament.

The New England Surge of the Continental Indoor Football League also called the Center home for two seasons, but after the 2008 season the team ceased all operations. They were the second indoor football team to do so, after the Massachusetts Marauders of the AFL. Boston area teams use the arena as an occasional home venue for pre-season games. In 2018, the Massachusetts Pirates began their inaugural season in the National Arena League, going 11-5 and regular season champions in their first year

The College of the Holy Cross uses the facility as an alternate location for anticipated larger attendance home games for men's basketball and men's ice hockey.

During the 1980s, the arena became an alternate stop for touring musical acts, offering them a small venue that could draw from both the Boston and Providence concert markets simultaneously. The old Boston Garden had poor acoustics and lacked air conditioning, prompting promoters to schedule Boston area shows at the arena. This practice continues today as the arena is an alternative to the larger TD Garden.

The impact was also felt immediately thirty-five miles south at the Providence Civic Center. Within six months of The Centrum's opening, Providence's WPRI Channel 12 news ran a two-part story by reporter Brian Rooney citing a situation the week prior with the KISS band as a prime example of how the newly built Centrum was cutting deeply into the Providence Civic Center's vital concert business.

Shortly after the Centrum's September 1982 opening, RI promoter Frank J. Russo scheduled KISS on their Creatures of the Night Tour/10th Anniversary Tour for a January 23, 1983 show at their usual area stop – the Providence Civic Center. He also scheduled a show the night prior at the new Centrum.

The Centrum KISS date sold thousands more tickets than the Civic Center KISS date, which petered out at 2,000 sales. Russo canceled the Providence show and publicly offered to trade Centrum KISS show tickets for Civic Center KISS show tickets in lieu of refunds, throwing in a free bus ride up and back .

On January 22, 1983 hundreds of fans departed from Sabin Street in front of the Providence Civic Center, headed up on chartered buses to the competing venue. (After this, for the next four tours in a row, only the Centrum got area bookings from KISS; they did not attempt to play the Providence Civic Center again until 1988.)

Rooney reported the new Centrum was "thriving," and already "doing double the business expected" despite the recession. Worcester Centrum Director Antonio Tavares told Rooney, in a shot at his competition down south, "You can no longer sit and wait for the phone to ring and expect acts to be calling you, especially unique types of events, and say 'Hey, we're interested in playing the Providence Civic Center.' That doesn't happen anymore." Rooney showed footage of a tennis match, a tractor pull, and KISS playing to underline the variety of events hosted by the new Centrum after only a few months of operation.

The arena still plays host to a variety of entertainment events, including Professional Bull Riding, Stars on Ice, Monster Trucks and more.

On February 11, 1983, Marvelous Marvin Hagler retained his WBC, WBA and The Ring Middleweight titles against English boxer Tony Sibson at the arena. It was Hagler's 60th professional fight and his 56th win overall. The fight was the only time Hagler fought at the arena and was the last of 36 he fought in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts.

From August 13 to August 24, 1987, in an effort to thank their local fans for years of support and allow wide availability of tickets, Boston played an unprecedented nine-show run on their Third Stage tour. Starting with a three-night booking, as each show neared selling out another night was added. This successful, well-reviewed tour stop prompted a good-natured ad parody on rock radio station WBCN, "Now appearing at the Centrum, Boston on Ice!", a reference to themed ice shows.

On January 27, 1988 KISS paused in the middle of their Crazy Nights tour concert at the arena and filmed most of the footage for a music video supporting their impending "Turn On The Night" single. The video was directed by Marty Callner who laid tracks inside the security barrier in front of the stage for a moving camera to film up at lead singer Paul Stanley dancing up a stage ramp while lip-synching the lyrics and featured a dolly shot running down the center aisle showing the crowd. "Turn On the Night" only charted in the UK, where it reached #41.

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