The San Diego Sports Arena, the county's oldest and largest indoor venue for live entertainment events, is undergoing a $2.5 million upgrade. The Sports Arena will spend $900,000 on its new Club 3500 alone.

“This is the most excited I've been in the 18 years that we've occupied the building,” Ernie Hahn, general manager of the facility, said yesterday. “With the improvements we're adding, we'll be more advanced than our competition in the marketplace.”

Located on the lower level of the arena, the 6,500-square-foot club will be a larger and more upscale version of the smaller Arena Club that it replaces.

Club 3500, which will also be available for private rentals and parties, is limiting membership to 170 per year. Thirty-five memberships have been sold by word-of-mouth since Thursday, said Hahn, who describes Club 3500 as a “very swank” cross between downtown's Stingaree nightclub and the field-level Sony Dugout Club at Petco Park.



The improvements are “a positive” for San Diego, said Gary Bongiovanni, the publisher of Pollstar , the concert industry's leading weekly trade publication.