Long Beach Arena

 USA > California > Los Angeles County > Long Beach

---

A crane sits amid construction material during the building of the circular Long Beach Arena, part of the Long Beach Convention and Entertainment Center at 300 East Ocean Boulevard. It is being built on the site of the Long Beach Municipal Auditorium and was the first building completed for the complex. The Villa Riviera Hotel is left of the arena. The complex was begun in 1962. On July 9, 1992, Planet Ocean, one of Wyland's Whaling Walls murals, was dedicated. It extends along the exterior wall of the drum-shaped arena. The mural covers 116,000 square feet and depicts migratory gray whales and other aquatic life that are found in the waters off Long Beach. In celebration of Earth Day in 2009, Wyland touched up the existing Whaling Wall and added a large mural of the earth on the roof of the arena. Maybe not taken from this roof.