Lakewood Church Central Campus
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The Lakewood Church Central Campus is the main facility of
Lakewood Church Lakewood Church is a non-denominational evangelical Christian megachurch located in Houston, Texas. It is one of the largest congregations in the United States, averaging about 45,000 attendees per week. The 16,800-seat Lakewood Church building, ...
, a
megachurch A megachurch is a church with an unusually large membership that also offers a variety of educational and social activities, usually Protestant or Evangelical. The Hartford Institute for Religion Research defines a megachurch as any Protestant C ...
in
Houston Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 in ...
,
Texas Texas (, ; Spanish language, Spanish: ''Texas'', ''Tejas'') is a state in the South Central United States, South Central region of the United States. At 268,596 square miles (695,662 km2), and with more than 29.1 million residents in 2 ...
, five miles southwest of
Downtown Houston Downtown is the largest central business district in the city of Houston and the largest in the state of Texas, located near the geographic center of the metropolitan area at the confluence of Interstate 10 in Texas, Interstate 10, Interstate 45, ...
and next to
Greenway Plaza Greenway Plaza is a business district located along Interstate 69 (U.S. Highway 59) within the Interstate 610 loop in southwestern Houston, Texas, west of Downtown and east of Uptown. The district is located immediately west of Upper Kirby, n ...
. From 1975 to 2003 the building served as a multi-purpose sports arena for professional teams, notably the NBA's
Houston Rockets The Houston Rockets are an American professional basketball team based in Houston. The Rockets compete in the National Basketball Association (NBA) as a member team of the league's Western Conference Southwest Division. The team plays its ho ...
. It was known as The Summit until 1998, when technology firm
Compaq Compaq Computer Corporation (sometimes abbreviated to CQ prior to a 2007 rebranding) was an American information technology company founded in 1982 that developed, sold, and supported computers and related products and services. Compaq produced ...
bought
naming rights Naming rights are a financial transaction and form of advertising or memorialization whereby a corporation, person, or other entity purchases the right to name a facility, object, location, program, or event, typically for a defined period of t ...
and dubbed it Compaq Center. That name was dropped when
Toyota Center Toyota Center is an indoor arena located in Houston. It is named after the Japanese automobile manufacturer Toyota. The arena is home to the Houston Rockets of the National Basketball Association (NBA), and it was once the home of the Houston ...
opened as a new and more advanced professional sports venue in the same city, and the building was leased to Lakewood Church. Seven years later, in 2010, the church bought the building outright.


Construction of The Summit

In 1971, the
National Basketball Association The National Basketball Association (NBA) is a professional basketball league in North America. The league is composed of 30 teams (29 in the United States and 1 in Canada) and is one of the major professional sports leagues in the United S ...
's
San Diego Rockets The Houston Rockets are an American professional basketball team based in Houston, Texas. The team plays in the Southwest Division of the Western Conference in the National Basketball Association (NBA). The team was established in 1967, and pl ...
were purchased by new ownership group Texas Sports Investments, who moved the franchise to Houston. The city, however, lacked an indoor arena suitable to host a major sports franchise. The largest arena in the city at the time was 34-year-old
Sam Houston Coliseum Sam Houston Coliseum was an indoor arena located in Houston, Texas. Early years Located at 801 Bagby Street in Downtown Houston, the Coliseum and Music Hall complex replaced the Sam Houston Hall, which was a wooden structure that had been erected ...
, but the Rockets would not even consider using it as a temporary facility. Plans were immediately undertaken to construct the new venue that would become The Summit. The Rockets played their home games in various local facilities such as
Hofheinz Pavilion The Fertitta Center, formerly known as Hofheinz Pavilion, is a 7,100-seat multi-purpose arena on the University of Houston campus in Houston. Located at 3875 Holman Street, it is home to the Houston Cougars men's and women's basketball teams and ...
and the
Astrodome The NRG Astrodome, also known as the Houston Astrodome or simply the Astrodome, is the world's first multi-purpose, domed sports stadium, located in Houston, Texas. It was financed and assisted in development by Roy Hofheinz, mayor of Houston ...
during the interim. Completed in 1975 at a cost of $18 million, there was an Opening Night Spectacular called "Heart To Heart", benefitting the
Baylor College of Medicine Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) is a medical school and research center in Houston, Texas, within the Texas Medical Center, the world's largest medical center. BCM is composed of four academic components: the School of Medicine, the Graduate Sc ...
, The Methodist Hospital, and the Texas Heart Institute. Andy Williams was the headliner for that evening's extravaganza. The Summit represented a lavish new breed of sports arena, replete with amenities, that would help the NBA grow from a second-tier professional sport into the multibillion-dollar entertainment industry that it is today.
The Omni Omni Coliseum (often called The Omni) was an indoor arena in Atlanta, Georgia, United States. Completed in 1972, the arena seated 16,378 for basketball and 15,278 for hockey. It was part of the Omni Complex, now known as the CNN Center. It was ...
in Atlanta (now the site of
State Farm Arena State Farm Arena (formerly Philips Arena) is a multi-purpose arena located in Atlanta, Georgia. The arena serves as the home venue for the National Basketball Association (NBA)'s Atlanta Hawks. It also served as home to the National Hockey Leag ...
),
McNichols Sports Arena McNichols Sports Arena was an indoor arena located in Denver, Colorado. Located adjacent to Mile High Stadium and completed in 1975, at a cost of $16 million, it seated 16,061 for hockey games and 17,171 for basketball games. Sports use It was ...
in Denver (now a parking lot for
Empower Field at Mile High Empower Field at Mile High (previously known as Broncos Stadium at Mile High, Invesco Field at Mile High and Sports Authority Field at Mile High, and commonly known as Mile High, New Mile High or Mile High Stadium) is an American football stadium ...
), and the
Richfield Coliseum Richfield Coliseum, also known as the Coliseum at Richfield, was an indoor arena located in Richfield Township, between Cleveland and Akron, Ohio. It opened in 1974 as a replacement for the Cleveland Arena, and had a seating capacity of 20,273 f ...
in Richfield, Ohio (now an open meadow in the process of being reclaimed by forest) were all constructed during this period and remained in service until the continued growth of the NBA sparked a new arena construction boom in the late 1990s. On each end of the arena was a Fair-Play scoreboard with a small two-line monochrome message center. Both scoreboards would be upgraded in 1986 with the addition of three front-projection videoboards on top of each scoreboard. The center videoboard showed live game footage, fan shots, and replays while the left and right videoboards showed slides displaying advertisements for the Rockets' (and Aeros') sponsors.


Notable events


Sports

The Summit housed the
Rockets A rocket (from it, rocchetto, , bobbin/spool) is a vehicle that uses jet propulsion to accelerate without using the surrounding air. A rocket engine produces thrust by reaction to exhaust expelled at high speed. Rocket engines work entirely fr ...
,
Aeros Aeros is a Ukrainian aircraft manufacturer founded by a group of ex-Antonov engineers in the early 1990s to build hang gliders. It is located in Kyiv.Bertrand, Noel; Rene Coulon; et al: ''World Directory of Leisure Aviation 2003-04'', page 41. Pag ...
,
Comets A comet is an icy, small Solar System body that, when passing close to the Sun, warms and begins to release gases, a process that is called outgassing. This produces a visible atmosphere or coma, and sometimes also a tail. These phenomena are ...
and several
arena football Indoor American football, or arena football, is a variation of gridiron football played at ice hockey-sized indoor arenas. While varying in details from league to league, the rules of indoor football are designed to allow for play in a smaller ...
sports teams until they vacated the arena in favor of the new
Toyota Center Toyota Center is an indoor arena located in Houston. It is named after the Japanese automobile manufacturer Toyota. The arena is home to the Houston Rockets of the National Basketball Association (NBA), and it was once the home of the Houston ...
in downtown Houston. Additionally, the arena was a prime Houston venue for popular music concerts and special events such as Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus, the
Harlem Globetrotters The Harlem Globetrotters are an American exhibition basketball team. They combine athleticism, theater, and comedy in their style of play. Created in 1926 by Tommy Brookins in Chicago, Illinois, the team adopted the name ''Harlem'' because of i ...
,
Sesame Street Live ''Sesame Street Live'' is a live touring show based on the children's television show ''Sesame Street'' produced by Feld Entertainment. History The VEE Corporation was started in March 1980 by founder Vincent Egan, who had an idea to produce a l ...
and
Disney on Ice Disney on Ice, originally Walt Disney's World on Ice, is a series of touring ice shows produced by Feld Entertainment's Ice Follies And Holiday on Ice, Inc. under agreement with The Walt Disney Company. Aimed primarily at children, the shows fea ...
. The
NBA Finals The NBA Finals is the annual championship series of the National Basketball Association (NBA). The Eastern and Western Conference champions play a best-of-seven game series to determine the league champion. The team that wins the series is awa ...
were hosted by The Summit in 1981, 1986, 1994, and 1995, including the deciding games of 1994 and 1995, and the celebrations that followed. The Summit also hosted the WNBA championships of 1997 through 2000, all of which were won by the Houston Comets. The first
professional wrestling Professional wrestling is a form of theater that revolves around staged wrestling matches. The mock combat is performed in a ring similar to the kind used in boxing, and the dramatic aspects of pro wrestling may be performed both in the ring o ...
event at the Summit was promoted by
Houston Wrestling Houston Wrestling/Gulf Athletic Club is a now-defunct professional wrestling promotion that ran from the mid-1920s through 1987. Originally run by the Sigel family, it reached its greatest popularity under Paul Boesch. History Houston's wrestling ...
on May 29, 1977, headlined by the
American Wrestling Association The American Wrestling Association (AWA) was an American professional wrestling promotion based in Minneapolis, Minnesota that ran from 1960 until 1991. It was owned and founded by Verne Gagne and Wally Karbo. The territory was originally part o ...
World Heavyweight Champion
Nick Bockwinkel Nicholas Warren Francis "Nick" Bockwinkel (December 6, 1934 – November 14, 2015) was an American professional wrestler. He is best known for his appearances with the American Wrestling Association (AWA) in the 1970s and 1980s. Bockwinkel ...
drawing
Terry Funk Terrence Funk (born June 30, 1944) is an American retired professional wrestler, rapper, disc jockey and actor. Funk is known for the longevity of his career – which spanned more than 50 years and included multiple short-lived retirements – a ...
. On January 7, 1979,
Dusty Rhodes Virgil Riley Runnels Jr. (October 11, 1945 – June 11, 2015), better known as "The American Dream" Dusty Rhodes, was an American professional wrestler, booker, and trainer who most notably worked for the National Wrestling Alliance, Jim Crocket ...
won the
NWA Texas Brass Knuckles Championship The NWA Brass Knuckles Championship was a professional wrestling championship sanctioned by the National Wrestling Alliance, contested for in hardcore matches. As it was a professional wrestling championship, it was won not by actual competition, b ...
from
Mark Lewin Mark Lewin (born March 16, 1937) is an American retired professional wrestler. Early life Lewin was born in Buffalo, New York. He had two elder brothers, Donn and Ted, both of whom also became professional wrestlers. He attended Lafayette High ...
. The
World Wrestling Federation World Wrestling Entertainment, Inc., d/b/a as WWE, is an American professional wrestling promotion. A global integrated media and entertainment company, WWE has also branched out into other fields, including film, American football, and vario ...
aired the first TV card from the venue on October 19, 1986, featuring
Hulk Hogan Terry Eugene Bollea (; born August 11, 1953), better known by his ring name Hulk Hogan, is an American retired professional wrestler. He is widely regarded as the most recognized wrestling star worldwide and the most popular wrestler of the 19 ...
defending his title against
Paul Orndorff Paul Parlette Orndorff Jr. (October 29, 1949 – July 12, 2021), nicknamed "Mr. Wonderful", was an American professional wrestler and college football player, best known for his appearances with the World Wrestling Federation (WWF) and World Cham ...
and a $50,000 tag team battle royal. It held the
Royal Rumble The Royal Rumble is a professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) and livestreaming event, produced annually since 1988 by WWE, the world's largest professional wrestling promotion. It is named after the Royal Rumble match, a modified battle roya ...
on January 15, 1989. This was the first time the
Royal Rumble The Royal Rumble is a professional wrestling pay-per-view (PPV) and livestreaming event, produced annually since 1988 by WWE, the world's largest professional wrestling promotion. It is named after the Royal Rumble match, a modified battle roya ...
, won by
Big John Studd John William Minton (February 19, 1948 – March 20, 1995) was an American professional wrestler and actor, better known by his ring name, Big John Studd. Studd is best known for his appearances with the World Wide Wrestling Federation/World Wr ...
, was televised on
pay-per-view Pay-per-view (PPV) is a type of pay television or webcast service that enables a viewer to pay to watch individual events via private telecast. Events can be purchased through a multichannel television platform using their electronic program guid ...
(PPV). The newly renamed Compaq Center hosted the No Way Out of Texas PPV on February 15, 1998, and Bad Blood (the first brand-exclusive PPV held in the United States) on June 15, 2003. It hosted a live episode of ''
SmackDown! ''WWE SmackDown'', also known as ''Friday Night SmackDown'' or simply ''SmackDown'', is an American professional wrestling television program produced by WWE that as of currently airs live every Friday at 8 p.m. ET on Fox. Fox Deportes simulc ...
'' on September 13, 2001, the first major entertainment event in the US after the
September 11 attacks The September 11 attacks, commonly known as 9/11, were four coordinated suicide terrorist attacks carried out by al-Qaeda against the United States on Tuesday, September 11, 2001. That morning, nineteen terrorists hijacked four commercia ...
.Wrestling shows from the Summit/Compaq Center, from WrestlingData.com
/ref>


Notable concerts

Prior to the construction of
Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion The Cynthia Woods Mitchell Pavilion, sometimes called The Woodlands Pavilion or simply The Pavilion, is a concert amphitheatre located in The Woodlands, Texas, an outer suburb of Houston, Texas. It caters to both the performing arts and contempor ...
and later, the
Toyota Center Toyota Center is an indoor arena located in Houston. It is named after the Japanese automobile manufacturer Toyota. The arena is home to the Houston Rockets of the National Basketball Association (NBA), and it was once the home of the Houston ...
, the Summit was the main Houston venue for large pop and rock music concerts. Before the Summit was opened, most large venue concerts were held at the
Sam Houston Coliseum Sam Houston Coliseum was an indoor arena located in Houston, Texas. Early years Located at 801 Bagby Street in Downtown Houston, the Coliseum and Music Hall complex replaced the Sam Houston Hall, which was a wooden structure that had been erected ...
. Smaller concerts were held at
Houston Music Hall Houston Music Hall was a 2,200-seat music venue located in Houston, Texas. The Music Hall opened in November 1937, at the same time as the Sam Houston Coliseum, which were built conjointly as the brainchild of Jesse H. Jones, and designed by Alfr ...
or
Hofheinz Pavilion The Fertitta Center, formerly known as Hofheinz Pavilion, is a 7,100-seat multi-purpose arena on the University of Houston campus in Houston. Located at 3875 Holman Street, it is home to the Houston Cougars men's and women's basketball teams and ...
.


From vacancy to church

In 1998, it became the first Houston sports arena to sell its naming rights. The Arena Operating Company entered into a five-year, $900,000 per year deal with then Houston-based
Compaq Computer Corporation Compaq Computer Corporation (sometimes abbreviated to CQ prior to a 2007 rebranding) was an American information technology company founded in 1982 that developed, sold, and supported computers and related products and services. Compaq produced ...
to change the name of the venue from The Summit to Compaq Center, keeping that name even after the acquisition of Compaq by
Hewlett-Packard The Hewlett-Packard Company, commonly shortened to Hewlett-Packard ( ) or HP, was an American multinational information technology company headquartered in Palo Alto, California. HP developed and provided a wide variety of hardware components ...
in 2002 (there was another arena named the Compaq Center in
San Jose, California San Jose, officially San José (; ; ), is a major city in the U.S. state of California that is the cultural, financial, and political center of Silicon Valley and largest city in Northern California by both population and area. With a 2020 popul ...
around this time, but has since been renamed the
SAP Center The SAP Center at San Jose (originally known as San Jose Arena and the HP Pavilion at San Jose) is an indoor arena located in San Jose, California. Its primary tenant is the San Jose Sharks of the National Hockey League, for which the arena has ...
). The length of the agreement was significant, because in 2003 the lease that Arena Operating Company held on Compaq Center would expire, and the tenants of the building were lobbying vigorously for the construction of a new downtown venue to replace the aging and undersized arena. When the sports teams moved to the new
Toyota Center Toyota Center is an indoor arena located in Houston. It is named after the Japanese automobile manufacturer Toyota. The arena is home to the Houston Rockets of the National Basketball Association (NBA), and it was once the home of the Houston ...
in 2003, the
City of Houston Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 i ...
leased the arena to
Lakewood Church Lakewood Church is a non-denominational evangelical Christian megachurch located in Houston, Texas. It is one of the largest congregations in the United States, averaging about 45,000 attendees per week. The 16,800-seat Lakewood Church building, ...
, a
megachurch A megachurch is a church with an unusually large membership that also offers a variety of educational and social activities, usually Protestant or Evangelical. The Hartford Institute for Religion Research defines a megachurch as any Protestant C ...
, which invested $95 million in renovations to convert the arena into the current configuration of seats and rooms for its needs; the renovations took over 15 months to complete, and the renovations included adding five stories to add more capacity. During the lease,
Lakewood Church Lakewood Church is a non-denominational evangelical Christian megachurch located in Houston, Texas. It is one of the largest congregations in the United States, averaging about 45,000 attendees per week. The 16,800-seat Lakewood Church building, ...
had an exclusive agreement with the
City of Houston Houston (; ) is the most populous city in Texas, the most populous city in the Southern United States, the fourth-most populous city in the United States, and the sixth-most populous city in North America, with a population of 2,304,580 i ...
for use of the former Summit, and as such, invested heavily in the structure for its use. In 2001, the church signed a 30-year lease with the city. In March 2010, the church announced that it would buy the campus outright from the city of Houston for $7.5 million, terminating the lease after 7 years. Marty Aaron, a real estate appraiser, said that while an "untrained eye" would "wonder how
Lakewood Church Lakewood Church is a non-denominational evangelical Christian megachurch located in Houston, Texas. It is one of the largest congregations in the United States, averaging about 45,000 attendees per week. The 16,800-seat Lakewood Church building, ...
purchased the Compaq Center for $7.5 million, when this is not really an arms-length sale from the city to Lakewood Church." Aaron explained that the church "put a phenomenal amount of money into the facility after the lease was initially structured, and it's really not fair that someone else would get the benefit of that." Aaron added that converting the property to a stadium-oriented facility "would probably cost as much or more than it took to turn it into a church, and right now there are probably not very many organizations that would be willing to step forward and do that." The
Houston City Council The Houston City Council is a city council for the city of Houston in the U.S. state of Texas. Currently, there are sixteen members, 11 elected from council districts and five at-large. The members of the Council are elected every four years, w ...
was scheduled to vote on the matter on Wednesday March 24, 2010. City council delayed the vote. On March 30 of that year, Ronald Green, the city's chief financial officer, said that he approved of the sale of the building. On March 31, 2010 the Houston City Council voted 13–2 to sell the property to Lakewood.


References


External links

{{Authority control Evangelical churches in Houston Defunct basketball venues in the United States Defunct indoor arenas in Texas Defunct indoor soccer venues in the United States Evangelical churches in Texas Former music venues in the United States Former National Basketball Association venues Houston Rockets venues Indoor ice hockey venues in the United States Evangelical megachurches in the United States Megachurches in Texas Pentecostal churches in Texas Churches completed in 1975 Trinity Broadcasting Network Defunct sports venues in Texas 1975 establishments in Texas Christian organizations established in 1975