They gathered under a big tent near a large hole in the ground for a major announcement:
The National Hockey League was coming to North Carolina.
In a press conference on May 6, 1997, Peter Karmanos Jr. said he was moving his hockey team, the Hartford Whalers, to Raleigh and renaming it the Carolina Hurricanes.
“This is a market where the people have a good feeling about themselves, have a good feeling about the future,” Karmanos said that day. “I think they want a sports team here as a quality-of-life issue, something they can identify with.