When the Dallas Mavericks lost twice to the Sacramento Kings at the American Airlines Center during the NBA’s Western Conference semifinals, fans weren’t referring to a literal stench when griping about the stinking games. Keith Shuley, a partner and environmental expert in the Austin office of Dallas’ Hughes & Luce, can attest to that.
When the arena’s developers — Ross Perot Jr. and Tom Hicks — agreed on building the $420 million structure at the former industrial site north of downtown Dallas nearly five years ago, Shuley and associate Misty Ventura joined the team. The location of the arena — a private-public venture — is a previously abandoned, relatively inexpensive one, which had been home to a Union Pacific rail yard, a power plant, a meat-packing plant and even a garbage-burning dump. Integral to the developers’ selection of the site was a heavily lawyered plan to clean up the contaminants according to the standards set by state regulators.
