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The HP Pavilion, commonly called The Shark Tank or just The Tank after its primary tenant or less often as San Jose Arena after its former name, is an indoor arena located at 525 West Santa Clara Street in San Jose, California.

	Capacity		16,000-20,000 (depending on sport)
	Opened		1993
	Owner & Operator		City of San Jose
	Construction cost		$162.5 million USD
	Architect		Sink Combs Dethlefs, Huber, Hunt & Nichols
	Location		525 West Santa Clara Street, San Jose, California 95113

The arena opened in 1993 as the San Jose Arena. Before the building changed its original name because of corporate sponsorship, Sharks radio play-by-play broadcaster Dan Rusanowsky always referred to it as the “spectacular” San Jose Arena. Later, naming rights were sold to Compaq, and the facility became Compaq Center at San Jose; the geographic identifier was needed because at the time, there was a Compaq Center in Houston. After HP purchased Compaq in 2002, the company chose to name the arena after its product.

The facility has also been home to the Golden State Warriors of the NBA during reconstruction of the Oakland Coliseum Arena, and the defunct San Jose Rhinos of RHI, San Jose Grizzlies of the CISL, and the San Jose Lasers of the ABL. It has also been used for other sporting events, such as the U.S. Figure Skating Championships, the NCAA Basketball tournament (known as March Madness), the Pac-10 women’s basketball championship, the Dew Action Sports Tour, and the SAP Open men’s tennis tournament.

The arena is one of the most active NHL venues. Of the current arenas in the league, “The Tank” is one of the more intimate and arguably, the noisest hockey venue since the Chicago Stadium. It hosts an average of 190 events a year, including many non-sporting events. For the nine month period ending September 30, 2004, the HP Pavilion sold the most tickets to non-sporting events of any venue in the United States, and the third highest in the world. HP Pavilion has had problems with the quality of the ice during Sharks games due to the mild, moist air in San Jose.

The arena has also hosted it’s share of wrestling events, in particular WWE. WWE (then known as the WWF) hosted the 1998 Royal Rumble and in 2001 hosted WWE’s (then known as WWF) summer event SummerSlam. In 2007, it will host WWE Judgment Day.

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HP Pavilion website
HP Pavilion wikipedia entry
San Jose Sharks website
The Feeder Fansite
San Jose Sabercats website
San Jose Stealth website
NHL website

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