Hollywood Sportatorium
in Hollywood, Florida
The Hollywood Sportatorium was an indoor arena in Pembroke Pines, Florida (originally Hollywood), located at 17171 Pines Boulevard (originally 16661 West Hollywood Boulevard). The Sportatorium was 26 miles (42 km) from downtown Miami and 23 miles (37 km) from downtown Fort Lauderdale. During its 18 years of operation, it was the only venue of its kind in heavily populated South Florida.
History
The Sportatorium was built beginning in September 1968 by Stephen Calder and Norman Johnson. Calder would also build the Calder Race Course shortly thereafter. It stood adjacent to the Miami-Hollywood Motorsports Park, which Calder and Johnson had constructed four years earlier. Among the plans for the Sportatorium were sports events, ice follies programs, auto and boat shows, and eventually a "Gold Coast State Fair". The Sportatorium was constructed as a hangar-like facility constructed out of concrete, a steel roof, an asphalt floor, and no air conditioning. Originally designed to seat 18,000 for stage events and 15,000 for arena events, it opened in December 1969 with only 6,000 seats.
"The idea was to have a facility which could have entertainment and events out of weather," said Bruce Johnson, Norman Johnson's son, who managed the arena until 1980.
This brief starts where responsible research should: with the source description of “Hollywood Sportatorium” as in Hollywood, Florida. Everything that follows is an evidence route, not borrowed authority.
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Vocabulary and entity names are the principal evidence signals here, because they determine the precision of every later search. The source revision retrieved here is dated Aug 30, 2026. The linked authority identifier is Q5882939. Authority coordinates are 26.009, -80.375. 2 of 2 selected statements include explicit references; 0 carry qualifiers and 0 use preferred rank. The first chronological checks are 1968, 1969 and 1980.
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This entry incorporates text from “Hollywood Sportatorium” on English Wikipedia. Contributors are listed in the page history. Text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Selected authority identifiers and statements are retrieved from Wikidata under CC0; their references and qualifiers remain part of the verification path.