José Miguel Agrelot Coliseum

col­iseo-jose-miguel-agrelot

José Miguel Agrelot was one of my child­hood heroes.  He was a come­di­an, radio per­son­al­i­ty and TV host.  He was also an all-around good Puer­to Rican.  I used to walk home from school every day (about a mile) to watch him on “El Show del Mediodía” (The Mid­day Show), and then walk back to school by 1:00 o’clock.  This guy was doing standup com­e­dy in 1964.  He was wicked­ly smart, fun­ny, and respect­ful.  But he told it like it was.  He was a true pioneer.

José Miguel Agrelot died in his sleep, while tak­ing an after­noon nap, on Jan­u­ary 28, 2004. He is best remem­bered for his char­ac­ter­i­za­tion of “Don Choli­to”, a wit­ty Puer­to Rican from the moun­tains, typ­i­cal­ly called a “jíbaro” among the locals.  How­ev­er, he devel­oped over 200 char­ac­ter­i­za­tions dur­ing his long and illus­tri­ous career.

Plans to build a new and larg­er Col­i­se­um start­ed in 1998, dur­ing the last Rafael Hernán­dez Colón admin­is­tra­tion.  Ini­tial­ly the col­i­se­um was sup­posed to be built next to the Hiram Bithorn Sta­di­um and the Rober­to Clemente Col­i­se­um as one of the new facil­i­ties for Puer­to Rico’s Olympic bid for 2004.  But that did­n’t mate­ri­al­ize. Athens was cho­sen instead.

How­ev­er, the gov­ern­ment of Puer­to Rico, this time dur­ing the Pedro Rossel­ló admin­is­tra­tion, decid­ed to relo­cate the project to the Hato Rey bank­ing dis­trict, where it would have no park­ing facil­i­ties.  ¿The rea­son­ing? Well, at the time the Urban Train was also being built, and gov­ern­ment offi­cials argued that it would be a way of forc­ing peo­ple to use the train instead of their pri­vate vehicles.

¿Sounds weird?  I thought so too.  So did thou­sands and thou­sands of Puer­to Ricans.

Any­way, the col­i­se­um opened its doors in Sep­tem­ber 2004. Many names were shuf­fled for the new facil­i­ty, caus­ing even more con­tro­ver­sy. How­ev­er, some­one sug­gest­ed the name of the recent­ly deceased come­di­an and the idea spread like wildfire.

The José Miguel Agrelot Col­i­se­um, affec­tion­ate­ly called the “Choliseo” among Puer­to Ricans, is the largest venue of its kind on the Island.  It seats a max­i­mum of 18,500 spec­ta­tors and is main­ly used for sport­ing and musi­cal events.

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