“Our lives are on hold going back probably two years to when the construction of the arena started,” says Dave Brown, a neighborhood resident and vice president and general manager of the $350 million American Airlines Center downtown.

“It started getting very intense. The demands started building, and at that same time I was managing Reunion Arena, so I’d have a full day of projects and meetings related to the AA Center, and then get to work the Reunion Arena events late into the night; that was quite a strain.”

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Brown’s time with his wife and their “pride and joy – our nine-year-old shepherd mix, Sadie” – has been, not surprisingly, affected as well by managing the state-of-the-art sports and entertainment arena near the West End.

After time spend in Atlanta and Coppell, the couple moved to Lakewood area a similar environment to the one in Atlanta. It’s one of the reasons why we moved here – the hills, the tall trees, the lake…I’m a big bike rider, so I love riding the hills and round the lake.

“It’s quite a mix of age and ethnicity in Lakewood. I’ve got 25-year-old neighbors and 95-year-old neighbors,” all of whom, Brown says initially gave him an earful about the controversial project he has been helping head up.

“When the facility was a referendum issue, the street that I live on was predominantly ‘vote no’. The yard signs were just about every other yard. After a few months of working on my neighbors, I got a good mixture of ‘yes’ signs in there,” Brown laughs.

On July 28, Don Henley and the Eagles will officially open in the Arena, and Brown will “no longer be the manager of Reunion Arena: I’ll just be dedicated to the AA Center.”

Which is not to say that life will be any easier, but “having the building finally open and operating will relieve a lot,” Brown says. “Just focusing on one building will be a lot easier than what we’ve been doing for the last two years.”

“The people that I run into in the neighborhood, they know what I do, and they say: Boy, it looks like a great faculty, can’t wait to get inside and see what it’s all about.”

Of his few off hours, Brown says: “In Lakewood, I’ve met probably five or six times the number of neighbors (as before). People walk, they sit out on their front porches, have block parties.

“We thought that was one of the neat aspects of it. When we first moved in, they had a block party at the end of the street, and now every year, we do the same – get caught up with neighbors you don’t get to see every day.”

After this month, Brown will have a little more time for catching up.