`New’ Garden Hopes To Make Name For Itself

The “new” Boston Garden is almost done, its roof already arching across the city skyline and its interior being fitted with all the amenities of a modern sports complex.

One thing’s missing, though: a name.

The original designation, Shawmut Center, will be erased if a proposed bank merger goes through. That has left those who tend to the Garden pondering what to do with a name and Indian logo that already adorns 15,000 seat tags and was about to be printed on cups, napkins, souvenirs and employee uniforms.

“When they said, `the New Boston Garden,’ we’d say, `There’s no New Boston Garden. It’s the Shawmut Center.’ And guess what? It was just starting to take hold,” said one arena employee who would speak only on condition of anonymity.

All that effort, pegged to have cost several hundred thousand dollars, evaporated Tuesday, when Fleet Financial Group announced it was buying the Shawmut National bank. Included in the $3.7 billion price tag were the rights to name the arena, which Shawmut owned.

While the name “Fleet Forum” has been rumored, Fleet officials would say only that a decision will be made within the next two weeks. Whatever the name, it’s certain the Shawmut name and logo, featuring the profile of Chief Obbatinewat, the leader of a local Indian tribe, will be scrapped.

The new arena is being built next to the Boston Garden and is scheduled to open in September. It will offer much that the Garden does not: up to 19,600 seats, all with unobstructed views, as well as air conditioning, concert acoustics and an abundance of bathrooms.

Its only link to the old Garden will be its parquet basketball floor, which the Boston Celtics use, and the championship banners won by the Celtics and the Boston Bruins, which will be moved over from the rafters of the Garden. The new arena carries a price tag of $160 million, with the bulk of the financing provided privately by Shawmut, Fleet and the Bank of Boston.

In a competition that now is replete with ironies, Shawmut outbid Fleet and Bank of Boston for the right to name the arena. It paid $30 million to call the building the Shawmut Center for the next 15 years. When Fleet announced Tuesday it was acquiring Shawmut, there were reports the bank also had considered acquiring the Bank of Boston before it settled on Shawmut.

Shawmut had endured much criticism when it announced in May 1993 it would call the new arena the Shawmut Center. Both Boston newspapers ran columns critical of the decision, and many area residents said they would prefer to keep the old name or call the arena the New Boston Garden.

The old building, though decrepit, is revered. It was designed as a boxing arena, so its seats are angled close to the floor. Winston Churchill and John F. Kennedy spoke there, Bobby Orr won a Stanley Cup for the Bruins in the Garden, and Larry Bird and Magic Johnson had some of their great basketball rivalries on the creaky parquet.