You might think of it as the Stealth Center, because it's hard to envision and it has slipped in under most people's radar.
We're referring to the new 125-acre Home Depot Center, on the campus of Cal State Dominguez Hills. Its centerpiece is a 27,000-seat soccer stadium that will be home to the Galaxy starting with a June 7 match with the Colorado Rapids (sorry, but it's already sold out). Nearby is a 2,000-seat track and field facility, where the first event will be the June 1 Home Depot Track & Field Invitational, and a tennis stadium that will host the top players of the women's circuit in the JPMorgan Chase Open Aug. 4-10.

The center is a study in contrasts. It is in Carson, but it will be a huge economic benefit to Long Beach. It is privately built, but located on a university campus. It represents the biggest investment ever made in amateur athletics, but will be a major draw in professional sports and entertainment. It is a unique combination of public and private interests; of small-time community athletes and big-time soccer pros; small-money sports like track, and big-money events like outdoor concerts. Who would try to make something like this work at all, much less at a profit? Nobody but the people in a Philip Anschutz enterprise, and their plan is to be profitable starting from Year 1.

Anschutz is one of the world's great entrepreneurs. He built a struggling wildcatter operation into a half-billion-dollar oil business; acquired the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad and Southern Pacific Railroad, then sold the merged company for $5 billion; built Qwest Communications from a small enterprise into a multi- billion-dollar company; acquired the L.A. Kings, an interest in the Lakers and control of the Major League Soccer teams; built Staples Center in L.A.; acquired major interests in two big movie-theater chains; and owns 335,000 acres of agricultural land in Wyoming, Texas and his home state of Colorado.

Among Anschutz' holdings is AEG, the organization that built Staples Center, among others, and the Home Depot Center. Though the center will produce only a comparatively small income stream, it is said to have a big place in Anschutz' life because of its potential to change the lives of young, and sometimes at-risk, potential athletes. The practice tennis courts, soccer fields, volleyball courts, baseball, softball and basketball facilities will be open, between tournaments, to the public.

Why should Long Beach care about the new facility in Carson? Just ask Tim Leiweke, president and CEO of AEG. Leiweke, who lives in Brentwood, only recently discovered the hotels, restaurants and other shoreline attractions of Long Beach. Expecting little, he was, as he put it, blown away. Downtown Long Beach has 10 times as much to offer visitors as downtown L.A., Leiweke says (and remember, Leiweke is vice chairman of the L.A. Convention and Visitors Bureau).

The new Home Depot Center, just off the 405 freeway, is only 20 minutes from downtown L.A., and 13 minutes from downtown Long Beach. But it's downtown Long Beach that will get the bookings from out-of-town visitors to the center's events. Leiweke already is working with the Long Beach Chamber of Commerce and the Long Beach Convention and Visitors Bureau to make that happen, and he has high praise for both.

Today, the Home Depot Center will host a group of more than 200 long Beach area business and government people who will have their first look at this facility that has slipped under their radar screen. Now it will be their turn, as Leiweke might put it, to be blown away.