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SALT LAKE CITY — The Vivint Arena renaming process is officially underway.
A small team climbed onto a suspended platform and began work to remove the current signage from the 32-year-old building's marquee Tuesday morning ahead of the new signage for the Delta Center that will be installed in the coming weeks.
The changes come months after Utah Jazz owner Ryan Smith announced that the team struck a long-term naming rights deal with Delta Air Lines to bring the arena back to its original name, beginning on July 1.
Terms of the deal were not released; however, Delta signed a deal with Salt Lake City International Airport late last year to keep it a major hub through at least mid-2044. Prior to that agreement, Bill Wyatt, the airport's executive director,said that the company referred to Utah's capital as its "Atlanta of the West," with plans to have operations in Utah similar in scope to its primary hub in Georgia.
The company originally held the naming rights of the building from 1991 through September 2006 before it declined to renew its naming rights contract a year after it had filed for Chapter 11 bankruptcy. It became EnergySolutions Arena for nearly a decade before Vivint acquired the rights in 2015. The Provo-based company will remain a partner with the Jazz through at least 2030.
But Delta's resurgence and growth in Utah made it the prime candidate to reacquire the building's naming rights. Delta CEO Ed Bastian said in January the decision to relinquish the name "still haunts" him 16 years later. It's why he promised that this year will be the last time the Jazz need to change the building's name.
"We're never leaving," he said at the time. "The fact that we're coming back here and putting a real great brand with 5,000 employees behind it — we're never gonna leave."
