News-Record.com

When local boosters boast that the ACC Men's Tournament has been played at the Greensboro Coliseum more than anywhere else, they're right.

But!

Which coliseum do they mean? There have been three, all in the same spot, but each with a different personality and look.

The first time the ACC came here in 1967, it was played in the original coliseum. It opened in 1959, with a Quonset hut style roof and a seating capacity of about 9,000.

To find out what it was like to play in the building, seek out a dinosaur who played there in '67 - former UNC star Dick Grubar, now a Greenboro real estate broker. He'll be hanging around the Carolina bench during this week's ACC tournament at the new, new coliseum.

A few years after Greensboro's initial ACC, to keep the event coming back, the city raised the coliseum's roof, adding a second deck and a flat roof. That doubled capacity to about 16,000. The city also added an exhibition hall that provided space for ACC entertainment.

The jump in coliseum seats caused Charlotte's original coliseum, which had opened in the 1950s with about 11,000 seats, to become outdated. But it was 1987 before Charlotte built a new coliseum on a different site and with a capacity of nearly 23,000.

Greensboro felt threatened. After an emotional political campaign, voters in the late 1980s approved raising the roof of the coliseum again and the seating capacity to 23,000.

The old exhibition hall was torn down, replaced by the Special Events Center, which provided more and nicer space for tournament dinners and entertainment. Later, the Pavilion was added in the parking lot for FanFest, where spectators and children can go between games to have fun.

Greensboro's expansion made Charlotte's new coliseum obsolete. It had capacity but poor sight lines compared to Greenboro's building. It also lacked auxillary structures for entertainment. The coliseum staff erected large tents in the parking lot. When the wind blew, the tents shook.

Finally, Charlotte decided the new coliseum had to go, not just to lure the ACC tournament but to please the NBA, whose team the Hornets had fled Charlotte partly out of disgust with the coliseum. The city got a new franchise, the Bobcats after promising to build a new arena.

The new new Charlotte Coliseum is downtown and built to NBA specifications, which calls for a slightly smaller arenas. The Charlotte building seats 18,000 to 19,000, but has loads of luxury boxes where big money people can watch the games in privacy, drink and eat catered food.

Charlotte wisely built auxillary buildings to accommodate the needs of the ACC. The tournament returns to the Queen City in 2009.

Meanwhile, the second Charlotte Coliseum is scheduled for demolition only 18 years after opening.

Greensboro probably won't have to make more changes anytime soon. The complex looks up to date with everything the ACC needs. The are no bad seats among the 23,000. Those with seats in the last row of the upper deck are closer to the floor than those in the last row in the second deck of the Charlotte Coliseum.

For building archaeologists to see something that remains of the orginal 1959 building, a press pass will be needed during this week's ACC Men's Tournament.

Portions of the narrow concourse left from the original building run below the first level of seats. Only reporters, players, cheerleaders and arriving pep bands use it. Part of the old concourse has been been turned into a press room.

Meanwhile, in Charlotte, the 1950s old, old coliseum survives and thrives as Cricket Arena, formerly known as Independence Arena. Shows and sports events are held there. The building was the sight of the 1999 Women's ACC Tournament, which moved to the Greensboro Coliseum the next year and has been here ever since.

No, his dad didn't go straight, says Michael Wigerman.

He was referring to a March 13 front page article in the News & Record about the Hallmark Gang, a group that burglarized fine homes in ritzy neighborhoods, including Irving Park. Ted Wigerman, Michael's father, was a gang crew chief.

The story cited an early 1980s interview with Wigerman while he was on parole for crimes that included stealing $175,000 worth of jewels from the late Benjamin Cone's house on Country Club Drive.

Wigerman, who was from the Philadelphia area, said he hoped to go straight.

But he added it may be tough to do so if he had to continue working for $140 a week at the Winston-Salem landfill, as he was doing at the time.

Wigerman and his fellow burglars were known as the Hallmark Gang in North Carolina. Elsewhere, they were called the K&A Gang, for the intersection of Kennsington and Allegany streets in Philly, where they hung out.

Ted Wigerman receives a fair share of space in a just-published book, "Confessions of a Second Story Man: Junior Kripplebauer and the K&A Gang," by Temple University professor Allen Hornblum.

Kriplebauer, with Wigerman, was another crew leader in the gang.

The book said that Wigerman had died in 1995, but didn't say whether he had stayed straight. The book's author has not returned a phone call.

Alas, it turns out the temptation for crime was too much for Wigerman. according to Michael Wigerman, who e-mailed the News & Record and later talked by telephone.

"My father did not stay clean and did time again," the son said. "He spent over one-third of his life behind bars."

Michael Wigerman said after the landfill stint in Winston-Salem, his father moved to Florida and worked in construction. He and some cronies decided to buglarize a Tampa, Fla., mansion. They botched the job and got caught.

At that time, Ted Wigerman was getting on in age and had health problems, his son said. The judge went easy. Ted Wigerman was released early because of failing health.

"He died of a heart attack while fixing his mother's sink, and he died broke and alone," Michael Wigerman said.

It's a sad story, but there's good news about Michael Wigerman and another family member.

Michael's mother - Patricia Wigerman, Ted Wigerman's former wife - became a corrections officer in Atlantic City, N.J., and was later promoted to deputy with the Atlantic County Sheriff's Department. She died about four years ago from cancer.

"I really believe she became a law enforcement officer out penitence," Michael Wigerman said. "She felt she had profited by her husband's wrongdoing. She felt she could have done more to protest his activities."

Michael Wigerman said he was in the fifth grade, living high off Ted Wigerman's ill-gotten gains in a nice neighborhood in New Jersey, when the police busted down the door and took his father away.

When he was 17, Michael Wigerman joined the Navy for five years and later served a stint in the U.S. Army Reserve.

"I worked in electronic warfare," he said. "I also flew in Europe for over two years for the Department of Defense and NATO. I hold U.S. and NATO security clearance."

He's also a skydiver with more than 2,000 jumps and a scuba instructor.

He now flies Lear Jets for a living and resides in Pompano Beach, Fla. He's married to a fellow jet pilot.

As for his father, he remembers him as charismatic, extremely intelligent and a genius at chess. If he had applied himself, the son said, he could have been a highly successful person instead of a cat burglar.

At least in this case, the old adage - like father, like son - doesn't apply.

A familiar name from the past recently popped up on the front of a tiny building housing the 915 Skate Shop on West Lee Street.

"Something just fell off the building,"' says manager Danny Skell.

It was a slab that extended the length of the building above the entrance.

Once gone, it exposed a long-covered sign that says "Guilford Dairy."

The shoebox of a building housed one of 21 Guilford Dairy Bars, which sold ice cream and milk produced by Guilford Dairy, a cooperative formed by county farmers in 1931.

In 1969, Guilford sold its ice cream bars to Mayberry Ice Cream Co. It kept the Lee Street location, but changed the sign. Presently, only one Mayberry remains in Greensboro, in Summit Shopping Center, occupying a former Guilford Dairy Bar.

The old Lee Street dairy bar may have been Guilford's first. The diary's original processing plant was close by on Lee Street.

Guilford Dairy moved its processing plant in about 1950 to a large new complex in a triangle formed by West Market Street and what's now United Street. A diary bar was opened in front of the plant, but the company kept the bar on Lee Street.

In 1969, Guilford Dairy merged with other area dairy cooperatives to become United Dairies. In 1975, Flav-O-Rich, a dairy out of London, Ky., bought United Dairies. In 2001, Flav-O-Rich closed the West Market plant. It has stood vacant since then.

A for-sale sign advertises the 8.3 acres of prime real estate in a busy part of town. Rumors say the plant will be demolished soon. The sale is being handled by Southern Asset Corp. of Dallas. Brooke Billups of the company said the sale does not include a clause that the building be torn down. That will be left to the buyer to decide. The asking price is $2.2 million.

Skell of the skate shop says he's not old enough to remember the Guilford Dairy Bar, but older people who come into the shop talk of good times and good eats they had there.

Skell said the dairy sign became exposed about six months ago. He's not sure if the skate shop owner plans to cover it. He could let it remain - a memory of a yummy place of long ago.