Lehigh Valley Phantoms
Rink: PPL Center
Capacity: 9,046
Built: 2014
League: AHL
City: Allentown, Pennsylvania
Home Of: Lehigh Valley Phantoms
Games Attended: 1
Only Game: January 18, 2025 vs Rochester
Unique Arena: #105
AHL Arena: #16
The PPL Center sits in the heart of downtown Allentown, PA but doesn’t look like an arena from the outside whatsoever. The rink is surrounded on all sides with more modern architecture that wouldn’t look out of place on a condo building or office space. There is a large restaurant with a street side entrance that also spills into the arena concourse. There are tons of restaurants around, but they seem to all fill up to capacity on game nights. There is a corner facade which acts as the main entrance, and despite being on concourse level it feels much like walking into the Avenir Centre in Moncton, NB.
The PPL Center has a layout unlike any I’ve ever seen. There is a main lower bowl with a concourse running around the top of three sides of it, as well as a restaurant that runs down the penalty box side (more on that later). But the rink has an upper bowl too, but it’s laid out in a J shape, running down the bench side and wrapping into one of the ends. The penalty box side has no upper bowl, but has two levels of suites stacked on top of each other, while the remaining end is just a wall with advertising where an upper bowl could go. One wonders why they didn’t just have the upper bowl wrap around this end as well. At one end of the arena closer to the main entrance the concourse is very wide and spacious with a well-stocked team store and plenty of concessions. It gets a tad tighter under the upper bowl down the side, as there is only the single concourse to serve both decks of seats. The press box sits at the back of the upper bowl seats on the bench side leaving the penalty box side entirely for suites.
Many mid-sized arenas in the minor leagues or junior place their club seats below a restaurant on one side of the ice, but in Allentown unlike many other places, unless you have a ticket for those club seats there is zero access to them or the restaurant. The main concourse is directed the long way around the restaurant while two security guards man the doors and check for tickets. The restaurant is the only way to access the seats on the penalty box side, as there are railings blocking the aisles from the adjacent sections. What’s crazy is the seats in this section are double the price of any other in the arena. $80 USD to watch the AHL is insanely high in my opinion, and it wasn’t surprising to see the club section be the most sparsely attended area of the building. Club seats are supposed to be the most expensive, but perhaps lowering that price a tad would help attract more people.
The lower bowl seats are a bit on the shallow side. Nowhere close to the worst I’ve seen, but noticeable. The upper-level seats have a much steeper pitch. A/V is fairly average in that I didn’t notice it being great, but not bad either.
The building was about two thirds full for our game, and while the crowd and atmosphere weren’t bad, they weren’t exceptional either. At the end of the day the experience at the PPL Center is a good one. It’s a nice modern facility with comfy seats and all the frills anyone could ask for at the AHL level, without being outstanding either. So far it ranks right about in the middle of my AHL experiences so far.
