Drive up North Main Street in downtown Elmira and you will pass a building that has spent twenty-five years refusing to quit. It has worn three names — Coach USA Center, First Arena, and now LECOM Event Center — outlasted financial storms that would have shuttered a less stubborn room, and cycled through more hockey tenants than most fans can rattle off from memory. Through all of it, one fact has held: this 3,784-seat arena is the only place in the Southern Tier where a national touring act can roll in with full arena production and plug straight into a downtown. If you live anywhere along the I-86 corridor and have ever wondered where the big shows land when they land close to home, this is the answer.
Three Names, One Stubborn Building
The arena opened on November 11, 2000, as the Coach USA Center, and its debut says everything about the scrappy history that followed: the building was not finished on opening night. The expansion Elmira Jackals spent the first ten games of their inaugural season entirely on the road while crews raced to complete the arena, then finally came home to a crowd of 3,378 — and won, 5–2. Elmira showed up before the paint was dry. That is about as Southern Tier as it gets.
The name changed to First Arena in 2004, and that is the name that stuck — two decades of ticket stubs and hockey banners made sure of it. The years in between were not gentle. The arena weathered serious financial trouble from the late 2000s onward, including tax defaults and foreclosure proceedings, and there were stretches when its future was a genuinely open question before Chemung County took control. Then, on July 30, 2024, the building got its third name: the Lake Erie College of Osteopathic Medicine signed on as title sponsor, and First Arena became the LECOM Event Center.
Old habits die hard, though — and here is your first practical tip. Ticketmaster, the venue’s ticketing platform, still files this building under its old name. If you search for a show here and come up empty, try “First Arena” and it will turn up. Locals still say First Arena too, so if someone gives you directions using the old name, you are headed to the same place.
What a Show Feels Like Here
At 3,784 seats, the LECOM Event Center occupies a sweet spot upstate New York does not have enough of: large enough for a touring act to bring real production — full stage, full rig, full light show — but small enough that you are never watching the performance from another zip code. It splits the difference between theater-scale rooms and the long drive to a major-market arena, and for a lot of Southern Tier concert-goers, that trade-off is exactly the point.
The amenities run deeper than you might expect for a market this size: luxury suites, two fully stocked bars, food service, and — because this is at heart a hockey building — a video game arcade and a recreational turf field tucked into the complex. It is a rink that learned to be a concert hall, and like most buildings with that résumé, it does its best work when the floor fills up and the place gets loud.
The Names on the Marquee — and the Monster Trucks Between
The concert résumé here is longer and stranger than outsiders expect. Bob Dylan played this room in 2002. Willie Nelson came through in 2009. The Moody Blues played the building in its opening year, Kenny Rogers made repeat visits, and Dierks Bentley stopped in back in 2006, well before the amphitheater-headliner years. The heavier end is covered too — an October 2009 bill stacked Lamb of God, GWAR, and Job for a Cowboy on one stage, which had to be one of the loudest nights in the building’s history. More recently, country acts like Chase Rice have kept the touring pipeline alive.
That range — folk legends, country stars, metal package tours — is the story of this building. A regional arena cannot afford to specialize. It takes what tour routing offers between the bigger markets, and when the right act needs a mid-size room on the way from one big city to another, Elmira gets a night the whole region circles on the calendar.
Concerts share the calendar here, and it helps to understand the mix. Hockey is the heartbeat: the Elmira Aviators of the NAHL arrived in 2024, the latest in a lineage that runs from the Jackals (2000–2017) through the Enforcers, the Mammoth, and the River Sharks. Around the hockey schedule, the building hosts the full regional-arena portfolio — WWE events, ice racing, rodeos, circuses, family shows, and tribute concerts. This July 25, a Monster Truck Thrill Show rolls in, which tells you everything about how a room like this stays busy year-round.
For concert-goers, the practical takeaway is this: the music calendar comes in waves, not a steady stream. Announcements tend to drop irregularly, so this is a venue worth checking back on rather than assuming you already know what is coming.
Getting There and Making a Night of It
The arena sits at 155 North Main Street, at the corner of West Gray and North Main in the middle of downtown Elmira — one of the few arenas in the region you walk to from a downtown block rather than hike to across a highway-side parking sea. Elmira is just off I-86, which makes this an easy target from anywhere in the Southern Tier: Corning is a short drive west, Ithaca is under an hour north, and Binghamton is a straight shot east on the interstate.
Make a night of it the Elmira way. This is Mark Twain country — he spent his summers writing here and is buried in the city’s Woodlawn Cemetery — and downtown wears that history proudly. The Clemens Center, the city’s performing arts center, is a short walk across downtown, and between the two buildings Elmira punches well above its weight for live entertainment. For the bigger picture of what is happening across the region, our Southern Tier page keeps the running list.
Insider Tips
- Search Ticketmaster for “First Arena” if “LECOM Event Center” turns up nothing — the platform still lists the venue under its former name.
- Locals use the old name too. First Arena and LECOM Event Center are the same building at 155 North Main Street.
- The calendar mixes hockey, family shows, and concerts, and music announcements arrive in waves — check the venue’s site periodically rather than once.
- Catching a winter show? This is the Southern Tier — check the forecast twice before committing to the drive, especially if you are coming over the hills from Ithaca.
- An Aviators hockey game is the cheapest way to scout the building before a concert — you will learn the room, the bars, and your favorite entrance in one night.
For the full event schedule and tickets, visit lecomeventcenter.com.