banking on the state of the art pp&l center to draw hundreds of thousands of people to the region and the very first concert gets underway tonight. for more on the potential impacte go live to "action news" reporter john rawlins. hi, john. >> reporter: hi, shirleen, pp&l senter is a nice new arena seats 8500 for sports and 10,000 for concerts and the folks who run allentown hope it will be much, much more. they hope this arena will play a major role in turn around downtown allentown's economic fortunes. app army of workers today readyying the 177 million dollar pp&l center. >> a 10,000 seat multi-purpose event center. >> tonight's inaugural event the classic rock group eagles and plan to host 1 40 diverse events here the first year. >> professional bull riders, judeist priest. college basketball games later in the year, villanova lehigh in november and drexel in september. >> phantoms that iced to play at the spectrum. >> we're excited to bring the phantoms back to pennsylvania in this region. people in philadelphia very familiar with the brand. >> the city is banking thon sent to bring in up to a million visitors a year downtown. part of aggressive effort to br