Of all the questions Kansas City Councilman Ed Ford fields on a daily basis &#8212; queries about KCI, light rail, schools and crime &#8212; one keeps popping up as much as any.</p><p>&#8220;People are always asking me,&#8221; Ford said, &#8216;When are we going to get an NHL or an NBA team?&#8217;&#8194;&#8221;</p><p>The question couldn&#8217;t come at a better time. The $276 million Sprint Center on Monday night will host its first NHL preseason game &#8212; between the St. Louis Blues and Los Angeles Kings &#8212; and will celebrate its first anniversary Oct. 10 when the Atlanta Hawks play the Portland Trail Blazers.</p><p>And, at least for another year, that&#8217;s as close as to the NHL or NBA as Kansas City will get.</p><p>Even without a major-league tenant, there is little doubt the arena has been a smashing success. By the time the NBA game tips off, the Sprint Center will have hosted 140 events and drawn 1.3 million people, exceeding its original projections of 90 events and 1 million spectators for the first year.</p><p>Entertainers from Elton John to Bruce Springsteen, from Hannah Montana to Tina Turner will have played to enthusiastic crowds, as have events such as Cirque du Soleil&#8217;s &#8220;Saltimbanco&#8221; and the &#8220;Dancing With the Stars&#8221; tour.</p><p>The Big 12 men&#8217;s basketball tournament returned to Kansas City after a two-year absence; the CBE Classic (Missouri, Michigan State, UCLA and Maryland) christened the adjacent College Basketball Experience; and the Kansas and Kansas State men&#8217;s basketball teams each played a game at the arena.</p><p>&#8220;Quite frankly, without an anchor tenant, we&#8217;ve blown all our numbers away even if we had an anchor tenant,&#8221; said Tim Leiweke, president of Anschutz Entertainment Group, which invested $54 million in the project and manages the arena.</p><p>&#8220;Clearly, within the entertainment, sports and live-music industry, it is as hot a building as there is in the country. No one could fault what we did with the building. We built it on time, on budget, and put on more events than anyone thought humanly possible without an anchor tenant.&#8221;</p><p>While that may be true, a major component in the public&#8217;s approval of an initiative to finance most of the project with taxes on hotel stays and car rentals was the prospect of an NBA or NHL team guaranteeing 40 to 50 dates. So far, the closest thing the Sprint Center has is the Kansas City Brigade of the Arena Football League.</p><p>When plans to build the arena were announced in 2004, Leiweke exuded confidence the Sprint Center would have a major-league tenant &#8220;playing here the day you open your doors.&#8221;</p><p>While Leiweke, who sits on the NHL board of governors as top executive of the NHL&#8217;s Los Angeles Kings, is disappointed that didn&#8217;t happen last year or this year, AEG and then-Mayor Kay Barnes had other objectives in building the arena.</p><p>&#8220;The big carrot in getting this done was to revitalize downtown Kansas City &#8230; and making it stand on its own two feet, and it has done that beyond all expectations,&#8221; Leiweke said.</p><p>&#8220;I&#8217;m not backing away from the statements we&#8217;ve made in trying to get an anchor tenant, but I&#8217;ve said from day one, we don&#8217;t control this process, we have to take advantage of the opportunities. Fault me for being optimistic in saying we&#8217;re going to work hard and we want to bring a team here.&#8221;</p><p>&#8226;&#8226;&#8226;</p><p>Complicating matters is that no team in the NHL has moved since 1997, though AEG in 2007 made a serious play for bringing the Pittsburgh Penguins to Kansas City before a publicly funded arena was approved in Pittsburgh. The NHL&#8217;s Nashville Predators could have been in Kansas City by now had a new ownership group not bought the club in 2007 and reworked its lease.