Before Cher performs tonight at the Everett Events Center, she'll find herself in a plush dressing room with wall-to-wall carpets, draperies, living-room furniture, candles and dishes full of candy.

Two nights later, the room will be the locker room for the Winter Hawks, the Everett Silvertips' hockey rivals from Portland.

But first impressions are important, whether it's Cher or the community weighing in on the events center and how it is altering Snohomish County's entertainment landscape.

The efforts to make Cher comfortable go beyond mere hospitality — likewise, the efforts to be a good neighbor in the community.

"You're being compared to 50 different locations on the tour," said Trey Bell, the assistant general manager and event manager at the events center. "You want to put Everett on the map. [The headliners] remember the catering and how well the arena is prepared."

It has been like that since 2003, when the events center opened.

Last year's entertainment grosses at the $71.5 million center were nearly $6 million, from about 200,000 people, a quarter of them from Everett. Three-fourths of the audience comes from elsewhere, mainly from Seattle to the Canadian border.

THOMAS JAMES HURST / THE SEATTLE TIMES A wall of windows in the ballroom of the Everett Conference Center, which is part of the events center, offers mountain views.

Like Cher's first impression tonight, the community's impressions when the events center opened were essential.

Suddenly, Everett had a 10,000-seat venue, a behemoth that dwarfed other venues in Snohomish County.

Suddenly, there were Olympic ice champions, the Silvertips hockey team, the Harlem Globetrotters. There were rodeos, monster-truck shows, car shows. There were children's shows: the Wiggles from Australia, Disney Princess Classics, Disney's Monsters on Ice. Suddenly, there were punk-rock groups, Christian rock bands, even the revived band Lynyrd Skynyrd, the first rock act to play the center, in February 2004.

Headliners such as Rod Stewart and Bette Midler showed up. Dolly Parton closed out 2004, and tonight, Cher will usher in 2005.

"The events center is already an important part of the community, and it's barely hit the ground," said David Dilgard, a historian at the Everett Public Library's Northwest Room. "[But] it established itself at the cost of a lot of historic buildings."

Dilgard mourned the loss of buildings on Hewitt Avenue, a full block of shops and offices.

"It was a drastic alteration of place, and the fact you're using it for Bette Midler and Dolly Parton, where there was nothing before, I find intriguing," he said. "It's hard to assimilate."

That sense of "pinch me, I'm in Everett" is shared by others, both pro and con, even as events-center managers proudly point to the center's standing nationally.

Four entertainment-industry publications — Billboard Magazine, Pollstar magazine, Venues Today and Amusement Business — have ranked the center among the top 5,000- to 10,000-seat venues for ticket sales, attendance and number of shows. That's strictly for entertainment; the rankings don't include the center's revenue from hockey games.

Events-center builders won a national award for construction excellence, and it was chosen as an outstanding public project of the year by the National Association of Industrial and Office Properties.

"We're more than just an arena — we're a complex," said Eric Blankenship, the director of marketing and sales at the center. "We have the main arena, obviously, but we have the Comcast Community Ice Rink and the conference center as well, which have been equally successful in their first years. We do everything from banquets to parties to receptions."

STEVE RINGMAN / THE SEATTLE TIMES, 2004 Pro wrestling Wrestler Victoria stops to hug 11-year-old Tyler Noble of Camano Island before entering the ring at a World Wrestling Entertainment match at the events center last May.

When the Ringling Bros. and Barnum & Bailey Circus came to town in September, a train parked at Everett Station and people lined the streets, cheering as circus animals trekked the few blocks to the events center.

Bell, who had called the circus' visit "a mammoth event — a concert times 10," said, "It was a warm welcome, a great feeling that it was accepted that way.

"A lot of thought went into the building," he said. "We can do a hockey game one night and have a concert the next and motocross the next day."

Tonight's concertgoers, for example, will walk over ice to their seats. The hockey rink will be covered with insulated decking.

"We're the new kid on the block," said Kim Bedier, the general manager of the events center. "We'll react to market conditions and grow with the community."

It's Bedier's job to book the center's shows, working with local, regional and national promoters. She, like Bell, Blankenship and Adam Gesacion, the director of sales at the center, are employed by Global Spectrum, a subsidiary of Comcast-Spectacor, a Philadelphia company that manages the facility.

With the exception of "American Idols Live," hosted when she was out of town, Bedier has seen every attraction presented at the events center. And she's hearing and soliciting feedback, both from the stars and from the audience.

Stars tend to talk about the center's more intimate setting, and Parton said she especially liked the curtained-off theatrical setup for her show, which accommodated about 5,000 people.

But as it vaults onto the regional scene, how does the events center play locally?

THE SEATTLE TIMES, 2003 Rodeo Bob Drewel, then the Snohomish County executive, helped open the Bullriders Challenge in December 2003 at the events center.

"Before the holidays, I went to the events center for a couple holiday receptions, and it was awesome to see all the people downtown," said Cherrill Dryden, the manager of the nearby Everett Performing Arts Center (EPAC). "It's wonderful to see more restaurants and after-hours places to go to. I can only see good things happening."

Village Theatre, which operates EPAC, has been in talks with the events center in ways to cross- promote each venue, according to Frank Stilwagner, the director of marketing for the theater.

"It's a win-win for everybody," Stilwagner said. "They're selling their programming but also our programming, and we're both reaching new audiences and creating an awareness of what else is happening in the community."

Stilwagner cited recent surveys from the Encore Media Group and ArtsFund that indicate large numbers of people who go to entertainment and arts events also go to sporting events.

The success of a Rod Stewart or a Bette Midler in both Seattle's KeyArena and in Everett has proved to Bedier that "even though we do draw from the Seattle market, it's very much a stand-alone market. It gives me even more opportunity to put events here because that's a perfect example. If Bette Midler wants to play the KeyArena and wants to come back to the market, I'm a logical second stop. I'm a little bit smaller and going to attract from a slightly different market."

Bedier also asks members of the public whom they'd like to see at the events center.

"Before Christmas, I got calls for Barry Manilow, but he signed a long-term deal with Vegas," she said. "They'll have to go to see Barry in Vegas. I don't look at any of those as silly requests. I'm always asking people who their favorite artists are."

The bottom line is financial, charging enough for tickets to cover fees.

"The premier artists are charging over half a million or more," Bedier said. "That's a big nut to pay. The math translates into a high ticket price. This market can pay a steep price. Bette's top ticket price was over $150."

THE SEATTLE TIMES, 2001 World-class skating Michelle Kwan is among the ice-skating champions to perform at the events center.

Tickets also are as low as $27 for the March 26 punk-rock festival Taste of Chaos, which Bedier said makes it affordable for young people.

But local groups have felt the pinch of another competitor.

"The bottom line is we're all going for those entertainment dollars," said Victoria Walker, the artistic director of the Everett Theatre. The theater books out-of-town attractions, such as Windham Hill recording artist George Winston on Feb. 18, and mounts its own play season and cinema series. But Walker thinks that when families budget their money, this affects the pool of resources.

"Families and the entertainment dollar is what we're competing for," Walker said. "It's an entirely different caliber of entertainment, of course, but there are huge budgets, and we can't compete.

"When you see Dolly Parton is sold out, you know people are going to say, 'How are we going to grab dinner? How long do we wait? What's the parking situation?' We used to be able to park behind the theater for free; now we can't offer that to our patrons or volunteers.

"We're kind of at the mercy at their booking," Walker added. "If they hook up with a tour, they just hook up. There's no forewarning, no conversations. We book a Tingstad and Rumbel [a musical duo], and after it's booked we find out that Dolly Parton's booked the same night. It was a show that evening that I might have booked a different date, just knowing such a strong talent was at their venue."

Blankenship, the center's director of marketing and sales, said the events center doesn't "fill the void for everyone."

"We're just finding our niche for what we can do, and our goal is to keep bringing more and more entertainment and a variety of entertainment," he said. "I think what you've seen in the first year — and I'll compare the KeyArena and the Tacoma Dome because they're the biggest indoor venues that compare to us — I don't think either one of those venues brings the diversity of events that we do here."

Walker said Everett is "suffering the pangs of growing up, like other towns this happens to."

"It impacts us, and we have to find the balance for ourselves," she said. "It is revitalizing, and it's a matter of how do we find a balance? And patrons have to find that balance, too: What do they want to see, and how much do they want to spend?"

Connie Wittren, a patron of the events center since it opened, said, "Frankly, Rod Stewart was one of the best concerts I've been to in my life, and I liked not having to drive to Seattle."

"The entertainment business, providing diversions for the community, is ephemeral," said Dilgard, the historian. "The Roxy Theatre, when it shut down in 1973, was less than 40 years old. Most things, like the Everett Mall Cinemas, had 30 years. I remember at the hearings [before the events center was constructed] that you get 40 years out of a center before you have to tear it down.

"At some point a century from now, someone will say to a child, 'I saw Bette Midler at the old Everett Events Center.' A little kid, when he's my age, he'll remember he saw the circus. I wonder if he'll remember the events center."

Diane Wright: 425-745-7815 or dwright@seattletimes.com