Meeting Speaker for November 28, 2011

Gregg Lukenbill

A Sacramento native, he picked up his first paycheck at age 7 and worked in construction for his dad. They became partners in 1976. In 1983, he and investors bought the Kings and moved them two years later to Natomas, where he built the old Arco Arena and then the current one to house the NBA team. He sold the team in 1992.

Gregg Lukenbill wore sneakers and a tuxedo the night Sacramento gave birth to the Kings, and 26 years later, he hasn't changed much.

He is still out there, supervising a charter airline that services places such as Cuba, Guam and Palau.

Preoccupied primarily with his passenger charter airline and its 195 employees, he rarely grants interviews and seldom attends games. 

He still builds things. Give him a hammer – toss out another crazy idea like bringing the Kings to town in the early 1980s – and he'll drive the nail.

He is speaking up now, he said, only to remind his community that amazing things can happen when business and civic leaders table personal agendas and collaborate on significant ventures – say, like a new sports-and-entertainment complex – that benefit the region.

This is the man, remember, who crawled along the catwalk and onto the Arco Arena roof during a driving storm in 1989.  Pummeled by wind and rain – with coaches, players and spectators staring upward in amazement – he grabbed a couple of banners hanging from the nearby rafters. Stretching and holding them tight, he essentially stitched together a “diaper” to stop water from leaking onto the court.