State Farm Arena (formerly Philips Arena) is a multi-purpose arena located in Atlanta, Georgia. The arena serves as the home venue for the National Basketball Association (NBA)'s Atlanta Hawks. It also served as home to the National Hockey League's Atlanta Thrashers from 1999 to 2011, before the team moved to Winnipeg, as well as the Women's National Basketball Association (WNBA)'s Atlanta Dream from 2008 to 2016 and 2019, and the temporary Home of the Georgia Tech Basketball in 2011. It opened in 1999 at a cost of $213.5 million, replacing the Omni Coliseum. It is owned by the Atlanta Fulton County Recreation Authority and operated by the Hawks, owned by Tony Ressler along with a group of investors including Grant Hill. Layout The arena seats 19,050 for basketball and 17,624 for ice hockey. The largest crowd ever for an Atlanta Hawks basketball game at the arena was Game 6 of the 2008 Eastern Conference First Round on May 2, 2008 (against the Boston Celtics), where there was an announced attendance of 20,425. The arena includes 92 luxury suites, 9 party suites, and 1,866 club seats. For concerts and other entertainment events, the arena can seat 21,000. The arena was originally laid out in a rather unusual manner, with the club seats and luxury boxes aligned solely along one side of the playing surface, and the general admission seating along the other three sides (the arrangement was later emulated in Ford Field, Addition Financial Arena, Soldier Field, Levi's Stadium, and other venues). This layout was a vast contrast to many of its contemporaries, which have their revenue-generating luxury boxes and club seats located in the 'belly' of the arena, thus causing the upper deck to be 2–4 stories higher. The layout at Philips was done so as to be able to bring the bulk of the seats closer to the playing surface while still making available a sufficient number of revenue-raising club seats and loges. Renovations in 2017–18 removed the upper levels of the suite wall in favor of premium seating spread throughout the arena, turning those upper areas to standard seating. On the exterior, angled steel columns supporting the roof facing downtown spell out "ATLANTA." The side facing the Georgia World Congress Center originally spelled out "CNN" (whose headquarters adjoins the arena), but that section has since been altered to accommodate a Taco Mac restaurant. The GWCC/CNN Center rail station