Remembering Steve Stroud, big-picture thinker who made things happen in Raleigh
Those who knew Steve Stroud best often used the same three words in describing him: larger than life.
Stroud, who died July 11 at 83, had that kind of presence. Wearing his ever-present bolo tie and boots, with a broad chest and stern gaze, gruff at times if need be, he was always uncompromising on the issues important to him:
- N.C. State Sports
- Building Lenovo Center
- Bringing a hockey team to Raleigh, to share the arena
- Making Raleigh a big-league city, one known internationally, with the coming of the Carolina Hurricanes, now a two-time Stanley Cup winner and the state’s only major-league champions.
“You only had to say ‘Stroud’ and everybody knew who you were talking about,” said Harvey Schmitt, former president and CEO of the Greater Raleigh Chamber of Commerce. “He was a big-picture thinker who always encouraged big-picture thinking.
“He had a much larger vision of what Raleigh could be. He saw a future that we’re now enjoying that other people had a hard time imagining.”
Stroud founded one of the area’s leading commercial real-estate firms in NAI Carolantic Realty in 1972. He had a keen acumen for business and a deep passion for Wolfpack athletics, having attended NCSU in the 1960s.
Stroud first chaired the Centennial Authority, which was created in 1995 by the General Assembly with the mandate of designing and constructing an arena adjacent to N.C. State’s Carter-Finley Stadium. The authority, then with 19 appointed members, would oversee the financing and operation of the arena.
Stroud, as authority chairman, was the point man, determined to replace NCSU’s Reynolds Coliseum with a new, large multipurpose arena that could serve the community much as Reynolds did for 50 years.
“He had that sharp business mind, was high intelligent and was great in working behind the scenes,” said Bobby Purcell, who served as executive director of NCSU’s Wolfpack Club for 33 years. “And when he made up his mind to do something, he was going to get it done and run over anybody or anything that got in the way.”
Purcell, who retired in 2020, recalls former Pack football coach Dick Sheridan first meeting Stroud at a luncheon at Amedeo’s near campus in 1986.
“We order our food,” Purcell said, “and coach asked Steve, ‘Tell us a little bit about yourself.’ Steve leaned halfway across the table, looked Coach Sheridan dead in the eye and said, ‘I ain’t scared of anybody or anything.’ They became best friends after that.”
Stroud was on hand to cheer the Pack to its improbable NCAA basketball title in 1983. He was a fervent supporter of Wolfpack football and the Pack’s baseball program, becoming close friends with longtime coach Elliott Avent, who recently retired after 30 years.
“The man was an icon,” Avent said last week. “He was a very giving man. He did so much for our city, our university, just giving, giving, giving.”
Stroud reveled in the Hurricanes’ Stanley Cup championships, first in 2006 and then again in June.
“You know, I became a huge ice hockey fan,” Stroud, a Rutherford County native, once said, his eyes twinkling as he spoke.
”People once were shaking their heads about hockey and wondering how this thing would work in the South,” Avent said. “The naysayers were many. Now, we have two Stanley Cup championships, and it has really put Raleigh on the map as much as anything that has happened.
“I think Steve Stroud is greatly responsible for that. It was his determination, and his doggedness to make this thing happen.”
Stroud worked closely with Schmitt in spearheading the effort to land a hockey team for the arena.
“He needed to find another occupant of the building that would fill some nights, so he could make a stronger case in the legislature, and they would give the money needed to put the deal together to build the building for NC State,” Schmitt said “The legislature was pressing to have enough business in the building that it would pay for itself and be worth the investment.”
Schmitt said Stroud first “dispatched” him to the 1996 American Hockey League All-Star Classic in Hershey, Pennsylvania. Schmitt said the goal was to begin preliminary discussions about possibly moving the St. John’s, Newfoundland, AHL team to Raleigh, but the focus soon turned to bigger things.
“He got up every morning thinking about how to make the deal work,” Schmitt said. “There were a lot of moving parts, and he did a very good job of marshalling a broad base of players to make the project a success. All of it was predicated on building a building for NC State. Hockey just fell into the conversation and became a big deal over time.
“That arena doesn’t get built without him. He was the driving force and drove it in the right way, always thinking about what was in the best interests of the community.”
Securing an NHL expansion team soon entered the conversation. An expansion bid was submitted to the league in the fall of 1996 by a potential ownership group fronted by Felix Sabates of Charlotte, a NASCAR team owner who had been an early investor in the Charlotte Hornets.
“Stroud first met Felix at a boat show in Miami,” Schmitt said, laughing. “They had a conversation. Stroud calls me up and says ‘We’ve got an owner willing to put up the money and I want you to fill him in on the details.’ Felix was our guy and Stroud made it happen.”
The Sabates group made an official expansion presentation to the NHL executive committee in New York, but constant haggling over the cost, size and funding of the new arena eventually led the Sabates group to withdraw the bid in February 1997.
Enter Peter Karmanos Jr.
Karmanos owned the Hartford Whalers but was looking to move the team. He was in the room in New York when the Sabates group made its pricey presentation. He liked what he heard about the market, liked the possibilities.
“We paved the way for him,” Sabates later said, half in jest.
The Whalers relocated to the state and after two years playing in the Greensboro Coliseum, the Hurricanes moved into their newly opened home in October 1999 — then the Entertainment and Sports Arena. The Canes had the inaugural game in the arena and the Pack played its first men’s basketball game the next month.
“Steve was the primary negotiator of putting Humpty Dumpty together,” Schmitt said. “I always felt the authority did everything possible to make as good a deal for the community as possible. That is, the building was going to pay for itself and not be a drag on the taxpayer. It was fiscally sound from the get-go.”
Stroud would later step down as chairman of the authority, although staying on as a member for several more years, staying active. In recent years, he was unable to attend as many games as he would have liked.
Always a Wolfpack fan, he turned down invitations to see the Pack play hoops at North Carolina, friends saying he once quipped, “I might die over there and the last thing I’d want is for my obituary to say I died in Chapel Hill.”
The Canes now play before sellout crowds every home game at Lenovo Center. They sold out the arena for a watch party for the Canes’ road games in the Stanley Cup Final against the Vegas Golden Knights.
The arena is undergoing a $300 million enhancement and renovation. Canes owner Tom Dundon, who bought the team from Karmanos, plans to build an entertainment district outside the arena, surrounded by E. Stephen Stroud Way and Peter Karmanos Jr. Drive.
A small family funeral service is planned later this month in Ellenboro. A Celebration of Life for Stroud open to the public will be held in September or October — fittingly at the arena.
This story was originally published July 16, 2026 at 12:45 PM with the headline "Remembering Steve Stroud, big-picture thinker who made things happen in Raleigh."
