The razzle-dazzle of last Friday’s ceremony marking the grand reopening of the renovated Dunkin’ Donuts Center was 40 years in the making.

That’s when Dave Duffy, chairman of the Rhode Island Convention Center Authority, which now operates The Dunk, cut his eyeteeth on balloon drops as an aide to Nelson Rockefeller at the 1968 Republican National Convention, in Miami Beach.

At the climax of Friday’s celebration, balloons cascaded down, confetti shot up, music blared and the tired building once known as the Providence Civic Center formally began its new life. The state bought the building from the city for $28 million and spent $80 million on such items as a lobby, suites, new seats, concession areas and palatial Providence Bruins and Providence College locker rooms.

The Rev. Brian Shanley, PC president and basketball fan, told me, “We can sell the school better with a facility like this to prospective recruits. We’re the littlest school in the Big East and it’s an uphill battle to get kids to come here.” When they see The Dunk, he beamed, they’ll go “Wow!”

I applaud the new Dunk. As Mayor David Cicilline said to me, it would be great to see state and local officials now apply the same cooperation and determination to such other challenges as housing, schools, transit and jobs.

Also, I’d welcome a new moniker for the place. “Naming rights come up [again] in 2010,” Duffy tells me. Dunkin’ Donuts has the right of first refusal. “You have to determine what the market will bear, but I will say this: They’ve been a very good marketing partner.”

I’m not pleased to have the state symbolized by a doughnut. Duffy, a retired PR genius, chuckles, “Well, there are more doughnut sales per capita in Rhode Island than anywhere in the world.”

In more promising food news — huge news — executive chef Russell Bettencourt tells me kosher-style brisket will sometimes show up on the buffet in The Dunk’s One LaSalle Restaurant.

Friday’s speakers included Governor Carcieri, House Speaker Bill Murphy, Senate President Joe Montalbano and Cicilline.

The crowd included General Treasurer Frank Caprio, who was on the Bishop Hendricken teams that played in the Civic Center in state championship basketball finals in 1982, ’83 and ’84. “I felt like Ernie D and Marvin Barnes,” Caprio says.

A big hockey fan, I often think back to when the Civic Center opened in 1972; I was at the first game there of the Bruins’ predecessors, the Reds. A program from that season has ads for Columbus National Bank, Winkler’s Steak House and Engle Tire Co. There’s a photo of Harold Copeland, Civic Center executive director. With young state prosecutor Buddy Cianci presenting the case to a grand jury, Copeland would be indicted for soliciting a bribe; he later was convicted.

The first Reds game in the new facility was the Friday night before the gubernatorial election between Democrat Phil Noel and Republican Herb DeSimone.

DeSimone, a former attorney general, started out way ahead. But could he hold off Warwick Mayor Noel? I thought DeSimone would survive, but what did I know? At the Civic Center that night, Noel told me he was going to win.

Last week, on a preview tour with Duffy, I mentioned the conversation and pointed to where it took place. Duffy, who ran DeSimone’s campaign, took no offense at Noel’s boastfulness about the election outcome. I must have been really dumb. Even in DeSimone’s camp, Duffy said, by then, “We knew.”

M. Charles Bakst is The Journal’s political columnist.

mbakst@projo.com