It's not April Fools' Day: W-R getting a full reno
- Thread starter rwhitney014
- Start date
Giving Whitney some love cuz he broke the news at the exact same time as Medill....
How many years earlier will this be completed than your best, most optimistic guess? I'm going to say five.
What I love about the announcement is that it looks to be almost entirely funded. Very cool.
How many years earlier will this be completed than your best, most optimistic guess? I'm going to say five.
What I love about the announcement is that it looks to be almost entirely funded. Very cool.
Ha, thanks. Honestly, I had 2025-27 pegged as the likely time range for something like this, something like 5-10 years after opening the lakefront facility. This is as shocking as it is awesome.
Kind of puts to bed the goofy idea that NU could compete on a high level with existing (worst among major conference) facilities...........
I wonder if they cut through some red tape by doing a renovation as opposed to a new build? I've never been involved in building anything so big but new construction is sometimes easier than renovation.
If the finished project looks great on the inside, I'm not concerned with the shell is...
What, didn't everything turn out fabulous with Soldier Field?
I'm concerned that, even after a $110M makeover, W-R will still be the worst basketball facility in the Big Ten, and that will be the situation for the next 35 years until the next ugly, half-assed renovation is made. While every other B1G school is driving a new or late model BMW or Lexus, NU is driving a twice restored AMC Hornet.
Perhaps NU can't come up with enough dough to raze the dump and start over. At some point the $'s have to run out. Having spent almost $400 Million on athletics facilities in 4 or 5 years, NU may be at that point.
I don't know this for a fact but my estimation is that the locker rooms and other player facilities will be top three in the conference. For a few years.
The playing arena will not be top three, as you write. However, it will be unique -- a la Wrigley Field -- and provide fans with a comfortable and authentic basketball viewing experience.
I think recruits care about the former and don't give two craps about the latter.
Well if you don't think that top notch BB players would rather play in front of 10,000 to 15,000 fans rather then half that, then we can agree to disagree.
Frankly,. I don't think it matters how many butts are in the seats if MOST of the seats are full. It's all about atmosphere. As to Glades' concerns about re-doing the arena, that's what both U of I and Indiana have done, or are doing -- taking the original assembly hall (since both are named, interestingly enough, Assembly Hall) shells and renovating the insides. Granted, the original McGaw Hall shell may not match up with what U of I and IU started with, but after $110 M, I have to think NU will come out with something pretty nice.
The current choice is between playing in a smaller arena that is packed with fans and provides an attractive atmosphere or building a larger new arena that we don't have the fans to support. If you think that just building a large modern facility will draw in fans and attract recruits all you need to do is look at Penn State and the Bryce Jordan Center. For all the money PSU spent on that facility, it has been a total failure if it was intended to draw in top recruits. No recruit is going to get excited about playing in front of all those empty seats. There is a reason why NU has resorted to using tarps at Ryan Field.
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If NU can't fill a 10,000 plus seat arena then it might be time move to the MAC. heck, the original McGraw Hall seated 10,000 plus and often full or close to it, especially when Kansas and Chamberlain or Kentucky came a calling They then reduced the capacity to 9,000 or so in the last re-do and have since reduced it more. not being able to draw 10,000 for basketball and 50,000 for football for a program next to a city the size of Chicago is sad but true. P.S. So what was said at the presser?
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Nothing really of interest. It was just an ***-kissing fest. Everybody is wonderful, especially the donors. The more you donated, the more praise and kisses you received.
...I think I see a bright corner....why don't you stand there and darken it
Back then, there was no cable TV. You couldn't go see the game in HDTV at a Chicago bar or in some small town. Now people would rather watch a high def telecast than *pay* to sit in the nosebleed sections with no view of the action. The incentive to go to a game and to simplify soak up the atmosphere is not great enough.
Amen. Only willy or xyzbobxyz could be unhappy with the prospect of a completely renovated WRA.
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I'm all about the Gonzaga model -- 6,000 seats, 6,000 asses .....every....single...night...
I'm all about the Gonzaga model -- 6,000 seats, 6,000 asses .....every....single...night...
Great to see that you would rather NU be like Loyola, capacity 5,000, rather then DePaul, 10,000 capacity or any other Big Ten arena. Actually your stupid *** ideas are enough.I know willy will be one, but who are the other 5,999 asses?
I'm really not sure that DePaul basketball attendance - or anything else DePaul basketball of the last few decades, for that matter - is the standard to which we should aspire.
Willy, you have been a fan almost as long as Pat Ryan. If Pat Ryan thinks a 7,500 seat WRA is enough seats, I think I will value his opinion.....
Collins and Phillips said the idea is kind of a retro look and cited Kansas' Phog Allen redo and UCLA's Pauley redo and Cameron as examples. They want fans close to the action. I think it's okay to create a demand for your tickets by not having so many to sell so I don't see capacity as that big of an issue. It will be pretty similar to now and it usually takes visitors buying a fair amount of tickets to fill it now.
Longer. Willy took Clarence Darrow's appreciation of the law class which is where he learned to argue.
Apparently, there were other artist renderings of the renovation disclosed at the presser yesterday (see the article on 247 Sports for one of the N Club side elevation), but I am very surprised that NU hasn't put these on their NU Sports site. Enquiring minds want to know!
That's because nothing has been decided yet. They couldn't even comment on the seating capacity. Essentially, all the artist renderings were BS drawings created for the announcement and showed hardly anything different from what we have now except three sections behind each basket and some entranceways in the upper seat sections.
This drawing is pretty silly, anyway. I like the locker room with no lockers. Just tiny giant football players gathering in a huge room.
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This drawing is pretty much silly, anyway. I like the locker room with no lockers. Just tiny giant football players gathering in a huge room.
They moved all the lockers to the Lakeside Facility to save money. The players will dress there, walk to Noyes, take the EL to Central and walk to the Stadium on game day to enhance the fan experience!
The capacity argument doesn't make sense. Cameron Indoor seats 9,500, and Stanford's arena seats 7,500 (in the middle of a huge metro area as well!). If you've been to the BJC at Penn State, you would also probably end up with an incurable bias against lower-tier schools building potential white elephant stadiums.
Whether we should have built anew is an interesting question. I wonder how much more it would have cost. The lakeside facility is coming in around $220 million, and that appears on surface to be a more complex build (but I could be wrong). A new building would have required demolition and more permitting than a remodel. It also would have taken longer. I think this year's football seniors should have been practicing lakeside for years by now.
It might have been a better long-term choice to knock W-R down, but I'm still very happy with what they're offering now.
Whether we should have built anew is an interesting question. I wonder how much more it would have cost. The lakeside facility is coming in around $220 million, and that appears on surface to be a more complex build (but I could be wrong). A new building would have required demolition and more permitting than a remodel. It also would have taken longer. I think this year's football seniors should have been practicing lakeside for years by now.
It might have been a better long-term choice to knock W-R down, but I'm still very happy with what they're offering now.
The fact that we're getting anything is quite remarkable. I mostly agree with you, and obviously there are lots of ways to do this that could potentially be better. That said, that goodness we're doing SOMETHING! I'm excited to see the new interior packed with Wildcat fans!