UNC Officials Seeking Alignment as Smith Center Decision Nears

On Monday evening, University of North Carolina officials held a video conference call with former UNC basketball players to present their findings from a years-long study into the future of the Dean E. Smith Center as the lengthy evaluation process nears its end, sources close to the situation confirm.

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The players’ meeting capped off a week of administrative discussions focused on the Smith Center, as university officials work to ensure alignment and answer questions from relevant parties. School leaders have been considering six possible options, including a renovation of the existing arena and a new build, as part of the university’s plan for campus growth.  

A university-commissioned physical master plan working group’s final report in August 2024 detailed those site options: Smith Center renovation, Smith Center replacement, Bowles parking lot, Odum Village, Friday Center and Carolina North. Inside Carolina reported in February that all six options provided for enough arena space to hold premium seating with a 16,000-seat capacity, although sources familiar with the process indicated that school officials were leaning toward the Carolina North location due to its future prominent role as a 250-acre integrated mixed-use extension of the UNC campus.

UNC chancellor Lee Roberts said this summer that he would like to make a formal announcement on the university’s final decision on the Smith Center’s future by the end of the year. That announcement will likely be delayed at least until next month, according to multiple sources familiar with the process.

Roberts provided an update on the Smith Center at a Rams Club board meeting on Thursday and then met with the basketball staff on Friday morning, according to sources.

On Friday afternoon, a group referenced as “Tar Heels Concerned for the Future of the Dean E. Smith Center and Carolina Basketball” submitted an open letter to the university that was addressed to Roberts. The letter, which was obtained by Inside Carolina, states that the group does not support the move of the Smith Center off campus to Carolina North, which sits on the land where Horace Williams Airport operated until 2018. It further voices concerns that the group’s stakeholders do not feel as though they have been “included to date in any known process” with regard to feedback and the evaluation of potential on-campus options.

The letter concludes with a list of 91 supporters. Those individuals include prominent boosters, retired coaches and administrators, former Board of Trustees members and former Tar Heel players spanning seven decades and five national championship teams. No one from the current UNC team is included.

On Monday, the university provided a statement to Inside Carolina in response to the open letter. UNC highlighted the three-year evaluation process involved in weighing the various options that include renovation, on-campus locations and new arena concepts as well as the inclusive effort to gather feedback through donor outreach, meetings, surveys and focus groups, among others. There was an emphasis on the broader goals of enrollment growth, campus planning, housing and transportation and how the Smith Center’s future factors into that conversation.  

The statement further noted that UNC had “heard from many whose names are represented in the circulated letter who told us they did not authorize the use of their name, including individuals who have participated in focus groups, interviews and surveys since 2023.”

The Smith Center’s future has sparked fervent debate between proponents of new arena construction and those insistent on maintaining the current facility’s legacy through renovation, and as the decision-making process nears its conclusion, the intensity of those discussions has escalated.

University leadership provided the following quote to Inside Carolina on Monday afternoon: “We know that there are a lot of passionate points of view in play but one thing everyone can agree on is the need for Carolina basketball to be successful – that’s also how we honor our past. The model to achieve success is very different today. Our conversations with stakeholders have been focused on just that – how to maintain an elite basketball program for decades to come that never forgets its history and origins.”

The Smith Center is in its 41^st season as the home of Carolina basketball. The 300,000-square-foot facility, which has hosted 586 UNC men’s basketball games, was state-of-the-art in design when it opened nearly 40 years ago on Jan. 18, 1986. More than $35 million in private donations were raised between 1980 and 1984 to fund the arena’s construction. While there have been multiple upgrades and additions to the building over the past 25 years, the substantial renovation work has largely been kept on the back burner. In 2013, UNC hired an architecture firm to provide concept renderings for a large-scale renovation in addition to the prospect of a new arena build.

UNC focused its facility upgrade efforts over the next decade on the sports complexes in the middle of campus, which included a new field hockey stadium, a new soccer and lacrosse stadium and the football practice complex that sits on Ridge Road. In early 2024, a physical master plan working group was tasked with exploring the next steps for the university’s footprint, including potential options for a new basketball arena.

>>> Inside UNC Basketball’s Arena Study: The Six Options (+) <<<

Carolina North has been a conceptual plan for UNC dating back to June 2009, when the Carolina North Development Agreement created a relationship between the university and the town of Chapel Hill for management of the extensive development envisioned at the site.

“We envision classroom space, office space, lab space, much of it in partnership with private sector partners,” Roberts told Inside Carolina in July. “There are some very successful developments around the country that serve as examples both of what works and some of what doesn’t work as well, but it’s going to ultimately be a very vibrant, mixed-use campus community.”

The parcel of land, located two miles north of campus up Martin Luther King Jr. Boulevard, will include undergraduate and graduate housing, academic and research programs, and mixed-use development. UNC will utilize a combination of university-funded projects and public-private partnerships to build out Carolina North in the years ahead.