The Arena Decision, and the Carolina Basketball Family's Fight to Save the Smith Center

In the hours before North Carolina took the court at Rupp Arena to play Kentucky on Tuesday, Dec. 2, longtime Tar Heel basketball supporters Rusty Carter and Hunter Morin stepped into a small meeting room at the Hyatt Regency in downtown Lexington for an hour-long conversation with UNC executive associate athletic director Steve Newmark.

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It was here, across a boardroom table and over a Diet Coke, that the university’s plans for the Dean E. Smith Center’s future were shared and the beginnings of a movement to save the 40-year basketball facility took hold. The meeting also illustrated what has become a rapidly growing division between Carolina’s old guard and the university’s new administration intent on handling matters in a more streamlined approach under chancellor Lee Roberts’ leadership.

In August 2024, a university-commissioned physical master plan working group’s final report detailed six possible options for a renovated or new basketball arena site: Smith Center renovation, Smith Center replacement, Bowles parking lot, Odum Village, Friday Center and Carolina North. Each option allowed for enough arena space to hold premium seating with a 16,000-seat capacity, although sources confirmed to Inside Carolina in February 2025 that a Smith Center renovation and a new arena build at Carolina North were the primary options, with school officials leaning toward the Carolina North location due to its future role as a 250-acre integrated mixed-use extension of the UNC campus.

By the time the 2025 ACC/SEC Basketball Challenge tipped off the first week of December, word had leaked out among prominent UNC basketball supporters that a decision had been made and an official announcement was pending.

“I was asked to meet with Steve in Lexington at the Kentucky game for a discussion,” Carter, a Wilmington businessman and a 1971 UNC graduate, told Inside Carolina last week. “I didn’t really know Steve at the time, and he said he just wanted me to know there was an upcoming announcement that they were going to start developing Carolina North, which included the relocation of the basketball arena to that site. The decision had been made, and we might be a little alarmed about it, but there was no turning back, and there was really nothing anybody could do about it. This was an information meeting, and he was the messenger and that was the message.”

Newmark had first traveled to Pinehurst, N.C. to meet with Roy and Wanda Williams to inform them of the decision on Sunday, Nov. 30, according to two people with knowledge of that meeting. Multiple sources, who participated in different stakeholder meetings in the days that followed, confirmed a similar version of meeting minutes. The common message throughout those meetings was that the university was appreciative and grateful for their support, but that the decision was a done deal.

Word spread quickly throughout UNC’s high-profile alums and supporters, many of whom had personal relationships with Dean Smith and Williams and played key roles in the fundraising efforts to build the Smith Center in the early 1980s. There were several more stakeholder meetings that took place in the days after the Kentucky game – one including the Smith family, according to Carter – and questions emerged among the group about the process and who was behind the decision to move the arena to Carolina North.

“There were numbers of phone calls and emails and texts saying, ‘Did you hear the same thing I heard? We’re unaware of any kind of process. How did this happen? How did this get here?’” Carter said. “It seemed very bizarre, and it seemed autocratic, if nothing else. It just was not consistent with the way things would typically be done at North Carolina. We’re the most collaborative place in the universe as it relates to faculty and administration and students and alumni, and it was just highly inconsistent with the culture and history that we knew at Carolina.”

The stakeholders quickly organized and formed the “Committee for a South Campus Arena,” a group described as being made up of alumni and supporters of the university and its athletic department, including former players, former trustees and longtime friends of Smith, Williams and the basketball program. Carter is the spokesman for the committee.

The backlash was fierce behind the scenes, according to two people familiar with the details. In response, the announcement was paused, and three focus groups were announced on Dec. 10. Stakeholders were emailed invitations to the meetings, which were scheduled over the final two weeks of December.

Additionally, administrative meetings were held with the Rams Club and the basketball office on Dec. 11 and Dec. 12, according to a source familiar with the meetings, as well as a video call with a group of nearly 100 former players on Dec. 15. Inside Carolina reported last month that former players and coaches who spoke during the video call included Mitch Kupchak, Larry Brown, Theo Pinson, Justin Jackson, Shammond Williams, Tyler Hansbrough and Roy Williams.

There were still concerns among stakeholders that an announcement was forthcoming even after the focus groups were established on Dec. 10, so the committee sought signatures over a 48-hour period before submitting a letter to the university on Dec. 12 thanking Roberts for his decision “to postpone any announcement about such relocation of our basketball arena and that you are now open to having select focus groups to hear from significant stakeholders.”

The letter, which was obtained by Inside Carolina upon its release, contains 91 names of influential UNC alums, supporters, trustees and former players. In a statement provided to Inside Carolina on Dec. 15, the university noted having “heard from many whose names are represented in the circulated letter who told us they did not authorize the use of their name.”

The focus groups were held on Dec. 16, Dec. 22 and Dec. 30. Roberts, Newmark and athletic director Bubba Cunningham hosted the meetings, each of which included approximately 25 donors, supporters and former players.  

The Committee for a South Campus Arena expanded its efforts to create a website, renovatesmithcenter.org, and establish a social media presence. Both Williams and Hansbrough have appeared in professionally produced videos calling for a renovation to the Smith Center. As of Wednesday, the website’s petition to renovate the 40-year-old basketball facility includes 27,800 names. Student advocates were outside the Smith Center before UNC’s game on Monday night passing out flyers that read “Save the Dean Dome” and encouraging fans to sign the petition. Carter expects that total to reach 50,000 names over the next month.

Dean Stoyer, UNC’s Vice Chancellor for Communications and Marketing, said to Inside Carolina in a statement on Wednesday that a decision on the arena has not been made at this time.

“University leadership continues to have ongoing conversations with various stakeholders about the future of the Dean E. Smith Center and the long-term success of Carolina Basketball,” Stoyer said. “Among them are former players who have been integral to gathering critical input. In fact, the conversations with the broader Carolina Basketball community have been some of the most substantive and have fostered the need for more conversation.”

In December, university leadership provided a statement detailing its three-year evaluation process weighing renovation and on-campus options alongside new arena concepts in addition to structured engagement with donors and community stakeholders in order to reach a decision that reflected the needs of the wider Carolina family.

Roberts indicated last summer that he hoped to make an announcement on the Smith Center’s future by the end of the calendar year. Two weeks ago, the university’s 13^th chancellor told UNC’s Board of Trustees that a decision about the basketball arena had not been made and that the university would be announcing two additional stakeholder committees for further input and feedback, one made up of basketball folks and the other made up of students.

Roberts told reporters after the board meeting that there are three considerations that UNC is keeping in mind as it makes the arena decision: (1) winning basketball games at a time when it’s becoming more expensive for everybody; (2) student access and proximity to the court; and (3) an enhanced fan experience.

The Committee for a South Campus Arena has not seen renovation or new arena architectural plans or projections, according to Carter. The group supports the development of Carolina North for housing and research, as well as consideration for a law school or engineering school on the property, but it is not in favor of moving the basketball arena to the future campus location.

In hindsight, the Committee for a South Campus Arena said it would have expected a transparent process in which Williams, former players and stakeholders were engaged and that those conversations would have served as the foundation for discussions about the impact of moving the basketball arena off campus and future financial considerations. The group also expected more research into the renovations completed at other blueblood programs in recent years and the feasibility of completing renovations around the playing season.

“It would have been a really serious deep dive into that before any evaluations of moving it were engaged,” Carter said. “And it was just the opposite. All the energy went into moving and none of the energy went into staying. That was just an absolute opposite approach to how I think most of us feel like this should have transpired. Every effort should have been made to see what it would take to remain on campus and renovate the Smith Center and not trite comments about a $100 million roof or this or that.

“It needed true due diligence and true sensitivity to the people who had the most at stake — the players, the coaches, the alums, the students — and that was overlooked. It was engaged in as a move to a real estate development as an anchor, apparently. That word was used. And it was just the opposite approach. I’ll say it one more time: the energy and the money went into the move, not the option to stay.”

On Monday night, the committee called for Roberts and the administration to fund an independent cost study of a Smith Center renovation and comprehensive seating revenues to provide comparative information to the new arena data that’s been made available.

In 2024, UNC sought feedback as part of its arena study effort through focus groups, donor interviews and a statistically significant online survey of nearly 8,000 season ticket holders, ticket buyers, donors and fans. The focus groups and interviews included 80 prominent donors. The study documents, obtained by Inside Carolina, indicate that 20% of that group preferred the major renovation scenario with 75% opting for a new arena, while 80% of the participants were in favor of keeping the basketball arena on UNC’s main campus.