Welsh-Ryan Arena at Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill. HOK was the project designer. (Courtesy Northwestern University)
College basketball is in full swing, and at three schools — Houston, Northwestern and Cincinnati — fans can now enjoy major renovations that have transformed relatively midsize arenas into essentially new facilities.
Fertitta Center, Welsh-Ryan Arena and Fifth Third Bank Arena all feature reconfigured seating bowls with fewer seats, improved sightlines and new premium inventory. Plus, they now have modern concourses, upgraded concessions, new videoboards and fresh exteriors that have undergone a face-lift.
As with most capital improvements in the college space, the projects are privately funded through donations from alumni and other fans committed to sustaining the lifespan of these on-campus facilities and retaining the best memories these programs have to offer.
In Houston, Fertitta Center reopened Dec. 1 for the Cougars’ game against Oregon and 7-foot-2 center Bol Bol, son of the late NBA player Manute Bol. The game took place 49 years to the day after the building first opened in 1969.
The transformation extends to the venue’s name. Billionaire and university alum Tilman Fertitta, owner of the NBA’s Houston Rockets, donated $20 million to help fund one-third of the $60 million project. In return, the old Hofheinz Pavilion was renamed for his family.
The renovation, designed by AECOM, is the final piece of a campuswide effort to update Houston’s sports facilities, said T.J. Meagher, the school’s senior associate athletic director for capital projects.
Fertitta Center as it neared completion at the University of Houston. (Courtesy AECOM)
The key part of construction was rebuilding the seating bowl, in which the front-row seats at midcourt were 30 feet from the sidelines under the old layout, Meagher said.
All told, there are now about 7,100 total seats, all with much closer views to the game. It’s a reduction of 1,300 seats under the old configuration.
“The original design of Hofheinz was a square building with an oval around a rectangle, and [the court] wasn’t lined up squarely in the building,” he said. “There was uniqueness to the design that added to some of the charm when it first opened, but it also happened to breed a lot of inefficiencies.”
Houston officials toured renovations to State Farm Center at Illinois and Clemson’s Littlejohn Coliseum, both AECOM projects, to get ideas for improving Fertitta Center. In addition, Houston used Turner Construction, the same contractor for rebuilding Littlejohn, as its construction manager, Meagher said.
AECOM came up with a creative technique to correct the geometry of the bowl and straighten the sidelines to bring all seats closer to the floor. On the east side, a new seating structure was built over the old oval bowl.
The west side was gutted and rebuilt with club seats supported by a lounge running the length of the floor. One level above is a new terrace section, created by pushing midcourt seats at the back of the bowl 40 feet closer “to almost hover above the floor,” Meagher said.
As of mid-November, Houston had sold 319 of the 448 club seats, priced at $350 a person for a season ticket. The 76 floor seats, which cost $500 a person, sold out immediately, Meagher said.
The premium inventory extends to 44 loge boxes, 20 “Barcalounger” seats similar to the living room boxes at NFL stadiums, and the 30 terrace seats at midcourt.
Houston eliminated the center-hung board at old Hofheinz and replaced it with two large end zone boards. As part of the retrofit, a halo-shaped LED ribbon board attached to the low ceiling stands out as a signature element.
The halo board is a dynamic feature and provides an additional revenue stream and a branding opportunity for IMG College, the school’s multimedia rights holder.
“Houston was interested in a design solution that captured crowd noise from the low ceiling but also expressed the spatial volume of a ‘big time’ arena the building had always masked,” said Greg Brown, AECOM’s senior associate and sports design studio lead. “We knew [the halo board] could be a great design feature to help tie the entire bowl together as one.”
In Evanston, Ill., project designer HOK met Northwestern’s request to come up with a seat count of 7,039. The final two digits pay homage to the 1939 NCAA Final Four, which was held on campus in a building that preceded Welsh-Ryan Arena. It was the NCAA’s first championship event in basketball.
Welsh-Ryan opened in 1952 as part of McGaw Memorial Hall, a large fieldhouse that fit 13,000, including floor seats. Most recently, the arena had a little more than 8,000 seats before renovations cut it down to the magic number, said Nate Appleman, HOK’s director of sports, recreation and entertainment.
“It was not a good building in its original state; it had a lot of issues,” Appleman said. “The Ryan family, who have their name on the building, wanted to transform it into something competitive with the best in the country. They weren’t just comfortable with industry standards when it came to things like amenities and accessibility. We came up with this term of ‘industry standard plus.’”
It took a plus-size investment of $110 million to bring it up to par with newer venues. The bulk of the money was spent to rebuild the seating bowl and construct the Wilson Club, a group of roughly 600 padded sideline seats tied to an end zone lounge.
Club seats are priced at $1,700 for a season ticket, tied to a minimum $6,000 donation. Most club seats have been sold outside of some held back for internal purposes, said Mike Polisky, Northwestern’s deputy athletic director of external affairs.
In addition, there are seven loge boxes behind the club seats.
The 115 courtside seats sell for $1,800 a person for a season ticket plus a five-figure donation.
“All of this premium ticket conversation was really new to Northwestern,” Appleman said. “They didn’t have that opportunity before. We maximized the number of courtside seats.”
There are two 90-person hospitality spaces in the end zones of the upper deck, one of which came about by accident in the south end overlooking Ryan Field, Northwestern’s football stadium. The arena’s concessions layout upstairs left a big open space for functions such as the Ryans’ tailgate party prior to the football game against Notre Dame, Appleman said.
“All of a sudden, they have space for hospitality that they didn’t have before,” he said. “It’s critical to that campus, cultivating that donor relationship.”
Cincinnati’s arena is just 29 years old, but there were shortcomings for a building that opened as a multipurpose facility without an upper deck concourse and seats in the upper corners that weren’t angled toward the court. After an $87 million makeover, there’s a new concourse at the highest level, three new premium clubs and fixed seats in the lower bowl, which was all retractable seating before the renovation.
Fifth Third Bank Arena at the University of Cincinnati. (Courtesy Populous)
Overall, the project resulted in 100,000 square feet of additional space by expanding the sides of the building, said Bryan Ramsey, senior project manager for Skanska, the school’s general contractor.
“They were looking for a dedicated arena as opposed to a high school gym on steroids,” said Norman Friedman, an associate principal with Populous, which teamed with local architect Moody Nolan on the project.
Apart from the club seats, the renovation produced 16 new suites, six each along the sidelines and four in the north end occupying an old club space. Most suites have 12 to 14 fixed seats. The corner suites on the sidelines are much larger spaces and fit well over 20 people, Friedman said.
Total seating is now 12,012, down from 13,176 under the old setup.
One point of distinction is the arena’s three public bars, two of which are in the upper deck. The school has served alcohol for college basketball games for several years, and the new Armory, Overlook and Queen City bars reflect the city’s rich brewing heritage and provide a destination for fans to meet up for a cold one.
The overall renovation has resulted in some emotional responses from Bearcat fans, Ramsey said. He’s a Cincinnati native and has family that attended the university.
“People walked into the arena and they were getting teary-eyed,” he said. “They’re ecstatic.”