A 2 for 1 !
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Most big donors are like that …I am happy though we finally have one willing to help with a new arena building.
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I would also be somewhat disappointed if every stone wasn’t at least turned over to see what options existed. Each location has its pros and cons. For the actual site of Lewis Place there are a lot of cons. I feel pretty comfortable saying it won’t happen, but if the constraints are building it close to uptown, it should be evaluated and subsequently rejected for a more reasonable option.
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Stipulations on donations are always sticky.
Someone posted a while back about King Library. It seems odd to even consider (removing a library on a college campus) but if you look at how information is accessed today, one could argue it’s a quaint relic from a more analogue world. Granted, it’s probably a great quiet spot to work for many students so I certainly can appreciate that. But it’s not historically significant the way Lewis Place is. If King was knocked down, maybe you build an underground study area for students with an arena on top. If you put in lockers, maybe some of those students would venture up for a study break on game day. This is prolly a non starter for a gazillion reasons but it’s a fun topic to think about.
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Many years ago, when fans were also moaning about student attendance, I wrote a tongue-in-cheek letter to the editor of The Student with suggestions for increasing the size of crowds at Millett.
One of my suggestions was to actually have the games IN King Library. It would take advantage of the then nightly crowds at “the libe”, and the stacks could be moved around to accommodate a court. Interesting to see how times have changed study habits.
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What do you mean “don’t take this the wrong way?” You are calling me a catfisher, how else am I supposed to take it. Fine. Don’t believe me. You will find out in early December after the proposal is brought up at the university Senate. Until then continue to bury your head in the sand.
And, as others have said, the National Historic Preservation Act offers no substantive protection. The university has, and will continue, to tear down and replace “historic” buildings as it wishes.
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I didn’t mean to upset you. I tried to make you laugh because what you said seemed well, almost impossible to believe. I hope this doesn’t end our almost 50 years of friendship.
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No, but bad ideas tend to be the genesis of innovative ideas.
I think too many people say no to an idea before asking themselves, “why don’t I like this idea? Is there a way to fix that problem?”
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I think JohnnyMac, one of the greatest social philosophers of our time, did just that in this thread (see above).
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I never said it was a good idea. My idea of building the first floating arena on a barge that goes up and down 8 mile creek is a good idea namely because it generates gambling money to pay for NIL and more. We’re just blue skying it here. Nothing is real until it’s real and then shit gets real.
Also, is King the only library on campus? I thought Alumni Hall was a library…
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It was before King was built.
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A library can now be smaller and closer to the edge of campus, can’t it? Building there doesn’t mean eliminating the library forever. That said, I don’t think Oxford would feel good about a building of that height sitting right so close to the edge of Uptown. Aesthetically, that doesn’t seem right.
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I guess they could dig down so the profile of the arena upwards would be minimalized…would they be building parking below ground or just use the north garage by the baseball field for parking??
I have been to other arenas where you enter at street level and come into the seating midway with seats below and above.
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Somebody else said this to me
The thing is with NIL a new arena (although needed for upkeep) probably is way less important than just funding a NIL program. Imagine if the donor put his $50m into an fund for the NIL and we funded NIL with 5% interest ($2.5M per year) we would crush mid major basketball
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Put Millett at King and King at Millett. Problem solved. They didn’t want to walk to support their peers so will they walk to support their GPA? I’m only mildly joking.
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Increase your GPA and lose some weight! It’s a win-win situation!
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In an increasingly digital age libraries are becoming an anachronism. They will become more so in the future. Find an accessible location for collections that can’t be digitized and build an arena.
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After years of dreaming of a new arena I love we’re going to NIMBY the thing
/s (kind of)
Think about this. In today’s world of athletics, it would appear that the only games that sell out (or play before large crowds), combine the contest being played with something extra—a raucous pre-game atmosphere featuring motor homes, tailgates with lots of grilling, drinking and partying…or something else very special…as in a perennial top-25 team getting ready to go to war within a few hours. Consequently, crowds otherwise tend to be minimal…or shadows of what they were “back in the day.”
Much of these shortfalls in attendance are related to game venues being a long way from the home of many fans (2-3 hours away at least) and/ or the rise in TV and internet access to most college games these days. Sadly, Miami seems to fit that description. Miami students only show up in numbers on rare occasions preferring the bar scene to the game scene.
Now, I was initially referring to football…but, in actuality, cannot much of the same be applied to basketball?
Let’s imagine a future in which TV, internet and developing streaming and other modes of delivery become an even greater factor in college athletics…and stadiums and arenas become even less populated than they are today…and these buildings no longer can be justified due to minimal usage and costly upkeep. There is unsatisfactory ROI on a building used half a dozen time for FB or fewer than 20 times a year for basketball…and that functions only seasonally at best and occupies space on a college campus today.
In their place, perhaps the vast majority of stadiums and arenas will repurposed into something akin to a Hollywood studio where the games will be played before a handful of spectators and the “fans” in attendance will be outnumbered by camera operators, sound technicians and control room personnel charged with “delivering the product over the airwaves and across a multi-modal set of technologies to viewers located elsewhere.”
Given where the still developing future may take us all, it may make sense to build a basketball sound stage with seating for only a relatively small number of paying fans while the overwhelming majority of fans and alumni are being entertained remotely.
Something worth considering…
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