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New UT Basketball Arena


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Two companies have responded to the RFP asking for private development and management of the new UT arena. The goal is that UT doesn't have to pay for any of it. We don't know yet what is in the proposals. Posted part of the ABJ article about the applicants. 

 

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Amicus and Oak View would bring different strengths to a UT arena development.

On its website Amicus stresses its experience with higher-education construction, using equity capital instead of taxpayer dollars. It says it has worked with UT as well as the University of Arizona, Louisiana State University and the University of Florida, among others.

Amicus was founded by Robert Utley, who remains chairman. Per the company's website, he was previously the founder of The Utley Group — a real estate firm focused on higher education, finance and technology — and chairman of Inland American Communities, a student-housing investment and management company.

Oak View operates in a variety of fields tied to sports arenas. It designs and builds them through its OVG Business Development division, it manages them through its OVG Facilities division, it helps them secure naming rights and other marketing opportunities through its OVG Global Partnerships division and it even provides security through its Prevent Advisors division.

Oak View announced in March a "strategic investment" from Silver Lake Partners, the same private equity firm that has worked closely with Michael Dell (helping finance both his 2013 buyout of Dell and the 2016 leveraged buyout of EMC Corp.) and that earlier this year invested $250 million in WP Engine Inc.

OVG is currently developing Key Arena in Seattle, a potential future home for a National Hockey League and/or National Basketball Association teams, as well as a new arena for the New York Islanders of the NHL.

 

Rest of Article: https://www.bizjournals.com/austin/news/2018/04/11/chance-to-replace-uts-erwin-center-basketball.html

 

The leading location for the new arena would be along the I-35 frontage road just south of the track and soccer stadium on a current parking lot. They would have to re-route Red River on to Robert Dedman. The second location is where the current Rec Center and School of Social work are south of DKR and north of MLK.

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  • 4 weeks later...
Guest Lobo

As much as I want student participation to be more of a factor at home games, we also need to remember that about half our home games are scheduled when students are on break (Thanksgiving/Christmas/New Year's/MLK).  Most other universities have the same issue, but 80% of our student body lives within 3 hours of campus so they tend to high-tail it home during breaks.  

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  • 2 months later...

https://www.hookem.com/2018/08/03/texas-ad-chris-del-conte-creating-longhorn-live-womens-athletics-new-arena/

A couple CDC quotes.

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On a new Texas basketball arena: “We average about 9,000 for a home men’s basketball game. The stadium seats 16,000. It’s just too big. Our game times are at 8 o’clock. Interstate 35 is pretty hard to come back on at 8 o’clock. Television has made it so easy, you get a 60 or 80-inch TV at Ikea where you can never leave your couch. 

“The Drum has been great for us, the Erwin Center has been great, but I think that was built in ’76. It’s had its time, but we have to do that in a thoughtful manner. And that’s just where we’re at right now.”

On building a smaller arena: “Now this is just my mind, no one else’s mind, so let’s just start with that. But there has to be, if you start with a lower bowl that seats say 10,000. You know that upper rake, couldn’t you have a garage door that comes down that’s padded? You never see those seats. 

“Somehow a garage door comes down right now and you never see my garage. Imagine if it was padded. You’d never open it up. Now, you have a 10,000 seat basketball stadium. You’re playing in the Spurs’ arena, close the gates on the upper rake and then open them up when you have a concert. Why can’t you do that? 

“No one ever thought you’d go from the 8-track to the cassette to the Discman to an iPod to the phone. … Someone’s going to find that technology at some point and time that works for everybody.”

 

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1) Maybe it's the wine; maybe I just don't read good (/Zoolander), but I've read the "garage door" part 5 times now and I still can't figure out what CDC is talking about.  I'm assuming it's something about covering up the top tier of seating when expecting only 10,000 fans or somesuch.

2) Whatever CDC decides, can we please get this shit done soon?  I'm tired of this rich-assed school dicking around and almost being good at things.

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#1 sounds costly, if in fact the Erwin Center is ti be completely replaced...

1 hour ago, Knoxtnhorn said:

1) Maybe it's the wine; maybe I just don't read good (/Zoolander), but I've read the "garage door" part 5 times now and I still can't figure out what CDC is talking about.  I'm assuming it's something about covering up the top tier of seating when expecting only 10,000 fans or somesuch.

2) Whatever CDC decides, can we please get this shit done soon?  I'm tired of this rich-assed school dicking around and almost being good at things.

 

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11 hours ago, Knoxtnhorn said:

1) Maybe it's the wine; maybe I just don't read good (/Zoolander), but I've read the "garage door" part 5 times now and I still can't figure out what CDC is talking about.  I'm assuming it's something about covering up the top tier of seating when expecting only 10,000 fans or somesuch.

2) Whatever CDC decides, can we please get this shit done soon?  I'm tired of this rich-assed school dicking around and almost being good at things.

I’m thinking indoor retraactable padded roof that covers the top section of the arena (hang scoreboard, based for sound). Think of the Alamo dome curtain but horizontal instead of vertical. That is my guess. So it looks like a 10k arena most of the time but could expand to handle larger events. 

Seems like that second level would have to be very high up

Edited by ChickenSandwich
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Whatever they decide, the gym needs to be close to campus. You can get 16k to games but there is nothing wrong if you build one smaller venue. It needs to be basketball first in its design. The games need to be fan friendly including getting students in and out of the gym 

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West Campus is adding more and more multi-family apartments every year.  However, there isn't anywhere on campus to put a basketball arena that's any closer than the Erwin Center is now.  The new arena, wherever it goes, will maybe 3-5 minutes closer to most student housing than is the current locale.  Only way around that is to demo something over near Guadalupe.  But that's an egress issue for non-student attendees.  Plus the higher cost.  Then again, Milliken sounds like he knows how to deploy capital.  

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Sometimes these designs can be so over thought and it's gonna end up a massive cave because of the obsession of having it be multi functional.

Build a 10k arena like Cameron indoor, cram that mother fucker with loud students and when we have a shit home game it won't look like a empty waste land.

Let the city build and fund a fucking convention/Concert hall.

We don't need some 16-20K arena for basketball. 

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45 minutes ago, Rockethorn1978 said:

Sometimes these designs can be so over thought and it's gonna end up a massive cave because of the obsession of having it be multi functional.

Build a 10k arena like Cameron indoor, cram that mother fucker with loud students and when we have a shit home game it won't look like a empty waste land.

 

Where are they going to get the loud students from?

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On building a smaller arena: “Now this is just my mind, no one else’s mind, so let’s just start with that. But there has to be, if you start with a lower bowl that seats say 10,000. You know that upper rake, couldn’t you have a garage door that comes down that’s padded? You never see those seats. 

“Somehow a garage door comes down right now and you never see my garage. Imagine if it was padded. You’d never open it up. Now, you have a 10,000 seat basketball stadium. You’re playing in the Spurs’ arena, close the gates on the upper rake and then open them up when you have a concert. Why can’t you do that? 

“No one ever thought you’d go from the 8-track to the cassette to the Discman to an iPod to the phone. … Someone’s going to find that technology at some point and time that works for everybody.”

I think it's great our new AD gives interviews when's he completely baked.  So refreshing.  

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On 8/3/2018 at 11:39 PM, Orca of Peace said:

losing the Rec center would be a tragedy.  Just blow up the FEC and use that space. Play all road games. 

That space is being taken by the med center. Hence the reason why we have to build another arena. 

 

This is has been mentioned before.

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49 minutes ago, Tony Soprano said:

If we are worth a damn the fans show up for the big games. 10,000 is beyond stupid. Look back at our season averages over the years.

I think the under is way more consistent than the over. What's dumb is to have a cave of a arena instead of something that fits who and what we are. 

But hey "we are Texas" so more than likely we are going to build another arena that is too big for us because "we are Texas" so we need the biggest in everything.

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I know we will make it 13-15K but if they really wanted a great atmosphere they will put the students right on top of the action instead of putting all the blue hairs in the seats. 

I was lucky enough to attend a game with my dad in the early 90's in the old Boston Garden and it was small and intimate and loud as fuck. Same with Cameron Indoor at Duke. It's small but loud as hell because the crowd sits right on top of you and that's is what you want. A loud intimidating crowd. 

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10,000 is where it needs to be. As a lifelong die hard i'd rather the arena occasionally have more demand than supply than to have a bunch of empty seats literally 90+% of the time, which is currently the case, and which would still be the case with 13,500 seats. Texas basketball has a long way to go to get to where more than 10,000 seats are consistently in demand. And if/when we do get there it will be a beautiful thing. All 10,000 fans need to really want to be there. That's when your home environment can become something special.

Edited by Goo Punch
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As I've mention before, the configuration is key.  A 12,000 arena is fine if it's configured right.  The FEC is horribly configured for basketball. 

I personally see them doing somewhere between 10-12000.  Keep in mind this thing wil be basketball focused but used for other events too like concerts, UT functions, graduations, etc.  So it realistically can't be less than 10,000.

 

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2 hours ago, Goo Punch said:

10,000 is where it needs to be. As a lifelong die hard i'd rather the arena occasionally have more demand than supply than to have a bunch of empty seats literally 90+% of the time, which is currently the case, and which would still be the case with 13,500 seats. Texas basketball has a long way to go to get to where more than 10,000 seats are consistently in demand. And if/when we do get there it will be a beautiful thing. All 10,000 fans need to really want to be there. That's when your home environment can become something special.

Are empty seats that were given to big Longhorn Foundation donors still a problem?

Because what they especially don't need is a bunch of sold-out games with only 6K actual attendance.

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35 minutes ago, Beau Vine said:

Are empty seats that were given to big Longhorn Foundation donors still a problem?

Because what they especially don't need is a bunch of sold-out games with only 6K actual attendance.

starting with steve patterson making the game day experience terrible and extending through our down times under shaka i don't think we've ever had worse attendance from the BMD's.

Edited by Goo Punch
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The arena should go where the Myers Track stadium is right now.  That's a ridiculous use of prime real estate that gets used for one marquee event a year then just takes up space.  

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10 minutes ago, Bojack said:

Allen Fieldhouse seats 16,300. The Erwin Center seats 16,734.  An arena doesn't need to have a small seating capacity to be a great place to watch basketball.  

ours does. not "small" necessarily, but no bigger than medium sized. we are not ku.

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9 minutes ago, Tony Soprano said:

The last 5 year attendance averages for Texas Basketball:

2013 10,945

2014 10,186

2015  11,249

2016  12,828

2017  10,490

This is with Texas teams that weren't that great playing in a crappy arena. As I said a 10,000 seat arena would be retarded.  It needs to be somewhere in the range of 12.5-14 thousand. People are going to want to go see us play in an arena actually built for basketball.  If it's only 10,000  then good luck seeing the Horns play often.

those numbers are nowhere near the actual attendance. how many games did we see where there were 6,000 people max and the reported attendance on TV was 10,800? We were drawing 5,000 people for non conference games. 

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just went and looked up our reported attendance for conference home games last year and of the four (4) games that had a reported attendance higher than 10k+ three (3) of them were saturday matinee games. TTU was the only conference team to draw more than 10,000 reported attendance on a weeknight. The saturday matchups (OU, KU, WVU) actually skew the overall attendance numbers, drawing 40+% more fans than weeknight conference games. we don't even regularly get 10k as it is. 

Edited by Goo Punch
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1 hour ago, Goo Punch said:

those numbers are nowhere near the actual attendance. how many games did we see where there were 6,000 people max and the reported attendance on TV was 10,800?

This was my point earlier.  10800 are tickets sold.  Which means you can't even sell that many tickets for those games if capacity is 10K.  

So we're going to have a bunch of sellouts with 5K people actually in the stands, which is a disaster, unless they get the LHF thing under control.  

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19 hours ago, Pancho Negro said:

As I've mention before, the configuration is key.  A 12,000 arena is fine if it's configured right.  The FEC is horribly configured for basketball.

I personally see them doing somewhere between 10-12000.  Keep in mind this thing wil be basketball focused but used for other events too like concerts, UT functions, graduations, etc.  So it realistically can't be less than 10,000.

 

 

15 hours ago, Bojack said:

Allen Fieldhouse seats 16,300. The Erwin Center seats 16,734.  An arena doesn't need to have a small seating capacity to be a great place to watch basketball.  

 

13 hours ago, realgreggym said:

Its not the number of seats in a gym, its how they are configured in relationship to the court..

All correct.  If we want a good basketball experience, it needs to be a basketball arena, not a special events center.

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CDC has been reading my posts. I said this on another site in March 2015:

 

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I've tried to draw it before, but I don't have the skills. My idea would be an arena designed to be used as just a lower level (most women's games and some men's), but be expandable to an upper deck for big games and tournaments.

There'd be a lower bowl. At the top of that lower level, there would be luxury suites. The upper deck would be above the suites. For smaller games, there would be a way to cut off the upper deck from view, and also keep the noise down low to make it a louder environment. My mind sees large, dark curtain-like panels draped from above the center court scoreboard to the tops of the luxury suites. But it would obviously have to be done in an aesthetically pleasing way, and not trailer-trashy (OU).

 

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