Latest Hockey Arena Update (Approved)

[polycom]

This is so stupid its painful to think about.

 

[Chin Diesel]

The Nanook's Carlson Center is aka The Big Dipper. No kidding.

That's the place I'm talking about.

 

[Adios]

When the hockey program has proven it can draw 6-8K for the biggest games what's stupid is playing all games in an arena capped at 4-5K. I think this is a good mix - play the OOC and lesser HE games on campus and play the top 7-8 teams in XL. Would have preferred 2600 be 4000, but oh well. It will still be much better than the current status.

Well, I never said must play on campus.

70 mil for a rink about the size of Colgate's new rink. Theirs cost half the price.

 

[husky8273]

Are you saying it was his choice to go with a smaller arena??

Does Hockey have any big donors, like Football (Burton, Schenkman) Basketball (Wirth) Baseball (Elliott) and Soccer (Rizza (spelling??))?? I don't know.

none announced yet. Perhaps before groundbreaking......

 

[zls44]

Well, I never said must play on campus.

70 mil for a rink about the size of Colgate's new rink. Theirs cost half the price.

The price tag for the size just absolutely does not pass the smell test, union labor or not.

 

[kingdobbs]

The price tag for the size just absolutely does not pass the smell test, union labor or not.

Maybe they’re going old school and trying to build out of wood.

 

[Adios]

The price tag for the size just absolutely does not pass the smell test, union labor or not.

Maybe someone in the board of trustees is associated with a construction company.

 

[Adios]

At the very least, this better result in a consistently ranked UConn women's hockey team. If not, someone robbed the school.

 

[kibblesnbits]

Well, I never said must play on campus.

70 mil for a rink about the size of Colgate's new rink. Theirs cost half the price.

Colgate's new rink gives new meaning to the word intimate. I know they claim it seats about 2200 but I think they must be including some standing room (there's an open concourse behind the seating on one side of the rink). I sat at center ice in a section with 5 rows in front of the press box. Based on the drawings UConn's rink will be much a much larger space, with the two levels giving a more vertical feel. I can't believe for that money that couldn't add a few rows up top to get capacity to 3K-3.5K

 

[WestHartHusk]

I really don’t understand how this can be justified. Gampel, Rentschler and now this rink: poor investments across the 3 most important sports.

Soccer and baseball the only ones done right.

 

[Jimdish255]

I love hockey and want them to have a new rink. But for the cost and capacity this is absurd. Looks like a practice rink. Short sighted and overpriced.

 

[Adios]

The only way to get answers or get changes is make noise. This is completely bogus. SHU's rink will be over 120,000 sq ft.

Intimacy and design are great and sure may become a well liked rink as it is. Kinda similar to Ingalls in setup. But 2600?! Maybe they got it right, what would I know. At least we know the HCC won't be demolished now.

 

[CTBballfan243]

As long as the ice sheet is 200 feet long x 85 feet wide, the training facilities are state of the art, the locker rooms are top notch, and the team meeting and study rooms are on par with the rest of hockey east then I'm good with the new arena. The seating capacity isn't all that important when the majority of the big games will be played in Hartford.

 

[WestHartHusk]

$27,000 per seat. Get $30/seat for 15 games and it will pay for itself in just 60 years, assuming no maintenance. Who is making decisions at this school?

 

[Adios]

$27,000 per seat. Get $30/seat for 15 games and it will pay for itself in just 60 years, assuming no maintenance. Who is making decisions at this school?

Oh, it's going to be so exuberant!

 

[John]

No skin in the fight and it's way too late for changes, but make the scoreboard smaller to save some $$$$, boost the wifi inside the building and add 3-4 more rows of seats on second level to get you to 4k seats.

I get the big huge scoreboard thing is a thing nowadays but most people spend more time on their phone socializing than they do staring at a big scoreboard. There's a huge difference between AT&T in Texas where there are 100k+ fans at a game and your seat may be 70 yards from the field. A big scoreboard with video enhances the game experience. A hockey rink this size? You can watch action quite nicely with you eyes.

I mentioned in another thread I was up in Fairbanks back in March. The hockey rink for Alaska-Fairbanks hockey team was used for a vaccination site. It was a perfect size for a hockey rink.

4600 seats for hockey, a few hundred more for hoops and over 6300 for indoor events needing floor seating.

This reeks of the same issues when Gampel was originally built. I'd say it is also like the Rent but at least the Rent is outside and was designed for expansion. Expanding an outdoor stadium is much easier than adding seating to a building which is walled in and has a roof.

Seems like baseball and soccer fields are the only two they did right.

View attachment 67173

Nailed it - first thing I thought is that they "Gampeled" the plan.

 

[Duncan Idaho]

Been a harpy about it but the lounge should be replaced with bench seating for a net gain of about 300 seats.

 

[CL82]

Been a harpy about it but the lounge should be replaced with bench seating for a net gain of about 300 seats.

If they did people would still complain about the size, but they would add to it complaints about the concessions.

Benedict needs to be able to answer the question why the facility seems to cost so much more for what’s been put in than other venues. I’m sure there’s an answer, but he needs to know what it is and explain it publicly.

 

[The Viking]

Have we gotten any write-ups about the new arena from the CT sports guys? Jacobs, Anthony? I'd assume they would talk to Cavanaugh and Benedict if they wanted to cover it from all angles.

 

[CL82]

Have we gotten any write-ups about the new arena from the CT sports guys? Jacobs, Anthony? I'd assume they would talk to Cavanaugh and Benedict if they wanted to cover it from all angles.

Don't know if they read the hockey threads. You'd think they be all over this. It is a good offseason story.

 

[zls44]

Benedict needs to be able to answer the question why the facility seems to cost so much more for what’s been put in than other venues. I’m sure there’s an answer, but he needs to know what it is and explain it publicly.

This is 97% of why I have such a bug up my butt about it. Can they try explaining it to us like adults, please?

 

[Storrs South]

The price tag for the size just absolutely does not pass the smell test, union labor or not.

My guess is UConn will probably cite this as the reason why. No idea if this truly explains what happened hear but that would be my guess (supposedly lumber costs have increased 180% in the last 12 months):

Sky-high construction costs force developers to get creative​

https://www.bizjournals.com/houston...h-construction-costs-developers-creative.html

EDIT: Didn't realize Sacred Heart facility hasn't been built yet. That's a head scratcher then. As someone else noted and the article below it says the issue is public v. private schools but I dunno how much I buy that...

 

[kingdobbs]

My guess is UConn will probably cite this as the reason why. No idea if this truly explains what happened hear but that would be my guess (supposedly lumber costs have increased 180% in the last 12 months):

Sky-high construction costs force developers to get creative​

https://www.bizjournals.com/houston...h-construction-costs-developers-creative.html

There isn’t much of a “supposedly” about it. The big box store I work at was selling OSB plywood at about $10 a sheet last year, and now it’s about $40. Same goes for almost any lumber in store.

 

[huskymedic]

Have we gotten any write-ups about the new arena from the CT sports guys? Jacobs, Anthony? I'd assume they would talk to Cavanaugh and Benedict if they wanted to cover it from all angles.

Don't know if they read the hockey threads. You'd think they be all over this. It is a good offseason story.

One would say they do...




Alternate access reading link here:

->“There’s a lot of people saying, ‘Why is it costing so much to build a small arena?’” said Dan Toscano, Board of Trustees chair. “I'm sure there are people out there who would say, ‘Why are they spending all this money?’ … The union situation in New England construction makes it expensive. As a public university we have all sorts of requirements we have to live by. If UConn were a private university, this project would not cost as much. That's a reality of life. It's embedded in all the construction that that state of Connecticut does and, frankly, most states.” <-

->Sacred Heart’s arena capacity will be 4,000. Some wonder why UConn’s isn’t, also. “I promise you, you can walk into a lot of athletic departments and find a lot of plans that have been designed but never been built,” athletic director David Benedict said. “If you design pie in the sky, it never gets done. This is a project where we needed to hit a budget target, which in this case was $70 million, and it's going to be a fantastic facility. We had to design a project where we could get everything that we wanted out of it for the amount of money we could afford. There are a lot of people who want a bigger house, but if you can't afford it, you can't buy it.” <-

-> Benedict said UConn consulted most other Hockey East members during the building planning phases. “Nobody told me we should be building something bigger,” Benedict said. “Nobody said, ‘Dave, you're crazy, you have to build something at 4,000 seats.’ Everyone said, ‘Dave, we can't fill our arenas every game.’ We'd much rather have a sold-out arena every game. And most of the people that sit on the side of the desk I’m on would tell you [they would] much rather walk into a facility that is jam-packed and you can't get a ticket than walk into one that's got 1,000 extra seats so you can say, 'Look how big we built this.' It doesn't matter if you can't fill. Filing them once out of 10 games versus filing them every night is different. If you can say this is sold-out every single night, that creates something. And hopefully that is what we'll have.” <-

->“It was probably May [2020] when one of our trustees asked if we should really be going through this construction process in the middle of a pandemic,” Toscano said. “But the translation in construction to waiting is higher cost. If we wait, the cost is going to go up. We had sort of worn out our welcome with Hockey East on getting this thing done, and it may well end up being quite a bit cheaper. … I'm excited to unlock potential and excited to have a home for our hockey programs that reflect who we are as a university and reflect our programming in athletics.” Costs and timelines have, “changed based on going through the public/private [options] and doing it as a university project, and ultimately what we thought we could really build it for and what the university and the [athletic department] thought we could fund,” Benedict said. <-

-> “This puts forward our best and most talented people,” Toscano said of athletic facility construction. “I'm totally good with it and I think it's good for the state. If you want to sit down with sharp pencil and calculator and try to figure it out, I think you’re looking at it the wrong way. If you look at public universities around the country and some of the crazy things they have going on in athletics, we run a spartan ship, comparatively. I can stand in front of any legislative committee or governor or staff and talk about how this all makes sense, and I feel really good about it.” <-

 

[CTBballfan243]

My guess is UConn will probably cite this as the reason why. No idea if this truly explains what happened hear but that would be my guess (supposedly lumber costs have increased 180% in the last 12 months):

Sky-high construction costs force developers to get creative​

https://www.bizjournals.com/houston...h-construction-costs-developers-creative.html

EDIT: Didn't realize Sacred Heart facility hasn't been built yet. That's a head scratcher then. As someone else noted and the article below it says the issue is public v. private schools but I dunno how much I buy that...

The cost for all construction materials across the board are up. Concrete, reinforcing bars, structural steel, lumber. Just because SHU has an OPC (opinion of probable cost) that says they can build their arena for “X” amount of dollars doesn’t mean the project will come in at that price.