Aloha,
Thanks for sharing. Love the idea of improving the size and location of the student section.
UA…Campus of Champions
Student section may not be any bigger, Guy, but it’s all downstairs. And they would be courtside on the entire north side.
Interesting concept to create a mezzanine below the current suites on the south side.
Looks like the media would remain in section 130 at the southeast corner next to the students.
Hard to believe the arena will be 30 years old this year. As well as it has held up, it’s still time for some renovations.
Last month I checked out the Poultry arena, which is very similar to BWA (octagonal layout, double deck, similar capacity) and 18 years newer. There’s more light on the concourse in Columbia thanks to plenty of glass, which might be something they might add at BWA since a concourse redo seems to be in the works. Little more space on the concourse as well. But other than that the concourse wasn’t any better than BWA despite being 60% newer.
I assume this would be starting in the 2024-25 season. Correct?
Nope. From the same Twitter thread:
That’s what Florida did when they revamped their arena, played NC games around the state.
Possible sites:
Simmons Bank Arena (with or without streaming)
Pine Bluff Convention Center (capacity 7620)
Barnhill
Hot Springs (capacity 6300)
ASWho wouldn’t let us play there, but it would be funny if we did and outdrew any Pink Puppy game.
That would be a good year, though, to play more road and neutral site games with the roadies to be returned in the new arena.
I would bet when it’s said and done, the arena will have a hyphenated name.
____ -Walton
Or Walton-_____
Because somebody will write a big check
EDITED TO CLARIFY: The Walton Arena name will remain in addition to whatever is added. They are shopping various naming opportunities that could total $35 million.
Can we get a collection going here?
Walton Whole Hog Arena
It just fits, right?
I’ve added some notes (long) from the presentation today here:
I really like seeing the student seating all along the north side, and the benches will obviously be moved to the south side with this plan since they can’t be in front of the student seating. Will look a lot better on TV with the students being court side the length of the court facing the camera
That story notes that HY said the parking issue will have to be resolved if BWA is to become a site for concerts, etc.
Well, duh. The parking issue needs to be resolved for football, basketball and probably class five days a week. Seems to me that parking decks are going to have to be built. Like a whole lot of Lot 56, for instance.
Where will the high donor tickets on the courtside be moved if the students are moved there?
You could build a massive parking deck and it would still not solve the problem
The biggest issue is lack of adequate street access. The traffic from a deck just empties out into streets that cannot handle the volume. Just an intrinsic problem with an arena on a college campus. And a metro area that is outgrowing traffic infrastructure.
seems to me that since non-con are not as well attended as conference…play them in Barnhill.
Probably just moved over in front of the students.
We’re assuming that the benches will be relocated but that’s not necessarily the case. I’m not sure if there’s an SEC policy about that or not.
Yep, but UA can’t fix the Fayetteville streets. Or remove the hills to the west of campus.
That’s a possibility, but it occurs to me ticket sales will be complicated. Conference games would go on a BWA ticket, NC games on a Barnhill ticket which will be much less numerous. You can’t sell 13,000 season tickets if half the home schedule is going to be in an 8,000 seat arena. Whereas if you move games around the state, they can do single-game sales like we do now in NLR.
I don’t think it would be a whole lot different than what happened during the 2020-21 school year when season-ticket holders had to assign priority to the games they wanted to attend.