(05-21-2018 11:51 AM)JMad03 Wrote:  

(05-21-2018 07:55 AM)jmufan2008 Wrote:  

(05-20-2018 10:23 PM)Hart Foundation Wrote:  

(05-20-2018 05:12 PM)DoubleDDuke Wrote:  I'm really excited about the Union Bank & Trust Center, but I'm really nervous about having to put a tarp on the upper deck for basketball games. I can't envision filling out 8,500 seats in a one bid league.

This is a good topic from DoubleDDuke that has been touched on a few times as we have waited for the new arena project. The nugget regarding tarps over the upper deck is circulating around the Spring Tour stops. I agree that 8,500 is way too big for JMU’s needs. It seems that capacity should be dialed back and reallocate money to other things in the arena.

If you don’t build a church for the Christmas and Easter crowds, then you don’t build an arena for the JMU vs UVA max crowd. The Harrisonburg market is just way too small to justify an 8,500 seating capacity.

This is also a multi-purpose center, not just a basketball arena. If built correctly, they'll be able to use at least 2/3 for concerts and such that can return solid revenue and be a HUGE perk for students and community members. Right now our ~7k seat Convo can only hold a little over 3k for concerts because it's set us very poorly for that. If they can fit 6k in the new arena for a concert, that means you can either cut ticket prices in half or bring an artist that costs twice as much, which takes you into tier 2 artists instead of just tier 3 (usually only large football stadiums and such get tier 1 for $1+ million).

This. The Center is not getting built because of basketball. Harrisonburg needs this just as much.
The old Convo has needed more seating for a looooooong time, but you wouldn't know that if you only went to basketball games.

FIFY

To expand, while seating for other events was a bit of a problem, a huge reason we had difficulty holding many events inside our Convo was due to the way it was built by digging down. There is no garage type entrance or exit from the floor level like at most coliseums. It is simply not an easy egress for anything other than a basketball game. Most venues have huge garage type entrances for unloading and loading as necessary.