9/18/02 - New House

Bathrooms, curtains, lighting and retractable seats dominated conversation Tuesday as the Buildings and Grounds Committee of the University of Virginia's Board of Visitors gave final approval to preliminary designs for the school's new basketball/multipurpose arena.

The university expects to break ground on the $128 million, 15,000-seat facility in December.

The arena's schematic plans were approved in May during a committee meeting in Richmond. There were, however, two key items the committee asked the architects to address. First was the possibility of putting restrooms in each of the 20 suites that will hover over the court. Second was the camouflaging of the arena's empty seats on its upper level for events. University officials do not expect to fill all of the arena's seats for every event held there after the facility opens in 2006.

As was the case in the May meeting, much of the committee's time was spent on the normally unpleasant discussion of toilets.

Bob Moje of Charlottesville-based VMDO, the arena's principal architects, presented three options to the committee. The first was the original plan with restrooms on the suite level but no restrooms in the suites themselves. That plan was backed by a survey indicating user preference for toilets outside the suites, Moje said.

The second option called for toilets in six of the suites, costing $90,000, or $15,000 per suite. The final option had toilets in all the suites available for rental, adding another $3.2 million to the arena's price tag. The additional cost would be created by the need to expand the arena's total area by 12,800 square feet to accommodate the additional toilets.

"The cost difference has nothing to do with the bathrooms. The fundamental issue is the overall span of the building. The less the span is, the more economical the building is," Moje said.

When asked by the committee for his opinion on the matter, UVa athletics director Craig Littlepage said that in terms of marketing the suites - which have a rental cost of roughly $60,000 a year - it would be best if they were all the same.

Committee member William H. Goodwin Jr. pushed for bathrooms in all suites, saying the school should make them as attractive as possible.

"If you are going to attract the people that are going to put out the bucks … we ought to make these things nice," Goodwin said.

Eventually, the committee opted for a hybrid resolution of having only the four corner suites with bathrooms. That decision will be put forward at the next full board meeting in October. Committee Chairman Thomas F. Farrell II said that if the school's arena committee strongly favors adding the bathrooms, the board will revisit it. The arena committee's next scheduled meeting is Nov. 22.

Just as with the bathrooms, the committee was presented three options for camouflaging the empty seats. First was a lighting system that would darken the empty seats and create a capacity of approximately 12,000 at a cost of about $50,000. The second would add a curtain around the upper level that would "block" the empty seats. That also would keep the capacity at about 12,000 and would cost about $500,000.

The final option was the use of retractable seats that would fold into a wall at the arena's upper level. That possibility would cost about $750,000 and would put capacity at 12,600. All three options are designed to create an intimate setting for events as the school tries to fill all 15,000 seats.

A decision on that issue also was forwarded to the school's arena committee, which is made up primarily of athletics department officials and coaches.

According to Littlepage, the athletics department had been leaning toward the retractable seat option.

"In the June arena meeting, the two basketball coaches [Pete Gillen and Debbie Ryan] were presented the retractable seating concept and were both generally in agreement that that was the best option," Littlepage said.

While Tuesday's approval of the preliminary plans moved the nearly 25-year process of replacing University Hall closer to fruition, there are issues unrelated to bathrooms and curtains that still need to be resolved.

"Fund raising has been our focus and will be our focus over the next couple of months," said Littlepage, who said that approximately $44 million has been raised for the arena. "We are proceeding forward. There is an understanding that this is something that will help students, helps the university, helps the community and our basketball programs obviously."

Littlepage added that before ground is broken in December, the aim is to have received $65 million or 50 percent of total cost.

"Our goal is to reach that benchmark in the next 60 to 90 days," Littlepage said.

Although UVa is dealing with cuts in state funding and is preparing for deeper reductions in state money, the university's executive vice president and chief operating officer said low interest rates make building projects attractive.

"It's an ideal time to undertake capital construction programs," Leonard W. Sandridge Jr. said.

The academic and medical sides of the university are not being ignored, Sandridge added, pointing to a planned expansion of the UVa Medical Center and a $126 million overhaul of academic buildings on the south Lawn.

"There's a lot going on other than the arena," he said.