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BOTH Adams Center Replacement

2

2011BisonAlumni

Well-known member
Building is 73 years old….

Missoula is 130k metro size and growing. There is nowhere to host conventions of notable size.

Has there ever been any serious talks of a new arena?
 
The Adams Center may be 73 years old but it's undergone numerous renovations over the years.

I also like that it seats about 7500. Other more recent facilities are much smaller, such as Gonzaga's arena at 6,000, Idaho's and PSU's in the 4000-seat range, and Sac State at 3000.

The problem is not with the arena. It's the product inside the arena.
 
I'm OK with the arena. There's really not a bad seat for most court events (not certain about music). I'm also very OK with the products. There were a lot of great games there this year. I know, cause I was court-side for all of them. Especially volleyball. (Damn. How'd we get back into volleyball?)
 
There have been conversations about an arena going back to the late 1990's. A lot of things have changed since Hogan first floated the idea of an off campus events center similar to Spokane Arena, but I think there is little desire to broach the idea again both on campus and off of it. Cost being one thing and control is another.

UM couldn't fashion together the 100 million plus capital campaign to do that in the 90's and the costs probably in excess of 500 million now. They couldn't get the 30 million needed to ideally redo the adams center the first time around, and they've been piecing it all together since then. I do believe there is a plan for thenorth end of the arena, to improve fan experience/concessions and further improve the concert/event hosting abilities but that has been on the back burner for quite a while now. Campus politics, monetary constraints has made it difficult for the athletic department to engage in university funded capital projects like that for nearly 20 years now. Gotta come from private entities, and they have been only able to fund it on small project basis for the Adams Center. Took them 20 years to get the womens locker rooms done.

My understanding the focus on private capital fund raising is all on improving the press boxes and suites on the west side of WaGriz first. Also on that list are upgrading the fan facing elements of Wa-Griz as well (restrooms, concessions, etc). I think that is next on the list of must do's, before they would even consider inside of Adams center renovations.
 
I too would like to see a new Basketball arena. Certainly don't think we need anything bigger than about 8k, but it would be a welcome addition. There really is nowhere to build a new arena on campus unless they were ok with building it down at south campus where all the practice fields are located. That's about the only place where they have any space unless they wanted to demolish Dahlberg but that would cause a major disruption for several years.

Like GF24 said, the first priority is the Wa-Griz west side expansion/renovation. It's badly needed and that's seen as the major revenue generation project for the athletic department, so this project of course will be the top priority for the time being. Have heard there is a lot of discussion for this project but who really knows how far off it is at this time.

I suppose if you had a 20 year master plan a new arena or a major Dahlberg renovation would be on the list but it's definitely not at the top of the list right now and it could be upwards of a decade away.
 
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