New location for basketball stadium
- Thread starter utisdabomb12
- Start date
Hmmm, this is a little troubling. I mean, I understand the appeal of building an events center right downtown... except that the appeal has very little to do with making the Texas Basketball experience better. If UT (and the city, if they get involved I suppose) wants a place even more "ideal" for having big concerts and live events? That location is great. Tourists can get there easily from their hotels. Locals are that much more likely to make an evening of it, going somewhere for a nice dinner before or after and such.
But man, I was hoping that the emphasis of a new basketball arena for UT would be... to make it a better basketball facility. For me, the obvious solution was to put the new place somewhere over near the baseball and softball fields. I realize, of course, that the area is a weird patchwork of UT land and private residential property. But there are enough smaller UT buildings (which, if they were rebuilt today would be built in a much more space efficient way, combining buildings into taller buildings and such) and parking areas (which, if you were to have more reasons to park over there could, at least in part, be replaced by a multi-level garage or two) that I'm pretty sure they could figure something out if they tried.
Now, I get the appeal of having the place be multi-use. They've done a lot to try to make the football stadium more and more multi-use to help warrant spending as much money and space on something that only hosts 6 or 7 home games a year (and they've done quite well doing that). The Erwin Center, hosting all the events it does outside of basketball, probably brings in quite a bit of money so swapping it for something that's only basketball probably sounds problematic to any of the money people at UT. And, yeah, putting a major events center across I 35 would almost certainly concern those same people. It's not to say that, with some forward thinking, they couldn't make it work very well. But... I would imagine this is playing a role in all this.
My concern is, if the focus isn't enough on making a better basketball venue to figure something out closer to campus, what else will be overlooked to make it more profitable in a multi-use way. I mean, as everyone as pointed out, this is bad for trying to get students to a game. I mean, I'd be shocked if they aren't going to try to come up with some kind of shuttle plan to get students over there... but that still doesn't make it BETTER for students to get there. It clearly would be more of a hassle than it is now. And let's be honest... the student section is about the only thing that the Erwin Center has going for it as far as being a basketball venue. Messing with that can't be a good thing I wouldn't think.
Here's hoping this isn't what ultimately happens... and if it ends up being the case, here's hoping that the rest of the decision-making that goes into it is MORE helpful for making a better gameday experience because they already have a lot of things to fix as it is, and this will just be one more step backwards as far as that goes.
But man, I was hoping that the emphasis of a new basketball arena for UT would be... to make it a better basketball facility. For me, the obvious solution was to put the new place somewhere over near the baseball and softball fields. I realize, of course, that the area is a weird patchwork of UT land and private residential property. But there are enough smaller UT buildings (which, if they were rebuilt today would be built in a much more space efficient way, combining buildings into taller buildings and such) and parking areas (which, if you were to have more reasons to park over there could, at least in part, be replaced by a multi-level garage or two) that I'm pretty sure they could figure something out if they tried.
Now, I get the appeal of having the place be multi-use. They've done a lot to try to make the football stadium more and more multi-use to help warrant spending as much money and space on something that only hosts 6 or 7 home games a year (and they've done quite well doing that). The Erwin Center, hosting all the events it does outside of basketball, probably brings in quite a bit of money so swapping it for something that's only basketball probably sounds problematic to any of the money people at UT. And, yeah, putting a major events center across I 35 would almost certainly concern those same people. It's not to say that, with some forward thinking, they couldn't make it work very well. But... I would imagine this is playing a role in all this.
My concern is, if the focus isn't enough on making a better basketball venue to figure something out closer to campus, what else will be overlooked to make it more profitable in a multi-use way. I mean, as everyone as pointed out, this is bad for trying to get students to a game. I mean, I'd be shocked if they aren't going to try to come up with some kind of shuttle plan to get students over there... but that still doesn't make it BETTER for students to get there. It clearly would be more of a hassle than it is now. And let's be honest... the student section is about the only thing that the Erwin Center has going for it as far as being a basketball venue. Messing with that can't be a good thing I wouldn't think.
Here's hoping this isn't what ultimately happens... and if it ends up being the case, here's hoping that the rest of the decision-making that goes into it is MORE helpful for making a better gameday experience because they already have a lot of things to fix as it is, and this will just be one more step backwards as far as that goes.
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