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Originally Posted by DrachenFire
You're confusing the Rec Center with the DAC, they're attached but considered separate buildings (you could buy naming rights to the Rec Center). The Rec Center was new construction and cost $41.6 million. In the DAC, where the hoops and wrestling teams compete upstairs and swimming and diving is in the basement, they've replaced the seating from bench to chairbacks along the sidelines and added more bleacher seating along the baselines. They've also constructed an actual concession stand instead of having a hot dog cart in the corner, and added a visiting locker room and restrooms on court level instead of needing to go downstairs for them. The home locker rooms were also renovated. Capacity actually went down from 2532 to 2509. It's like a structurally deficient bridge, not necessarily in danger of falling down, but not up to modern standards.
I say lipstick on a pig because I assumed they were meant to hold the fort before another run was made at renovating The Armory. There really isn't any other land available on campus that has not been spoken for either for uCity Square or Schuylkill Yards. Looking at the Wiki page for the DAC, they've probably spent $15-20 million on the renovations. The original estimate I remember for The Armory renovation was around $80 million, that $15-20 million would have been a good jumping off point for a new, modern, creative reuse of a historical building in the heart of campus that would have benefited the whole student body. Instead the university is giving The Armory, which is used extensively for rec sports and as practice space for some of Drexel's other programs, to an outside organization.
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Eh, they can call them different buildings if they want too, it's clearly one in the same. But I agree the money primarily went to the athletic center as i wrote. I was there last maybe three years ago, I thought it was a perfectly acceptable place to watch college basketball. I thought rehabbing the armory was a good idea but I imagine feasibility studies demonstrated that ground up construction would be much cheaper.
Drexel is definitely not at a loss for land, Ucity Square and Schuylkill Yards are decades away from compete fruition, still plenty of time to incorporate an Arena for Drexel into the plans for either site. For now, I see no major issue with the Dac.
Quote:
Originally Posted by Londonee
It's actually around 20,500, which already makes it one of the 3 or 4 largest venues in the NBA - so 25,000 is probably a stretch. To quote someone smarter than me, size matters not. I'd rather have an awesome, super high-end, sleek, intimate Arena in Center City that holds 17,500 that's hopping every night than a cavernous sometimes full, sometimes not building on the edge of town.
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Totally agree. Not to mention, every whisper of a new sixers arena portrays it as a downtown arena, which further conflicts a larger capacity building.
I'd be shocked if it had more than 18000 seats. By virtue of being primarily a basketball arena they'll be able to do things like incorporate more court level seating that will more than offset the loss of a few thousand of the cheapest seats in the WFC.
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That was funny.
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