Comprising 225,000 square feet, the state-of-the-art arena seats 9,500 fans and features a full basketball court and locker room suites for players, athletic coaches and officials. It also includes more luxurious amenities such as a private student concourse, courtside and baseline student seating, three premium club areas — the Courtside Club, the All-American Club and the Pavilion Club — more than 1,700 premium seats and an intimate seating bowl. Spectators can even watch the action on the largest center-hung video display board in all of college sports, or enjoy the cutting-edge, fiber-enabled Wi-Fi lounge.

The facility was designed by AECOM Technology of Kansas City, Mo.; BL Harbert International located in Birmingham, Ala., served as the project’s general contractor.

The Pavilion at Ole Miss is intended to serve as the centerpiece of the Ole Miss Athletics Foundation’s Forward Together capital campaign, according to a statement by AECOM. Located adjacent to Vaught-Hemingway Stadium (which is also undergoing an AECOM-designed expansion and renovation), The Pavilion anchors an updated athletics complex near The Grove, the university’s central open space and renowned tailgating location.

Additionally, the proximity of the facilities is intended to build synergy between football and arena operations and boost the game day experience for fans. The Athletics Foundation worked with AECOM to maximize opportunities for fan engagement, premium seating experiences, sustainable revenue sources, student involvement and campus engagement, according to a statement by the company.

“AECOM provided an integrated perspective with market and economic analysis, long-term cost planning, extensive sports experience and exceptional design,” said Keith Carter, senior associate athletics director and executive director of the Ole Miss Athletics Foundation in a statement. “We’re very proud of their contributions to our facility projects and look forward to The Pavilion becoming a cornerstone of campus life.”

Structurally, the facility consists of a three-story steel frame supporting steel trusses. A curved, colonnaded entrance featuring Doric columns greets visitors at the arena’s entryway, a nod to Ole Miss’ southern traditional architecture style. A barrel roof with a grand clerestory window wall helps introduce natural light into the seating bowl, which is visible from both the main concourse and the mezzanine level. Retractable lower seating allows for large group lectures and convocations on the event floor, and the north entry can double as a food court on non-game days, according to a statement by AECOM.

ACI Building Systems LLC of Batesville, Miss., supplied the arena’s durable, weather-resistant UltraLok Roof system, which was coated with Fluropon by Valspar in a terra cotta hue.

“We are excited to work on such a high profile project in conjunction with ACI,” said Tommy Rogers of Chattanooga, Tenn.-based Rogers Steel Company, which provided metal panels for the project, in a statement issued by Valspar. “The 22-gauge galvalume substrate on this job, paired with the Valspar Fluropon coating, is not only aesthetically pleasing, but offers a premium roofing system fitting of this project.”

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Global design firm DLR Group, which serves clients from 23 locations around the world, has led design efforts for a number of highly regarded collegiate sports facilities since 1987. The firm has in recent years completed the 16,000 seat Pinnacle Bank Arena in Lincoln, Neb., which serves the University of Nebraska women’s and men’s basketball teams; TDECU football stadium for the University of Houston in Houston; PK Park baseball stadium at the University of Oregon in Eugene, Ore.; and Louisiana State University’s 8,550-seat Alex Box Stadium in Baton Rouge, La., among others.

School Construction News spoke with DLR Group Design Principal Greg Garlock, AIA, LEED AP BD+C, and the firm’s National Sports Leader Don Barnum, AIA, about what it takes to design a sports facility that will keep athletes motivated and fans engaged, all while ensuring operational ease and financial success.

Q: What is the most common challenge you encounter during the design of a stadium or arena?

Barnum: One of the key drivers in designing a stadium or arena is how everybody watches the game. The seating bowl, the suites, loge boxes, club spaces — how all of that gets put together is the basis of our job and our responsibility. While that’s a challenge, it’s also an opportunity for great design. All of those premium products have a certain amount of revenue that they generate. We have to make sure that we can build the facility within the amount of money that it’s going to pay back, and that the return on investment (ROI) actually makes sense for the incorporation of those premium products.

Garlock: Another challenge is that many of these facilities become quite large. When we’re talking about a 50,000-seat football stadium or 12,000-seat arena, trying to balance the need to have a capacity like that and create an intimate atmosphere in which people feel close to the action is sometimes a challenge.

Then there’s the magnitude and size of some of these facilities in terms of how they will fit on a campus and not overwhelm their surroundings. We have to look at a number of options to make sure we’re achieving the best blend of all those factors.

Q: Have you noticed any recent design trends specific to collegiate stadiums and arenas?

Garlock: One thing that has really become very prevalent is that these facilities have much stronger connections to their communities, campuses and overall settings. It used to be that these tended to be standalone, inward-looking facilities that really didn’t connect to anything around them. That’s really been flipped completely around in the last several years where we as architects now look long and hard at the campus and community in terms of what is special about that place that we can incorporate in our design. It has created considerably better architecture and friendlier facilities, and made them much more unique and responsive to the owners’ needs.

Barnum: Additionally, what keeps growing is the appetite for premium products. The suites keep getting bigger and nicer, and every building has created some new idea that sets the quality of their product apart from their peers. The reason that’s important is that many universities are competing with other venues in and around their own cities. At the University of Houston, their football stadium is competing for disposable income with professional football and baseball stadiums and other arenas, so they have to be competitive not just with their fellow collegiate institutions but also within their marketplace.

Also, the whole audiovisual aspect of game entertainment is growing. The size of video boards is just unbelievable; they are truly entertainment devices. The game content can also be tied into personal devices as part of the overall entertainment package. The use of smartphones and other devices is driving the entertainment that is produced in the facility. How the fans interact with the event and the institution begins to inform the physical design of the facilities.

Garlock: Fans can just as easily watch the game on their 80-inch big screen television at home with air conditioning, drinks and food, so these facilities and institutions are trying to create experiences that draw people in. We’re helping them develop additional ways to keep it new and exciting, and to create these fantastic environments that people want to be a part of not just once but many times a season. That’s really a challenge for many universities and programs: To keep raising the bar in order to create the best game day experience possible.

Read more of this interview in the September/October issue of School Construction News.

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Sylmar, Calif.-based Tutor Perini, along with 28 Arizona-based subcontractors, extended the arena’s upper concourse, and added permanent as well as portable retractable seating in just 160 days. Renovations were also completed on the arena floor to accommodate different preassembled flooring for basketball and volleyball games. Life-safety improvements were also made throughout the facility, and the arena received minor upgrades including paint and concrete and tile repair.

“I’m in awe of what they were able to do,” said Brian Mueller, the university’s president and CEO. “It was very important for us to have the arena available at the start of the school year.”

Speaking with GCU Today in April 2014, Mueller also noted the project’s seamless quality. “It doesn’t look like a retrofit. It doesn’t look awkward, and that’s big,” he said. “The construction group came through. And it was under budget and in advance of what was agreed to.”

“This has been a great project for Tutor Perini,” said Mike Maland, project manager for Tutor Perini Building Corp. “To complete the expansion ahead of schedule and under budget was a team effort by the architectural team, subcontractors and craftspeople. GCU’s executives played a significant part in our success through their accessibility and ability to make swift decisions.”

The private, for-profit, Division 1 school announced plans to double it’s enrollment from 2013 to 2016, bringing enrollment to roughly 15,000. In an effort to attract more students, and accommodate them, the university has embarked on multiple large-scale building projects.

In 2011, the school completed construction on the original incarnation of its arena. The same year crews broke ground on the new College of Arts and Sciences classroom building. In Feb. 2013, GCU officials also announced that a four-story, 58,000-square-foot addition to the existing Student Union would follow, expanding dining and other services for the growing student population.

Just three months later, the school kicked off a slew of summer construction projects. In addition to the two new five-story residence halls already well underway, the school also announced the construction of a new 33,700-square-foot classroom building, as well as plans to relocate the school’s library to the newly expanded Student Center.

The school is also in the process of developing a second campus in Mesa, and is in talks to develop satellite campuses in Tucson, Las Vegas and Albuquerque after the Mesa campus is established.

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