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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Constructed by Moss & Associates, headquartered in For Lauderdale, Fla., and designed by Miami-headquartered Arquitectonica, the $45.5 million Student Activities Center includes a new two-story Rathskeller restaurant, which is a marker of tradition on the University of Miami campus; three retail food shops; an indoor/outdoor dining area; lounge; galleries; individual and group study spaces; and a large 1, 065-seat multipurpose room to be used for events from banquets to lectures.

“We wanted to give our students an activities center that’s second to none,” said Donna Shalala, president of the university, in a statement.

The four-story building will also include a 10,000-square-foot student organization suite, conference rooms, workspace and a media center fully equipped with computer rooms, production facilities, tiered meeting room and outdoor lakeside amphitheater.

Built to meet LEED Silver standards, the Student Activities Center was constructed in an L-shape along Lake Osceola. The center was partially funded by $20 million donation from the Fairholme Foundation and a 2006 school referendum, which levied a student fee for the construction and maintenance of the new building. Construction on the activities center began in 2011.

The $14.7 million Schwartz Center for Athletic Excellence will hone in university pride to accommodate and support the student athletes of the University of Miami. The 34,000-sqaure-foot facility was built on the north side of the Isador Hecht Athletic Center and features new football locker rooms, a lounge for university football players, the Student-Athlete Academic Center, which includes a 120-seat auditorium, and mew sports medicine and hydrotherapy training areas. A Gallery of Champions will also be located within the building to pay homage to the tradition and successes of Hurricane Athletics.

Designed by AECOM, with offices in Coral Gables, Fla., the Schwartz Center for Athletic Excellence broke ground in March 2012. The building is expected to achieve LEED Gold certification.

“These projects should give UM students and student athletes a big boost to their Hurricane experience,” said Stephen Chang of Moss & Associates, project manager for both projects, in a statement.
 

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The basketball court at the University of Oregon’s new Matthew Knight Arena.

EUGENE, Ore. — Project architects believe the new 418,000-square-foot Matthew Knight Arena at the University of Oregon represents a number of trends in stadium design innovation: multipurpose facility design, the ability to evolve and the use of technology.

The $200 million stadium, which opened in January of this year, serves the men’s and women’s basketball teams and is the home court for volleyball. Additionally, the stadium will host about 30 to 40 concerts and other entertainment events each year.

Designed by Los Angeles-based AECOM, in association with TVA Architects Inc., the new arena replaces the 84-year-old McArthur Court, a project that required the design team to ensure preservation of the iconic “Mac Court” history and memories, according to the firm.

“The seating bowl was the heart of this project,” said Jon Niemuth, principal and design director with Ellerbe Becket [now practicing as AECOM]. “It was very important to capture the intimate, passionate mood of McArthur Court, while feeling modern and not crowded.”

To achieve this, the firm approached the project from a fan’s perspective and designed the new arena from the inside out.

A primary design goal for the new arena was to create a “Theater for Basketball.” The new arena has a capacity of 12,500 and “preserves an intimate, intimidating feel with a seating bowl pitched at 36 degrees in the student section and upper level — the steepest pitch allowed by code,” according to AECOM officials.

Started in 2003, the project is being built to meet LEED Silver certification but may achieve Gold.

Niemuth said that shrinking budgets require schools to do more with less money. Subsidy reductions in the last five years have impacted schools’ ability to fund athletics,
forcing creative solutions to stadium design.

Niemuth said collegiate stadiums vary from professional sports stadiums in terms of their market demographic — specifically, they bring in more income from personal income expenditures than corporate sponsorships, said Niemuth.

“Our biggest trend in the collegiate market is what I call self-sustainability,” he said.

“While revenue is important for all of our domestic clients and domestic leads, the big trend in collegiate athletics is essentially to produce enough revenue or support operations for the athletic department in a way that essentially moves them towards the goal of self-sufficiency, not relying on a subsidy from the larger university.”

Trends in Stadium Design

Ongoing struggles amongst coaches and athletic department staff, caused by scheduled events clashing with needed practice time, resulted in a boom of practice facilities that provide consistently available practice areas separate from the university arenas.

“That’s worked out good, but again, in a profile of different sizes not everyone can afford a standalone practice facility,” Niemuth said. “That could range from $7 million to $8 million, to as high as $20 to $25 million.”

Facility signage for advertising is a means for revenue generation. Due to LED technology and a downward price-versus-value trend, fixed placement signage has increased, Niemuth said. While the cost per square foot for LED can be higher, it provides the opportunity to sell advertisements multiple times, easily refresh content, and create more dramatic brand expressions in a larger area for greater potential revenue.

However, many schools are challenged by the upfront costs, as their budgets aren’t flexible to accommodate “extras” even with the return on investment, he said.

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