A new home for the basketball teams is slated to open in downtown Louisville in Fall of 2010. I was hoping capacity would top 24,000 seats, but it seems it will be just 22,000, remaining second in the state (see renderings below). Team Services LLC (the sports division of Learfield Communications) marketed the naming rights for the city's downtown arena for $40 million, but ended up settling, on April 19, 2010 for less than $14 million. One exciting development: we're the only major college sports team that plays in an arena with an exclamation point in the middle. I hear you have to shout the yum when you say it (the kfc YUM! center)

Louisville-based Yum! Brands, Inc. will pay $13.5 million for the naming rights. The agreement spans 10 years with the right to extend for five years if both parties agree in the eighth year. The KFC Yum! Center name will be branded on the front and Ohio River side of the arena, as well as on the roof of the building. It also means Yum! brand foods like KFC, Taco Bell and Pizza Hut will be available at various concession stands throughout the center - the availability of each depending on the event.

The press releases are making special mention of how much better the sightlines will be than at Freedom Hall. The sightlines are Freedom Hall used to be fine, but the floor was lowered 25 years ago to accomodate luxury boxes and the slope of the upper deck was never redone (was built in 1955 as a 13,000 seat facility). These lines will make the arena more enjoyable for upper-deckers, assuming that you aren't really high up. That, the additional capacity, scheduling flexibility and the newness to wow recruits are the main benefits. Currently, Freedom Hall is unavailable for most of February due to horse shows, tractor pulls, RV conventions et al. That can be bad for our team's momentum, though in 2007 and 2008, that's when we really came alive.

The city is also making a big push to land some marquee events for the new arena when it opens, notably the Division I NCAA women’s volleyball finals, scheduled shortly after the building is to open in 2010. It is unclear whether the NCAA would award a contract to a building that is so far from completion.

I'm not sold that this plan is best for U of L basketball. U of L basketball is very strong financially. They get very cheap rates on a large arena that meets most of their needs. This will a lot of pressure to rake in revenue from the additional luxury boxes. When the program is hot, that should be easy, but if we have a couple of down years and football starts winning again (dividing the historically concentrated sports attention span), we could be looking for trouble. This arena is secretly about luring NBA or NHL teams, which will hurt U of L in the long run, though perhaps benefit the city and state.

You have to wonder about those potential benefits given the skyrocketing cost, making this the most expensive basketball arena ever built. Anywhere. No kidding. Per the Louisville Courier-Journal:

Total cost of the arena over 30 years is projected at around $602 million.

That puts the facility squarely in the running for most expensive arena ever built, a distinction claimed by a proposed New Jersey Nets arena that had been projected at $637 million before construction costs skyrocketed. It's unlikely to be built anytime soon. Mandatory donations (the amount due for the priviedge of purchasing season tickets at face value range from $2500 for lower level seats along the side to none for the top endzone seats.

Certainly, this will be the most expensive arena -- by far -- ever built for a college sports team, which is a non-taxpaying, non-profit organization.

This whole arena issue has been a tough one for me. I'm in support of a downtown arena. The site, to me, wasn't a big deal.

But all of these ships had sailed by the time I became a columnist. It's interesting to me
that the estimates of a new arena around the Fairgrounds ranged from $165-$185 million.

The estimates for an arena downtown at the old Water Company site favored originally by major Jerry Abramson ranged around $270 million.

Both of those, of course, would've been much higher in today's dollars. Of course, if both had been approved immediately, one or both likely already would have been built -- at less than the cost of this waterfront arena now.

Unreal. Still, UofL gets total freedom to schedule games when they want. That concession was needed to provide some benefit for the school, given the aforementioned sweet deal with Freedom Hall. One caveat on that $600 million price tag... that includes hotels and commercial space. The real dollar amount just for the arena may be just half that.

Here are some links to renderings:

CJ's interior sight lines
Skyline with Arena and Museum Plaza
Video of Proposed Arena (likely somewhat outdated)
An entire document about the sightlines
CJ Site Overview

The unnamed $249 million arena, planned for Second and Main streets downtown, has had some isses, as has everyone else, with financing. Financing costs were projected at $573 million in January 2007, before fallout from the subprime mortgage crisis caused that figure to escalate. Assured stepped in and offered to replace the arena authority's first choice for a bond insurer, troubled Ambac Financial Group Inc. Ambac had proposed a fixed-rate plan for insuring the arena bonds that had total financing costs of more than $700 million. Greg Carey, managing director of Goldman Sachs' sports facility financing group, told the arena authority on 4/24 that total interest costs under the Assured plan would be in the low-$600 million range, a "significant savings" over what they would have been just three months ago. Seeing that you end up paying 2.5 times as much makes you wish you could just pay cash.

Here's a live view of the construction:
http://oxblue.com/pro/open/ksfb/louisvillearena

HOK press release, 4/24/2007

The Louisville Arena Authority has challenged our design team to make the new arena the very best facility for the #1 college sports town in the nation. We have developed a unique seating bowl concept with better sight lines and more seats than Freedom Hall. With this bowl design, we feel we have met the challenge given to us by the Arena Authority, and believe that this community will be thrilled with the experience at their new arena.