Someone on BN, I believe, made a good suggestion. Why not leave Pauley as is, use it for other purposes, and build a new arena located in south campus near Westwood for the $185MM or much less, just for basketball. It could be designed in any way that UCLA wanted to design it, make it a “basketball specialty” arena, intimidating for visiting teams and a solid answer for the guys across town. A lot of value can be had for $185MM with a new structure in another location.
Bill

I share the same thoughts as N. I’ve been back and forth on this, but I think I’ve concluded that I like the idea of renovating Pauley, or at least keeping the stadium at the same location as Pauley. There’s so much history there and you can call me sentimental, but I like it there. The updated look is pretty nice and I’m sure it will look better once it is completed.

I also wish they did more with the seating configuration and, like N said, made the seats steeper and more intimidating. I thought they would do this by digging deeper underground and lowering the court. They could then slope the seats so that they are steeper and closer to the court. This could also allow us to create suites above for additional revenue.

is because the additional expense is in the value of land, which is already owned. Once you take the land value out, building a building on the USC campus during the height of the construction boom should be equal to or greater than the cost of buiding a building in Westwood during an economic downturn.

Its good to see some plans reach the light of day — Pauley needs an overhaul. The question is whether or not this is the right plan and whether or not the athletic department is going about it in the right way.

I consider this a freshening up, rather than a redesign or full renovation. The most significant additions are the player locker rooms and training facilities. Those are essential. Centering the seats and bringing them close behind the baskets (with one section given to students) is also a move in the right direction.

However there are some design and expenditure missteps. Not improving the sight-lines for any section — especially the 300s — is one flaw. Blowing money on a donor club room above the new locker rooms and training facilities is another. What a waste of space and money.

I am glad Guerrero is revisiting the donation scheme and its proposed impact on long-time season ticket holders. However, donor reaction and its impact on the plan should have been considered and addressed a long time before now.

They have already begun to alienate some large donors by threatening to take away their seats if they don’t contribute tens, if not hundreds, of thousands of dollars to the renovation. The money grab is especially troubling when you consider all of the money the department has left on the table in the past. I was told by fundraising officials that the annual donation required for many ticket holders in the 100 sections was grandfathered in at $800, while more recent donors paid between $5,500 and $6,000 annually for the right to have their seats.

Bottom line is the department has not handled its donors, a valuable resource in any renovation plan, intelligently or thoughtfully. Combined with the design flaws, I’m left to wonder if this project will ever get off the ground without a serious rethinking of expenditures and fundraising. I just hope they didn’t bungle a prime opportunity to get Pauley done right.

Our athletic teams are students at UCLA. The best seats should be reserved for their classmates – other students at UCLA. Of course, once you graduate from UCLA you retain your interest, and there are many who didn’t or couldn’t go to UCLA who also have an interest. To me, though, the most important people to be remembered when setting things up should be the students. Each student gets one brief time to be a student, to go crazy, to be part of the Den, to put on blue and gold face paint, and all of that. That time is what we geezers now refer to with great relish as the Good Old Days. (Mine were Coach and Coach Prothro, and my sincere condolences to those whose “Good Old Days” will end up being CHP and CTS.)

Sure, the business aspect of the enterprise says separate as many dollars as is possible from the patrons, but I do not want Pauley and Mr. Guerrero to become (look the other way, Nestor) the Yankee Stadium and Steinbrenner of the West.

Pack the students all around the Court. Maybe another e-mail campaign to Mr. Guerrero thanking him for spearheading this effort, but also reminding him that the students have to be his first priority. He is the athletic director for UCLA so his first priority has to be to those who attend UCLA, not to Geezers, Geezers to be, and Anyone with bucks.

To create an all new stadium on campus would be a problem because we have so much now that in order to build something new, you have to tear down AND replace an existing structure. This is costly to an extreme, plus having 2 major construction projects not only doubles the cost, but possibly creates more opportunities for delay. And given our academic administration, any inconvenience to them may kill the project entirely.

Also I have heard that the water table does not allow digging deeper to improve sightlines. So the only alternative would be to tear down entirely and build up. This would probably add another $100 million to the project. Seeing as we are already strong arming season ticket holders, this would be a disaster and kill the project.

This is a compromise pure and simple. Nobody will be completely happy. Such is the nature of it. But given the situation as it stands, I think they did a good job, and should be commended for getting this on track.

I think people are looking at this the wrong way. The reality—fortunate or unfortunate—is that UCLA basketball and Pauley Paviliion go hand in hand, both in a historical context and in a donor context. We had to keep it and modify it as well as we could.

9 of our 11 banners have been hung since Pauley opened (the first two were won during its construction). It is to college basketball what Yankee Stadium is to pro baseball. We have seen what happened when the Yankees tried to build a new stadium—immense costs and cost overruns, enormous ticket price increases and most importantly, a loss of the history. Pauley is epic and needed to be kept.

In addition, the conditions of the gift that the Pauleys made in the 60s had to be respected. This meant keeping the look of the structure and not building a new one in a new location. If UCLA had reneged on these conditions, how would it get major donors for the new arena?

It is also clear that no matter what the athletic department tried to do, people were going to be unhappy. Many have the view that Pauley is hallowed ground and should not be altered. Others think it’s a poor facility and needs to be razed. The administration admirably found middle ground: an upgrade that will make Pauley one of the premier college basketball arenas in the country, while paying appropriate respect to the historic nature of the building and the gift that made it happen.

it is not a "perfect " arena (especially the seats), but due to the restrictions it was never going to be perfect. I trust that the administration took all of our concerns into consideration and did the best it could do to satisfy us. Desepite its imperfections, I do think that it’s going to be a fanstastic place to watch a game, a fantastic place to bring recruits, a great place for history, awe and inspiration, and I, for one, cannot wait until 2012 when I will make my pilgrimage to the improved mecca of college basketball.

My comment above would result in zero $$ spent on Pauley, except for taking out the banners and relocating them to the new arena.
SC built their arena in a short period of time. Stanford built a new football stadium in one year!!! Somebody please tell me that in Los Angeles, we have the expertise to build a basketball arena for the Bruins, first class, in less than or equal to the timelines they are discussing now, and do it for less than $185MM.

My concern is that for, maybe political reasons, the administration will overspend on Pauley and come up short of an “ideal” basketball viewing arena, and take much longer doing it. Leave the old one alone for intramural, PE (do they still have those classes?), etc. and do it right.
Bill

Then I believe they will overspend, and end with a “barny” feel for many of the seats, without addressing the line of sight issues. How did Cal do on Heck Pavilion? Is that a multi-purpose place with limitations for basketball, or more specific for basketball?

Bill

I like that we are finally giving Pauley a facelift.
I don’t like that absence of a practice court and improving the 300’s.

Although I would love a new state of the art facility, Pauley is hallowed ground and a landmark in the world of college basketball. I just wish more was done because this opportunity won’t come again for a loooooong loooooong time.

Don’t forget – Our home games for championships nos. 1 and 2 were at that hallowed venue the Sports Arena next door to the Crapaseum. That place sucked (although it was neat for the interior shots of "THX 1138). I shot baskets at Pauley like hundreds of thousands of other kids, and I also shot baskets on the outdoor courts by the dorms. There is nothing sacred about either of them.

What we’re talking about is about the home for the number one college basketball program ever anywhere. (Someone find the clip where Coach Howland explained the reasons for that.) The number one program should have nothing less than the number one facility. The players deserve nothing less, and more important, the students deserve no less.

Sure, we had 30,000 students and only 15% or so showed up at games. Find out how many students will show up for every game and then allocate that many sideline seats. They can be benches, of course, because the students won’t be sitting down.

This is not a time to try to put lipstick on a pig. It’s demeaning to Coach, for one thing.

Another reason to provide a first class facility is that our coach, Ben Howland, was promised something when he was hired and UCLA needs to deliver. To come up with a remodel seems to be a compromise that may satisfy the administrators (i.e. we told BH we would do something and we did it), but could be frustrating for too many others. Either tear it down and build for $185MM or abandon it to the intramural program and build somewhere else using all of the $185MM to create from ground up a place all Bruins can be proud of (I ended that sentence a bit awkwardly but FOX71 would understand).
Bill