Alumni Hall -- Fairfield Stags Hoops Forum

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Date Posted: 04:07:44pm 01/15/06 Sun,
Author: JCM
Subject: Alumni Hall
In reply to: Antman 's message, "Alumni Hall" on 02:30:38pm 01/15/06 Sun,

I have long advocated fixing Alumni Hall. However, if you renovate Alumni Hall, you'd better plan to use it.

The decision on whether to rebuild is impacted by many factors. A principal fact is facility utilization. You can justify spending the money if the facility is going to get a lot of use. Its hard to imagine spending the money, regardless of the price for a facility that gets rare usage.

That being said, the biggest obstacle to rebuilding Alumni hall is not the university, but the town of Fairfield. The town will not allow the school to add seating capacity to Alumni Hall. In fact the last proposal Fairfield made to renovate alumni hall called for reducing the seating capacity there. I can't see spending that kind of money of a facility that has less seating than the current building. What's the point?

The university needs to figure out what they are doing in a hurry or they won't have time to build before the Arena contract is up. And if they can't get things going they will have zero leverage when it comes time to renogiate the arena contract.

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[> [> Alumni Hall - Multiple issues -- JoeStag, 12:34:07pm 01/16/06 Mon, [1]

First, the cost issues. Alumni Hall would cost a lot more than 1 million to renovate, and the capacity would be reduced to about 2,300. My guess 2-3M Buliding a new 4K-5K on campus area would probably be a total of about 20-30 million when you consider knocking down Alumni hall, build a parking garage, road construction on Fairflield property and on North Benson, and all the legal fees and consessions that is take to allow it to be built. Whatever you use as the Cost of Money, it would be much more expensive to build on campus than to remain at Harbor Yards, which is basically at at a break even level.

The other issue is if we just renovated Alumni Hall it would be below the 4,000 seast limit that the A-10 has for entrance. And if we renovated it, all the Club Sports, Prep sports and all the other things that used it would have to be relocated for over a year. Alumni is used 100% of the time.

So I agree that a 4k-5k on campus Arena with a few games at Harbor yard is the most preferable, but its a major decision that the University has to make that effects a lot of people, and is costly. And I do not know how easy it would be to justfy building a 4K-5K arena when Alumni Hall drew less than 2000 with a lot of people getting in free, and AHY only averaging between 2,500 and 3,000.

But big question is what do Alumni and Students want, and do they care. The University did not asked Alumni when they dropped football or went to Harbor Yards. We really don't know if Alumni would show for an on campus arena..... UNLESS we ask. Having only 300 Alumni that own Season tix out of 35,000 is not much of a buy-in or commitment. And if students did not show at Alumni Hall, what makes you think they would show in a on campus arena. The University needs to ask us to get buy-in.

Direction and a plan is what is needed, but feedback from Alumni is most critical. Do you we could even get 750 Alumni to show up at the Quick Center for a symposium on what should be done with Alumni Hall and AHY. Before we dig one shovel of dirt, we need to get 1,000 Alumni to commit to buying 3 season tix (thats a guarenttee of 3,000 seats). If we cant do that, then lets just back to Alumni Hall. We have to get buying from Alumni, and if we do , then it can be truly called Alumni Arena.

I do not care what Sport you are in, if you don't have a Season Ticket base, you are not going to suceed.

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