SLU's New Arena

[Muskie]

SLU's brand new arena opens in less than a month. It's a welcome addition to the Atlantic 10,

http://www.thechaifetzarena.com/home

[coasterville95]

Yes, and an upgrade I'm sure they will appreciate.

Finally bringing athletics back to campus where they are the primary tenant will help. Sure the facility may be smaller capacity than Scottrade, but they didn't really need those extra seats anyway.

From what I have seen on Billikens.com here and there, there are numerous accounts of having to schedule basketball games tightly around hockey games. Sometimes meaning less than desireable court times, lack of in arena practice time (actually SLU's oponnents may appreciate finally getting real shoot around time more than SLU does), and in some accounts given the bums rush at the end of the game so that they can convert to hockey.

Being in control, means other events will have to schedule around the school's needs instead of the other way around. It should also help improve the student section attendance problems which are also a recurring trend on billikens.com.

Folks were saying its a Cintas clone, but I don't see it. I like the exterior of SLU's new arena a lot better, but I'm not so sure about the seating bowl. It looks like they looked at the typical 1970's arena as their inspiration. For example having the ring between the upper and lower concourse being inside the bowl, and the access to the upper bowl seats looks just like US Bank Arena's layout the way I look at the artist renderings. Of course US Bank's main problem is the outer concourse is just way too narrow, which they may fix in their new arena. I may also my looking at the artist renderings too hard, but did they really put the luxury boxes way up top, like the skyboxes at US Bank Arena? Oh, and going with wall mounted scoreboards instead of a center scorecube. I know, I'm a scorecube snob some times...

Though I see they are booking outside events in as well. Grand opening event is Harlem Globetrotters vs. Washington Generals. Sometimes I wish we could get better utilization out of our own arena by booking in more external acts, particularly between April and October. (Though looking at the Billikens last two final scores, they may want to book in the Washington Generals for their exhibition game next fall to ensure the first home game ia a win.. I know that wasn't really nice)

[Muskie]

Yeah i won't miss traveling to Scottrade. I can't wait to check it out in person. Unfortunately, based on the tiering system, we're likely not going to play SLU twice in the regular season next year. So no game in St. Louis.

Also, I'm not sure but those do appear to be "Sky boxes".