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Post by Problem of Dog on Mar 1, 2016 0:40:57 GMT -5
On campus arena is never happening. Verizon is a terrible environment for basketball in general, Hoyas, Wizards, NCAA tournament, you name it. Never been to a game where I felt there was a real home court advantage, ever. So we're damned if we do, damned if we don't. I don't think the lighting helps things, but I'm not sure it's #1 on my list, nor do I think lowering the lighting makes it any less of boring, sterile experience.
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Mar 1, 2016 0:45:03 GMT -5
Understand the NIMBY argument but consider this: the same community that couldn't possibly allow on-campus basketball will or has signed off on a circa 6,000 seat football stadium and a hospital project that will turn Reservoir Road into a battle zone. It's all about timing and context.
Maybe they wouldn't mind the crowds if they came in on the gondola...
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Post by Problem of Dog on Mar 1, 2016 1:18:46 GMT -5
Understand the NIMBY argument but consider this: the same community that couldn't possibly allow on-campus basketball will or has signed off on a circa 6,000 seat football stadium and a hospital project that will turn Reservoir Road into a battle zone. It's all about timing and context. Maybe they wouldn't mind the crowds if they came in on the gondola... There are 5 football home games a year, they're on weekends, and they currently draw 2,500 people only about half of the time (no, don't try and sell me on the "official" attendance figures over the years).
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McBricks
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Post by McBricks on Mar 1, 2016 1:20:44 GMT -5
Understand the NIMBY argument but consider this: the same community that couldn't possibly allow on-campus basketball will or has signed off on a circa 6,000 seat football stadium and a hospital project that will turn Reservoir Road into a battle zone. It's all about timing and context. Maybe they wouldn't mind the crowds if they came in on the gondola... Totally agree DFW. Honestly, has the University and alumni ever actually tried, since 2007? There has to be a will first, and I'm not sure that will is there. Seems like everyone has the attitude that it's simply not possible. My question is, has anyone actually tried recently? What was actually done? I'm not saying we need an arena on campus with 10K seats. But something based on how Cal Berkeley renovated Haas Pavilion could be a nice case study. They were able to double the size and keep the building within the existing walls. Could GU get creative and double the size of McDonough? Not sure how accurate this is, but good ol' Wikipedia says original capacity of McDonough was 4K. Could we double it to 8K within the existing walls (or how about 6,500)? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haas_Pavilionen.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonough_Gymnasium
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SSHoya
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Post by SSHoya on Mar 1, 2016 7:27:20 GMT -5
On campus arena is never happening. Verizon is a terrible environment for basketball in general, Hoyas, Wizards, NCAA tournament, you name it. Never been to a game where I felt there was a real home court advantage, ever. So we're damned if we do, damned if we don't. I don't think the lighting helps things, but I'm not sure it's #1 on my list, nor do I think lowering the lighting makes it any less of boring, sterile experience. Generally agree but I assume you weren't at Verizon Center on January 21, 2006?
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RusskyHoya
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Post by RusskyHoya on Mar 1, 2016 11:43:54 GMT -5
Understand the NIMBY argument but consider this: the same community that couldn't possibly allow on-campus basketball will or has signed off on a circa 6,000 seat football stadium and a hospital project that will turn Reservoir Road into a battle zone. It's all about timing and context. Maybe they wouldn't mind the crowds if they came in on the gondola... The MSF concept that was approved under Zoning Commission Order No. 05-31 "was designed to accommodate a total seating capacity of 4,500 (2,000 in the east stands and 2,500 in the west stands). The modified MSF concept that was approved under Zoning Commission Order No. 07-23 kept essentially the same capacity: the concept renderings showed 2,557 home seating capacity on the west stands, plus 26 wheelchair spaces, and 2,095 visitor home seating capacity on the east stands, plus 22 wheelchair spaces. That's a grand total of 4,700 persons capacity. Did I miss a more recent submission/approval that was 6,000? Anyway, as Problem of Dog noted, the MSF is rarely filled to capacity, and it's heaviest use comes on Saturday mornings/afternoons. Given the nature of those uses - GU and visiting fans coming onto and departing campus over a period of multiple hours on a weekend, with many cars carrying multiple people - I can understand why the District Department of Transportation assessed that the MSF would have negligible impact. That would almost certainly not be the case for a basketball arena with weeknight or weekend night games, when the local transportation network is already at or above capacity. If there were some way to guarantee that the vast majority of attendees would arrive via transit, be it gondola, GUTS, or what have you, that could change the equation somewhat. But I don't know that there's any feasible way to do that, and it would likely drive off a fair number of non-student fans. Totally agree DFW. Honestly, has the University and alumni ever actually tried, since 2007? There has to be a will first, and I'm not sure that will is there. Seems like everyone has the attitude that it's simply not possible. My question is, has anyone actually tried recently? What was actually done? I'm not saying we need an arena on campus with 10K seats. But something based on how Cal Berkeley renovated Haas Pavilion could be a nice case study. They were able to double the size and keep the building within the existing walls. Could GU get creative and double the size of McDonough? Not sure how accurate this is, but good ol' Wikipedia says original capacity of McDonough was 4K. Could we double it to 8K within the existing walls (or how about 6,500)? en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Haas_Pavilionen.wikipedia.org/wiki/McDonough_GymnasiumThe Green Lantern Theory of getting stuff done, where the only necessary ingredient is just wanting something enough, is an ever-present temptation. It is also usually wrong. What the University has tried recently, since 2007, was to secure approval for a suite of fairly low-impact, logical enhancements to campus. A large number of them were blocked by neighborhood opposition (and by opposition from DDOT and the DC Office of Planning, which were co-opted by the neighbors via shady shenanigans involving DC Councilmembers Jack Evans and Mary Cheh). The ones that made it through the gauntlet were only able to do so thanks to the University agreeing to a large number of stipulations, some of which are downright demeaning (e.g., Georgetown students are effectively forbidden from parking on Georgetown streets, at any time, ever, though this is de facto unenforceable). The University renovated the Old Jes Res into a dorm, is building another dorm now, and temporarily converted part of the Leavey Center hotel into a dorm - projects collectively costing many tens of millions - all to secure the approval of a limited number of campus projects that have little to no off-campus impact. Point being, if the University tried to propose something that actually would have significant spillover effects, recent experience tells us that the opposition would be insurmountable. Summoning vast depths of Hoya willpower will not change this equation, much as willpower is not a sufficient propulsion system to put a man on Pluto. Renovating inside of the existing building envelope would let you bypass the Old Georgetown Board and the U.S. Commission of Fine Arts design reviews, but it doesn't help with the "objectionable impacts" issue.
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Post by ColumbiaHeightsHoya on Mar 1, 2016 12:46:01 GMT -5
Maybe not the right spot for this, but I love that Gtown (the neighborhood, not school) has been left behind in the culinary expansion of DC because of arcane liquor license rules put in place by Gtown ANC. They now (about twenty years late) realize this and are trying to right the ship. If the University were able to build an on-campus facility, that would keep students on-campus many more nights a year. It would give students outlets for entertainment that don't currently exist on campus by way of more athletic & music (assuming concerts in an on campus facility) could bring. This would seem to benefit the neighbors who complain about loud off campus students.
These neighbors are rich yokels without any foresight.
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Post by JohnnyJones on Mar 6, 2016 18:31:48 GMT -5
I posted this in another thread, but this is probably the better place for it: Apologies if this has already been discussed but I wonder if the new arena being built (or to be built?) in Ward 8 could be an option? It will apparently act as a new practice facility for the Wizards and also as a home arena for the Washington Mystics. They are talking about 5000 seats (an issue for the BE requirement) and the hope is the new facility could turn things around in this part of the city like Verizon did to Chinatown. Metro station two blocks away. I'm sure there are a million reasons it wouldn't work but when I heard a new 5000 seat basketball arena being built in the District it did draw my interest. Link: m.washingtontimes.com/news/2015/sep/16/new-practice-site-wizards-washington-revitalize/
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Mar 6, 2016 21:36:48 GMT -5
I posted this in another thread, but this is probably the better place for it: Apologies if this has already been discussed but I wonder if the new arena being built (or to be built?) in Ward 8 could be an option? It will apparently act as a new practice facility for the Wizards and also as a home arena for the Washington Mystics. They are talking about 5000 seats (an issue for the BE requirement) and the hope is the new facility could turn things around in this part of the city like Verizon did to Chinatown. Metro station two blocks away. I'm sure there are a million reasons it wouldn't work but when I heard a new 5000 seat basketball arena being built in the District it did draw my interest. Here are a few: 1. If you think students or suburbanites won't show up to Verizon Center, no one will travel to Ward 8 for a 9:00 Wednesday game. Realistically, no 5,000 seat arena is turning St. Elizabeth's around. 2. Moving to a 5,000 seat arena sends the wrong message about the program; namely, that it is downsizing or deemphasizing its aspirations. However meager the crowds on some nights, it means something to those kids to play an an NBA arena. Playing alongside the Mystics and the DCIAA isn't a compelling message to recruits. 3. The season ticket base appears to hover around 5,000, so what happens to the students if there is no room for their seating? 4. Monumental doesn't give things away and I suspect the rent would still be steep to recoup its investment. Georgetown has lacked vision on this issue through the Healy, O'Donovan, and DeGioia years and it was too easy to pay rent versus make some capital investment decisions--this is why the DePaul program atrophied in Rosemont. There is no Rahm Emanuel to ram though an arena project to benefit Georgetown and his favored contractors, but while opportunities existed, both local officials and Georgetown looked the other way. Example: the Key Bridge Marriott is the oldest hotel in the entire Marriott chain and, as the second hotel Bill Marriott ever built, is approaching its 60th anniversary. Short of tearing it down, Marriott will soon need to consider a $150-$200M renovation. Why not tie a convention center-styled arena in the back half of the property where the one-level banquet halls now stand, something that Marriott could book all year for conventions, concerts, and tailor-made attendance to the hotel? That's a five minute walk from Metrorail and ten minutes from campus, even less if there's that gondola. Throw a couple water taxis in the mix (weather permitting) and gameday becomes something special.
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Post by hoyasaxa2003 on Mar 7, 2016 0:43:59 GMT -5
Example: the Key Bridge Marriott is the oldest hotel in the entire Marriott chain and, as the second hotel Bill Marriott ever built, is approaching its 60th anniversary. Short of tearing it down, Marriott will soon need to consider a $150-$200M renovation. Why not tie a convention center-styled arena in the back half of the property where the one-level banquet halls now stand, something that Marriott could book all year for conventions, concerts, and tailor-made attendance to the hotel? That's a five minute walk from Metrorail and ten minutes from campus, even less if there's that gondola. Throw a couple water taxis in the mix (weather permitting) and gameday becomes something special. I realize the odds of this happening are low to nearly non-existent, but that would be fantastic. It would easily be the closest we would ever get to being "on campus."
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sleepy
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Post by sleepy on Mar 7, 2016 20:16:40 GMT -5
Who was it that ran for Student Council President back in the 70s His platform called for annexing Rosslyn to provide increased on campus housing. If only Fr. Henle had listened we could have solved many problems.
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bostonfan
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Post by bostonfan on Mar 8, 2016 8:21:21 GMT -5
I can't see the school building a new on-campus arena for the basketball program. There is just not enough space left on campus and it would not be a good use of financial resources. What I would hope they could consider is renovating and enlarging McDonough to maybe 5 -6,000 seats. Probably need some big time donor to step up and target a large gift to that project for it to happen. It would provide the school with a place to host some of these early season OOC games and even a few mid week BE games. It would also give the school a larger facility to host things like concerts and even a bad weather graduation alternative along with other school events that need more capacity.
It would make for a great environment for some home games and help encourage more student support of the team.
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sleepy
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Post by sleepy on Mar 8, 2016 9:20:50 GMT -5
I can't see the school building a new on-campus arena for the basketball program. There is just not enough space left on campus and it would not be a good use of financial resources. What I would hope they could consider is renovating and enlarging McDonough to maybe 5 -6,000 seats. Probably need some big time donor to step up and target a large gift to that project for it to happen. It would provide the school with a place to host some of these early season OOC games and even a few mid week BE games. It would also give the school a larger facility to host things like concerts and even a bad weather graduation alternative along with other school events that need more capacity. It would make for a great environment for some home games and help encourage more student support of the team. Money is not an issue. Its the community that will never allow anything like this to be built.
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Mar 8, 2016 9:40:52 GMT -5
I can't see the school building a new on-campus arena for the basketball program. There is just not enough space left on campus and it would not be a good use of financial resources. What I would hope they could consider is renovating and enlarging McDonough to maybe 5 -6,000 seats. Probably need some big time donor to step up and target a large gift to that project for it to happen. It would provide the school with a place to host some of these early season OOC games and even a few mid week BE games. It would also give the school a larger facility to host things like concerts and even a bad weather graduation alternative along with other school events that need more capacity. It would make for a great environment for some home games and help encourage more student support of the team. Money is not an issue. Its the community that will never allow anything like this to be built. The renovation of a building is at its core a University decision, not an OGB/ANC one. And had someone in the University shown the vision (and fundraising) to see where the original Joe Lang proposal would have done (at a cost of $22 million), we wouldn't be having this conversation and would likely have played a majority of non-conference games on campus since 2006. Purely as an example, what it might have looked like (this is the facility at Monmouth):
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SaxaCD
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Post by SaxaCD on Mar 8, 2016 10:03:30 GMT -5
Money is not an issue. Its the community that will never allow anything like this to be built. The renovation of a building is at its core a University decision, not an OGB/ANC one. And had someone in the University shown the vision (and fundraising) to see where the original Joe Lang proposal would have done (at a cost of $22 million), we wouldn't be having this conversation and would likely have played a majority of non-conference games on campus since 2006. Purely as an example, what it might have looked like (this is the facility at Monmouth): Was that the "digging down" concept? I always thought that one made a lot of sense, for the space.
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Post by aleutianhoya on Mar 8, 2016 11:23:06 GMT -5
The renovation of a building is at its core a University decision, not an OGB/ANC one. And had someone in the University shown the vision (and fundraising) to see where the original Joe Lang proposal would have done (at a cost of $22 million), we wouldn't be having this conversation and would likely have played a majority of non-conference games on campus since 2006. Purely as an example, what it might have looked like (this is the facility at Monmouth): Was that the "digging down" concept? I always thought that one made a lot of sense, for the space. Yes. The plan in the early 2000s was to essentially knock down everything inside McDonough, dig down, and put in a significant enough arena that we could host our cupcake games there and smaller non-conference games. Essentially what Nova does. There was even modest fundraising done toward it. The larger plan was to essentially sequence it with the "original plan" for the multi-sport facility, which involved significant office space in addition to a renovated field and seating. In other words, the MSF would get built, the folks in McDonough would move into the MSF space, and there'd be few people that would be without space while McDonough was bull-dozed. Made sense in a vacuum, I think, and probably was the best overall plan if it could have been pulled off, but it proved far too ambitious when funding for the MSF didn't materialize. Obviously, in hindsight, it probably would have made sense to focus on just re-doing McDonough and the heck with space (put everyone in trailers). That is, don't tie the two together. Presumably, mosts of the funding for the practice facility could have been used to re-do McDonough instead (John Thompson, Jr. Court?). And maybe you still could have incorporated some elements of the practice facility within a re-done McDonough, though surely not nearly all. If (and they are big ifs), we could have gotten neighbor/city approval for that sort of a plan, and if the funding really would have been transferrable, and if we could have arranged to still use Verizon for a handful of big games, and if we could have found office/locker space for all the other sports somewhere as part of the plan, then I think that would have been a no-brainer. And "if" all of those "ifs" were "yes," then building the practice facility was a huge mistake. But that's a lot of "ifs"!! EDIT: We still haven't seen exactly what the new MSF will look like. It's not inconceivable there will be space there for folks to move into from McDonough -- and even if not, it's not crazy to think that could be added in the future. But it's hard to see how we'd be able to fundraise from the same folks to re-do McDonough after tapping that well for the practice facility.
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drquigley
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Post by drquigley on Mar 8, 2016 11:28:40 GMT -5
How many does this seat?
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Post by aleutianhoya on Mar 8, 2016 11:31:32 GMT -5
Monmouth? A touch over 4K. But it looks really small, doesn't it? That's the point. A 6-8K arena isn't particularly big. There's room within McDonough to do it if you knocked everything down that surrounds the present arena and probably turned the court the other direction. Crazy idea: What if you just took away (or made much smaller) the lobby -- that is, you turned some of the lobby into the arena -- and re-centered the court by moving it closer to the front entrance. If you did that, you'd then have room behind both hoops for a very steep set of bleachers. Right now, there's no seating behind either hoop because there isn't really enough room. If you did that, you'd also have room to add a bit more space on the sidelines for seats. You could also make the existing bleachers on the sides go higher (remember, there's hallways right now up above the bleachers) perhaps by making everything steeper on the sides. Those relatively inexpensive improvements probably wouldn't get us where we'd need to be, would they? I don't have a great sense for how many additional seats you could cram in by doing that. I don't even have a good sense for whether what I'm describing is feasible from an engineering perspective! But it'd be a very cheap (relative to anything else) fix with minimal disruption to the existing space. EDIT: The RAC at Rutgers is a fair comp. It's an 8K arena. www.scarletknights.com/facilities/rac.htmlI haven't been there in a decade or more, but as I recall, it's about as steep on all sides as you could reasonably do. So the question is whether the square footage and height of the current McDonough footprint (adding the lobby) is sufficient to support what is at the RAC.
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sleepy
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Post by sleepy on Mar 8, 2016 12:24:44 GMT -5
DFW I always assumed that this still would need to be part of the University plan and hence would have met with ANC objection. This sounds more like the same leadership and foresight that gave us the Mt Vernon debacle.
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DFW HOYA
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Post by DFW HOYA on Mar 8, 2016 13:10:10 GMT -5
DFW I always assumed that this still would need to be part of the University plan and hence would have met with ANC objection. This sounds more like the same leadership and foresight that gave us the Mt Vernon debacle. "What kinds of projects do not require review by the OGB/CFA? --Minor repairs --Masonry repointing --Storm windows --Temporary primary business signs to be displayed 60 days or less while review for a permanent sign is pending installation, removal or repairs of underground storage tanks, underground utility lines, and underground waterproofing measures temporary construction barriers and scaffolding and public space permits for dumpsters and parking repair or partial replacement in kind of compatible fences (new fences or substantial replacement of a fence requires OGB/CFA review; replacement of small portions can considered a minor repair not requiring a permit) --Changes of use involving no physical change to the exterior of the propertywww.cfa.gov/project-review/old-georgetown/old-georgetown-faqs#9This may all be moot as Georgetown has shown no inclination to actually do anything to McDonough (which will be 85 years old when the next campus plan expires) and focus instead on fixing the crumbling Yates structure.
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