New Haymarket arena?

LINCOLN -- Lincoln City Hall and Husker basketball are double-teaming to press voters for a new Haymarket arena.

Husker basketball is falling behind in the intercollegiate arms race for more spacious, luxurious and high-tech facilities.

Meanwhile, the City of Lincoln is choking in the dust when it comes to pop concerts and other performing acts. Pershing Center, built in 1956, is too old and too cramped, Lincoln city officials say. UNL's Devaney Center, where many concerts once were held, is too busy.

So the city and the University of Nebraska-Lincoln are asking Lincoln voters to approve a $168 million sports and entertainment arena for Lincoln's Haymarket District. The arena question will appear on the May 11 ballot.

With the arena proposal, Husker hoops gets a shot at playing in a new facility. The City of Lincoln gets a marquee tenant to help sell voters on the plan.

Nebraska Athletic Director Tom Osborne said last week that the Devaney Center needs as much as $40 million perhaps more in renovations and improvements to remain competitive with other basketball facilities in the Big 12 conference and elsewhere in the country.

Aging basketball palaces have been renovated or are being replaced at the University of Iowa, Missouri, Texas Tech and elsewhere.

If voters reject the arena plan next month, he said, UNL is prepared to launch an overhaul of the Devaney, even though a renovated facility likely would lack the posh skybox suites and other amenities that could come with a brand-new arena.

“If we could play our basketball games down there, it would be helpful for us,” Osborne said. “But the city needs an anchor tenant. If they don't have 30 basketball games there a year, it will be hard to make this thing work.”

The University of Nebraska's participation is not simply a matter of signing a 30-year lease as an arena tenant.

UNL has agreed to be a partner in a joint public agency to govern the redevelopment of the entire Haymarket District.

“This arena is important for our basketball program, and it's critically important for the entire university,” said UNL Chancellor Harvey Perlman. “The arena is going to have an extraordinary impact on … the community. That's important to us as we recruit students and faculty.”

NU would not put tax or tuition dollars toward the effort. Its contributions would come in the form of $750,000 annual rent, paid out of Athletic Department revenues. With the men's and women's basketball program as a whole breaking even, football revenues in essence would cover the cost, Osborne said.

NU would get credits toward its rent to reflect lost concession sales, among other things. Dan Marvin, the city's coordinator for the Haymarket project, said the credits reduce NU athletic's net cost to only about $300,000 a year.

Osborne, however, pointed out that the Athletic Department would give up skybox and other revenues. For example, the city would sell 32 of 36 proposed skyboxes at $40,000 per year each, generating a total of $1.28 million. NU keeps four to sell or otherwise use.

The concessions credit does not fully compensate NU for lost basketball concessions sales, which grossed nearly $622,000 this year, according to basketball director Marc Boehm.

The city, however, must give up one potential source of concessions revenue during Husker basketball games and other UNL events. The agreement between NU and the city would not allow beer or other alcoholic beverages to be sold at the games.

Osborne estimates the university's contribution will be more than $1 million a year, when its rent payments and lost revenues are taken into account.

“We think that's fair, and we think that's recoverable,” he said.

During a recent walk-through of the Devaney Center, Athletic Department officials made their case that something has to give with the facility that dates to 1976.

Facilities director Butch Hug explained that the center, which includes a swimming pool and a 65,000 square-foot indoor track, was built before Title IX required equal access for women athletes, before the digital age made it possible to broadcast nearly every sports event, and before the Oklahoma City bombing and the 9/11 attacks heightened security concerns.

Not to mention boosters who want padded seats and private lounges and fans who now demand pizza and ice cream along with the hot dogs and popcorn of yesteryear.

Today the facility houses wrestling, gymnastics, tennis and swimming, along with men's and women's basketball. Former ticket offices have been converted into security offices; a control center for Husker Vision has been erected in the garage and smoked glass partitions establish a VIP lounge in a corner of one concourse. Heavy-duty extension cords snake over the walls of concession stands to provide power to food carts operated by contract concessionaires.

Wrestling mats and scorekeepers' tables are stored in a public hallway near the basketball arena, and portable wheelchair ramps were stashed in a stairwell corner. Women divers were doing floor exercises on mats in a hallway near the pool, because there's not enough floor space in the weight room.

“Recruits see this when they visit,” said Boehm, while looking at the rolled-up wrestling mats. “They've been to other facilities. It may not be the reason for their decision whether to come here, but it makes an impression.”

Most of UNL's space problems will be solved by the construction of $18.5 million practice facility on the south side of the building, slated to begin in June and to be completed by 2011-12. Wrestling and basketball will move into the practice facility, although competitions still would be held in the Devaney. If approved by voters, the Haymarket arena is scheduled to open in the fall of 2013.

Osborne said experts estimate that a new arena would boost basketball attendance by 15 percent although he cautioned that it would take winning seasons to maintain such attendance after the first few years.

He also noted Devaney will continue to house other sports and that no matter what happens in the May vote, the building will need about $10 million for age-related roof and structural repairs.

“We've run the numbers very carefully on what we'd have to spend to stay in Devaney and what it would cost to move into the new arena,” he said. “We think this is a win for the city, definitely, and a win for the Athletic Department.”

Contact the writer:

402-473-9581, leslie.reed@owh.com

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