The UNC Basketball Arena Question: Another Option

UNC’s need to renovate or relocate the home for its storied basketball program has been apparent for a while. That need soon moves from discussion to action. Chancellor Lee Roberts’ research committee seemed to prefer a relocation to Campus North, a 230-acre development project centered upon the old Horace Williams airport site along Martin Luther King, Jr. Blvd (Hwy 68). That’s how a presentation to the UNC basketball community last month came across, and it was poorly received. In response, Coach Roy Williams and Tyler Hansbrough now front an effort to increase public support for renovating the Smith Center. Those two pieces of news have reduced the debate to one of two options: relocate to Campus North or renovate the existing location.

Fellow Tar Heel Blog writer Al Hood did an excellent job outlining the advantages and disadvantages of those two options in the two pieces linked above, so I won’t rehash those here. I’d like to discuss another option among the six possibilities originally proposed: a new arena, on campus, at the site of Odum Village.

A bit of history: Odum Village, for over 50 years, served as housing for UNC married and graduate students. Built in the early 1960’s, 47 two-story brick apartment buildings served up to 500 residents until its closure at the end of the 2015-2016 academic year. 25 of the buildings have been demolished, and 22 units remain, although no longer serving as residences. Issues with bringing the structures up to code apparently preclude repurposing them, and demolition for the remaining buildings has been budgeted and scheduled.

A bit of future: UNC’s 2019 Master Plan advocates developing Odum Village into a “Campus South Hub,” a mixed-use area (live-work-play) serving as a “vibrant activity hub” that will “establish a welcoming arrival sequence.” For those familiar with the area and wondering about access, the Master Plan “reserves land for a future regional transit corridor with a stop adjacent to the mixed-use hub.” In other words, the Master Plan already contemplates converting Odum Village into a high-profile entry point to campus, including a major access road and significant alterations to the existing road map.

The Biggest Plus: The Odum Village site would keep the basketball arena connected to the main campus, making it easily accessible to students housed there. Among the many concerns about a Campus North relocation, access for the 10,000 or so students housed on the main campus ranks at the top. Those concerns go beyond the simple issue of logistics.

My parents walked to games at Woollen Gym. Later generations walked to games at Carmichael Auditorium (now William J. Carmichael Arena) from 1965 to 1986, and then the Dean E. Smith Center after that. Removing that from the student experience might sound insignificant. However, severing UNC basketball, so central to UNC’s identity and student life, from the main campus feels wrong on so many levels. Carolina basketball remains vital connective tissue for generations of UNC students, and a Campus North relocation puts that at risk.

The physical experience of walking out of my dorm and heading to a game as a freshman connected me to the UNC community — past, present, and future — in a way that attending classes or late-night deep talks with new friends never could. I suspect that’s true for most students. To my knowledge, UNC still requires freshmen to live on campus their first academic year and still forbids freshmen from parking on campus. Keeping the home of Carolina basketball on the main campus preserves attending UNC hoop events as a core introductory student experience, not just a money-making machine.

An aside: I can’t find the links to it, but UNC did some research into alumni giving awhile ago and ran into some troubling feedback. Especially among my generation, a feeling that UNC took undergraduates for granted during our time there deeply impacted later giving. Part of that was the “publish or perish” mentality dominating how professors prioritized their time and attention; we often felt like afterthoughts and an annoyance in too many classrooms. A bigger part, however, was the feeling UNC prioritized revenue via rich alumni rather than current students, and seating in the Smith Center was the primary citation for it.

If men’s basketball seating practices in an arena on campus can fuel stubborn feelings of resentment and disconnection well after a student has graduated, imagine how uprooting the whole thing and moving it down the road might go over.

The Biggest Minus: The Smith Center has become the heart and home of UNC basketball for generations of students and players. Shuttering it hurts. I am a huge fan of UNC basketball. I experienced some incredible moments there. That included watching my son participate in events there as a Roy Williams camper. When Roy Williams calls the building “home,” that resonates with me. I’m absolutely sympathetic to those attachments.

That said, I’m much more attached to the memories than I am the building. The view from the upper rows of the upper deck, which is where the UNC ticket office usually put me as a student, were disappointing. I’ve only managed seats in the lower level at a basketball game once in my lifetime, comped by a lifetime owner of them when I took their son and mine to the William & Mary game in 2012. I almost felt like I was trespassing.

The energy in the building has never been great. While much of that gets blamed on the “wine and cheese crowd” in the lower level, I’ve seen three artists in concert there that I can compare to other venues: Bruce Springsteen, Tom Petty, and REM. Sound quality was much poorer, and as a result, crowd engagement just didn’t match my experience in Atlanta’s Omni, Birmingham’s Civic Center, or Nashville’s Ryman Auditorium. For me at least, the issue of crowd energy seems more than just courtside demographics.

Built on a budget largely through private donations, the original design never considered optimizing things like that. The original designers couldn’t look 40 years into the future to anticipate future needs or how to better accommodate them. In that respect, the original design came with limitations from the outset. Additionally, the original design paints the facility today into a corner with respect to renovation. There’s no blame in those observations; it’s just the reality of the situation.

Put it all together: I’d be fine with a new arena at the Odum Village site. I suspect many feel differently for entirely valid reasons. It’s not a simple problem. The connective tissue of UNC basketball makes all of us care deeply, but it does little to drive consensus beyond “what’s best for UNC basketball.” Views on that abstraction will differ, all having arrived earnestly and honestly.

What are your thoughts?