Know it's a hot button topic here. I am for a smaller, new arena. Convo was great for decades, but I would rather have an arena that seats anywhere from 6,000-8,000.
[/QUOTE]At the Miami game last week, our best attended game of the year I believe, I sat there and thought: "It's time to shrink capacity". To me, the simplest, and most cost effective solution to this might be some kind of quality curtaining system to hide or eliminate the top 15 (?) rows in the upper level.
The real time to do this would have been when the new seats were purchased, to reduce capacity by adding wider seats in the upper level, thereby reducing capacity. That's past, but some kind of updates, including making it look more full when there is a decent crowd, would be nice.
There are already rough plans to add a large building/entrance to the front of the Convo that would serve as a visitor center, media lab and ground-level practice courts.
I think this is the way to go. Every time I walk into the Convo, and after I enter, I look around and think about what paint, sand blasting and window and door replacements/upgrades would do. Add some historical Bobcats references on the walls and a new visitor center and practice facility and once again we have the best facility in the MAC. Yes, it will have a significant cost associated with it but certainly it has to be a more cost efficient alternative than building everything new. Now if the “bones” of the facility are not good, that’s a different conversation.
[QUOTE=GoCats105] If it came down to it, I'd prefer a renovation over a total new build.