By Jimmy Lemke
PantherU.com
Saturday afternoon, the Milwaukee Panthers played in front of 5,683 fans at the U.S. Cellular Arena. It was a banner day for the Panthers as they fought off a scare from the visiting Fairfield Stags to win only their second game in Bracketbuster history, one of the final Bracketbuster games to be played by the Black and Gold.
That brought about the realization that other things are also on their way out, at least in terms of the Milwaukee Panthers. I am, of course, talking about the venue - the U.S. Cellular Arena, formerly known as the Milwaukee Arena and MECCA. The news that the university was looking to bring men’s basketball to campus was broken a couple years ago by yours truly when the Student Association put up to a vote to assess a $25 fee to students to build a basketball arena on-campus. That fee has been in action since the students overwhelmingly supported it in a record vote, and talk of the facility has been going ever since.
In that time, there has been a lot of turnover - George Koonce, Carlos Santiago, Helen Mamarchev, or in short, the three top people with oversight on the athletic department in the spring of 2010, are all gone. George Koonce was replaced on an interim basis by David Gilbert and permanently by Rick Costello. Carlos Santiago’s move to the Hispanic College Fund brought about an interim chancellor in Mike Lovell, who we’re very pleased to say is now the full chancellor. Dr. Mamarchev’s departure brought on Dean Jim Hill in the interim, and now Michael Laliberte (formerly of Boise State) is the permanent Vice Chancellor for Student Affairs.
So we shouldn’t be surprised that in the two years since the students approved the fee, there hasn’t been much headway made in terms of the basketball arena, a facility that will shape the next 50 years of Milwaukee Athletics.
Following the game Saturday, I made the customary rounds to speak with donors, fans and students of the basketball program. It was brought to my attention by several donors that they had been pitched on a 5,000-seat arena on-campus between Enderis Hall and the Klotsche Center, on the space currently occupied by the Norris Health Center.
This site is completely different from the one we endorsed at the Wisconsin Paperboard Corporation. The Wisconsin Paperboard Corporation site isn’t on the main campus, exists on a site not currently owned by the university, and involves more than building just an arena. However, it is the site that we will continue to endorse because of its potential, and this is why.
Size - the Norris Health Center design is, according to several donors, around 5,000 seats. This is significantly smaller than the arena design by Joe Rice at the Wisconsin Paperboard Corporation, which is between 7,000 and 8,000 seats.
The Panthers currently average about 4,200 fans per game. Their greatest years in attendance were the 2004-05 and 2005-06 seasons, the only two years when the program averaged more than 5,000 fans per game.
However, you don’t build an arena for what you intend to average. You build an arena to grow into. In 2025, we don’t know what the Milwaukee Panthers will need from a seating perspective. It could be 2,000. It could be 10,000. But this is what we know. In the 90’s, it was easy for people to count on two hands the amount of fans coming to see the game. By the early 2000’s, they were averaging 2,000 at least in the Klotsche Center. The Panthers hit their high point in the mid-2000’s, then attendance has mirrored the slow rise from the bottom 2006-07 season.
The truth is, we don’t know what the ceiling of this program is. So building it at 5,000 could be a good thing, creating a tough ticket, or it could be throwing away millions of dollars in future revenue. Look at Gonzaga, a school that built a gym at 6,000 seats in 2004 and is kicking itself for not going bigger. Is Milwaukee a program like Gonzaga? No, but you can’t guarantee that ten years from now we’ll be happy with only 5,000 seats.
At 7,000 seats, the department is set for much more growth than a 5,000-seat arena, obviously. This year, you’d have room for the fans that came to see Fairfield, Valparaiso and Butler, whereas a 5,000-seat arena would be turning hundreds away at the door. The same thing is true when Madison and Marquette come to the east side - a 5,000 or 7,000 seat arena would be full for either squad, as recent home games against those schools have proven.
Parking - As far as the Norris Center site is concerned, parking is significantly better now than it was in 2003 when the Panthers last called the area home. Since then, a 600-car parking garage has been added with the Pavilion addition, and the university has purchased the 900-car garage in the new “northwest quadrant” of the Columbia hospital. Because it is only a block north of the entrance to the union parking garage, there is another couple hundred parking spaces, along with whatever arena parking goes into the construction.
On the Wisconsin Paperboard Corporation site, the parking would consist of any parking built into the facility - the university does not own any garages in the area, and would have to build one. Luckily the site is large enough that any parking needed could be built.
Alcohol sales - This is one that rings true for a lot of fans, especially those alumni and older fans who like to have a beer when they watch the basketball game. For the Norris Center site, as it is on-campus and the university could not designate it as “off campus,” the arena would be able to sell beer, but it would have to be drunk in designated areas and not in the seats, which is where people would be watching the game. This flies in the face of fans who want to drink beer wherever.
At the NPC site, it could be designated “off-campus,” therefore allowing it to sell alcohol much the same way as it is at the U.S. Cellular Arena. This is pivotal towards keeping the existing fan base together as you bring games to the east side.
Amenities - Milwaukee’s big advantage to moving downtown early in the past decade was the fact that fans could find something to do before and after the game. Not only do fans go to games, but they make a night of it. Head into Major Goolsby’s before the game and you’ll find people there, and afterwards people head back or go to the Calderone Club or any number of places within walking distance of the U.S. Cellular Arena.
As of now, the Norris Center site doesn’t have this. The campus area is extremely devoid of places to eat and drink before or after the game - and if they want to have the kind of amenities available to the Wisconsin Paperboard Corporation site, they’d need to build it themselves. For the Wisconsin Paperboard Corporation site, it’s a short walk to any number of places - Judge’s, Champion’s, the Red Dot, the Eastsider, Vitucci’s, BBC, Cans, Hooligan’s, Paddy’s, Replay, Rascal’s, Landmark Lanes, the Y-Not....you get the idea. Imagine Saturday’s Fairfield game being played at an arena one block off of North Avenue - what is North Avenue like from noon to game time, and afterward? It’s Milwaukee’s very own State Street, which might be selling it short.
It’s the kind of college experience you just can’t get anywhere in the Norris Center site or even in the downtown area, where many thousands of people hang out on the weekends regardless of the game.
Visibility - In the absence of a football program, the most visible building at a D-I university is its basketball arena. Cameron Indoor, Rupp Arena, you know the Kohl Center would be the most recognizable building on campus in Madison if the Badgers didn’t play football. So why would the university want to hide the basketball arena behind Enderis Hall? If you’re driving east on Hartford, you wouldn’t see the prospective arena until you pass Chapman Hall. Drive west on the same street and you have to crane your head to the right as you pass Enderis. From the east on Downer Avenue, the arena would be blocked by Sabin Hall and the university’s power plant. The power plant. This is where you want to put your most important building? Hidden behind the rest of the north quadrant?
The Wisconsin Paperboard Corporation site is better because Joe Rice’s thesis has the university taking control of every building in front of the arena up to North Avenue. That way, the university can create a pedestrian mall slash farmer’s market slash space leading into the front doors to the basketball arena, the most visible and important building at the university.
Fundraising - Visibility may seem like a small problem, but it is a big problem when you think about fundraising. When soliciting donors, the pool will be bigger if you’re talking about putting someone’s name on the arena. People will be willing to put their name on this arena, the kind of building that will see upwards of 100,000 people pass through its doors each year, the kind of arena that will be center stage on prime time of ESPN when the Panthers host the title game.
When you hide that building, you’re hiding it from all the people that come to campus and don’t head towards the Klotsche Center. Visibility matters when trying to solicit the naming rights donation, the largest donation of any basketball arena.
The other end of this problem is the fact that fans who will be donating significantly smaller amounts, from $10 all the way up to the five-and-seven-figures that don’t involve putting a name on a building. Those who I’ve talked to are...underwhelmed at the facility. Its location, its design, all of it don’t stack up to the building they want. You need to wow people. You need Dick Vitale to walk in, drop his jaw and shout “It’s awesome, baby!” It needs to be the kind of place that will light the world on fire, because at 7,000 seats you can build that kind of facility and not approach the price that the Kohl Center was built at - not just to build it, but to get the fans and donors to BUY INTO IT. That’s why the design needs to be amazing, because otherwise you’re not raising the amount of money you need to raise to build the facility you want.
Proximity to students, a “South Campus” - this is something that fans might be confused about. You want to put the arena a mile south of campus? Isn’t this whole move about the students?
Yes and no. It is about the students in that it makes it easier for them to get to games and they are the future season-ticket holders and donors, but it is all about bringing the basketball community to the UWM community. It’s all about making campus a destination, because the university’s biggest event should not happen three miles from campus.
You might be confused. Isn’t campus the footprint? The Wisconsin Paperboard Corporation site is almost a mile away! Yes it is. But what you don’t realize is that this move to get it close to students is done better with a move to the Wisconsin Paperboard Corporation site. The reason I say this is that while only 1,425 students live around North Avenue in university housing compared to 2,700 in Sandburg Hall, 700 of the former live within ten feet of the doors of the prospective Wisconsin Paperboard Corporation arena, Cambridge Gardens.
The Norris Center site is over a football field of distance from the front doors of Sandburg Hall, and while there are 2,000 more students from which to draw, the students in Cambridge Commons are just a few steps away. If the university decides to make it even easier for those students, then they can create a tunnel that connects Cambridge Commons to the new arena, giving 700 students an opportunity to go to a basketball game without even going outside. This is a huge development in creating a student crowd that has been fickle about attendance.
The other very important thing to consider, when you build this arena, is the fact that you are creating a “South Campus” along North Avenue. It started with the Kenilworth building - 330 students, mainly upper class and international students, living off campus in apartments. Then you add Riverview, a beautiful building on the shores of the Milwaukee River. But it was so detached from everything else, until the university gave it a pairing with the construction of Cambridge Commons opposite along the river.
This arena is the continued progression of the university. We complain all the time about how our campus is landlocked, but it isn’t landlocked if you consider North Avenue as the “State Street” of UWM. I do, because it is. Any night of the week you can head into any bar along North Avenue, and it is staffed and populated by members of the UWM community - students, alumni, faculty, and fans. By building this arena down there, you are saying “Yes, Panthers on North Avenue, we haven’t forgotten about you.” Because students in the area who live in university housing as well as apartment complexes, duplexes and houses are connected together by their proximity to North Avenue and their lack of proximity to campus. They have to ride a short bus with Chris Hill and Rob Sanders on the side to get to class. Building the arena is a big step towards annexing North Avenue as a separate, “South Campus.”
In the future, UWM could be a campus of 40,000 or more students. Classroom space could be pushed to the limit, so building in the area around North Avenue is the best way for the university to alleviate that concern short of buying up all the real estate next to the main campus. Even before that, there is a major concern about the lack of university presence in an area that houses several thousand students.
Right now, the neighborhood residents want to flatten the factory and replace it with a brand new arboretum, because if there’s anything lacking along the riverfront in UWM’s neighborhood, it’s trees. But if these plans go through and the factory is replaced by more green space (in a metropolitan city, mind you), the university is allowing the students on North Avenue to be as isolated as if they were in the middle of the forest.
Beginning with the arena, the university can make a large commitment to the North Avenue Campus that eventually can include recreational facilities and a Union South - something else you can find at Madison, and would be an excellent place for students of the lower campus to congregate for study, meals, and recreation. It also provides the university with a base from which to raise money for future projects in the area, as well as put on events throughout the year, including gameday events for individual colleges and schools to raise money and use the basketball games as a backdrop to doing so.
The way I see it, the university stands to gain a lot more from the construction of an arena at the Wisconsin Paperboard Corporation site than they do at the Norris Center site. It would be nice to see UWM expand its footprint and build a facility that literally blows away the competition. Give the fans, students, alumni, and program something they deserve: a facility that inspires and build pride among the campus community.
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