Unless we owned the facility we will always have to compete with other scheduling at the Cell. There has been persistent chatter about whether the University should buy the Cell to solve that problem. I have mixed feelings about it. As I said before, it's in the wrong place. And while it's a great basketball arena from a sightlines perspective you can't change the fact it's an aging facility with potentially immense maintenance costs. And any building that old presents serious challenges. Let me give an example. I was there a few weeks ago with some department personnel and one of them was suggesting places for some LED signage. Great idea -- except there are no power outlets or cable channels anywhere near those places. You either retrofit at great cost or end up running cables along floors and railings, which looks terrible. Remarkably enough, sports arenas built in 1950 did not make provision for fiber optics or assume that you might need power outlets at every possible location.
I'm all for nostalgia too, and as I said, I think the Cell is a very fine basketball arena from the standpoint of sightlines, but I fear that the University pouring money into the Cell would not be unlike pouring money into the Klotsche. In both cases there is a definite element of putting lipstick on a pig.
The one thing that militates for the idea of the University owning the Cell is that it's the only realistic alternative I can see over the course of the next 5-10 years for a credible facility, despite its drawbacks.