Thompson boling

#51
#51
VolsSportsFan said:
Or maybe...it's that it's because it's ugly. Being a great basketball arena has nothing to do with what it looks like on the outside. Rupp Arena is a great basketball arena as well and yet it's ugly as hell on the outside too.

And the irony that you're whining about the "whiners".
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I think Rupp is an awful venue, personally. Terrible location and very outdated. Cramped as all get out. The only thing I like about it is the food court located just outside of the actual arena offers some flexibility.
 
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#52
#52
Thompson-Boling needs a facelift on the outside, but on the inside, it is one of the best venues in the country since the renovations. Upper level seats still leave a lot to be desired from a fan view perspective, same as Rupp, but if you can fill the seats, no reason to shrink the current size down. Anything in the lower bowl is great for watching a game. Concessions are nice, bathrooms are improved. Scoreboards and stat ribbons are first class.
 
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#54
#54
Some architect major friends referred to TBA as the "hat box." It does resemble a hat box from above.

I recall the issues with the ceiling not being able to support very much weight which caused issues with concerts, as well.
 
#55
#55
TBA in its original incarnation was a basketball staging fail. Everything was painted white and the seats were all orange. The multipurpose lighting system threw light all the way into the rafters and there was no focus on the court. The endline seats started about 50 feet from the court. The sideline seats started behind the big concrete wall, also painted white. It's still there but painted gray now, and chairs have been put in front of it. The scoreboards were in the far rafter corners, which took attention away from the court. The steel handrails in the upper deck blocked the sightline of every seat up there.

The biggest difference now is that the black seats, black ceiling paint, and lights focused on the court have transformed the place from a monster truck show warehouse into a true basketball theater. TBA is also the first venue in America to use hockey glass in the upper deck to improve visibility.
 
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#58
#58
Didn't Cooper Construction get the bid, then had to pull out after the walkway they built at the Kansas City Hyatt collapsed? If I recall, not only were they hit with a ton of civil fines that drove them to bankruptcy - but I think there were some criminal charges levied also. Ray Bell stepped in to finish the job, I think
 
#59
#59
BB Andersen did the original, shoddy work.

KNS:
Contractor B.B. Andersen was at odds with the university almost from the start when it won the contract with a low bid only to request an additional $553,000 almost immediately because of an error it admitted making in its bid. The fight with Andersen was ongoing, one blaming the other for shoddy work, one blaming the other for shoddy planning and eventually led to multimillion-dollar lawsuits on both sides that didn't get settled until 1992. There was a work shutdown on the site for nearly nine months, the company finally dropping out of the project, and massive repairs and redoing of Andersen's work were needed.
 
#60
#60
KNS:
A worker fell to his death on the site.

Sink holes required thousands of extra dollars and man hours to fix.

The project was finished 15 months after its originally scheduled completion date.

The price tag started out at $24 million, then $30 million and finally landed at about $40 million.
 
#61
#61
Thunder Good-Oil said:
BB Andersen did the original, shoddy work.

KNS:
Contractor B.B. Andersen was at odds with the university almost from the start when it won the contract with a low bid only to request an additional $553,000 almost immediately because of an error it admitted making in its bid. The fight with Andersen was ongoing, one blaming the other for shoddy work, one blaming the other for shoddy planning and eventually led to multimillion-dollar lawsuits on both sides that didn't get settled until 1992. There was a work shutdown on the site for nearly nine months, the company finally dropping out of the project, and massive repairs and redoing of Andersen's work were needed.
Click to expand...

My Bad, it was BB Anderson - Not BB cooper :)
 
#65
#65
Speaking of coke dealers, it's kind of a shame there's no vendors walking the aisles anymore. Standing in a 10-15 min line in the concourse isn't so great.
 
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