New plans for Maxwell Convention Center

[sgrizzle]

quote:Originally posted by joiei

Out of curiosity, just what is wrong with the old arena at Maxwell Convention Center?  Be specific, talking in generic terms like it is a ****hole is not helpful.  I have been there and yes, it is visually outdated in the reception hall area, but that is a matter of updating.  I am sure that in the 60s and 70s, all those old buildings downtown were considered outdated and needed to be replaced.  So they were leveled and the replacement was never built.  Now people wax poetic about what was lost.  Is the building structurally falling apart?

Structurally sound but the arena floor is too small (we have to have an exemption for the talons to play) and the seats are small by today's standard. Everything wrong with it seems size related to me.

[Breadburner]

Depends on which seats your talking about....The ones in the lower bowl are larger than the ones above the catwalk......

[cannon_fodder]

I think the arena is serviceable, but for sure there are problems:

1) Bathrooms - start with the basics.  The bathrooms need to be redone as they are nasty, inefficient, and old school.. They function, but do not impress.

2) Concessions - need way more concession stands. Having to wait to pay $4 for nachos is a bad idea.  

3) Size - the arena floor is too small for regulation hockey or Arena football (as I understand it).

4) Ceilings - the ceiling is yellowed and cracked.  Structurally it is sound, but it looks a little like death.

5) General Appearance - it looks like an old arena.  Spartan and run down, older design elements.  A few coats of paint, some neon or something else to add an element or two... just make it look like it was made to be used sometime after the year 1975.

Another idea I have in my little head is making an entrance for it.  Neither the outside nor the inside entrance to the arena floor signal to anyone that you are entering an arena of any kind.  The entrance to the arena is the same as entering any other room in the building.  The library has a more exciting entrance.  

The bathrooms, entrance, and sprucing up could be done for a few million ($5? Really no solid idea, but nothing too expensive involved).  Making the floor larger would add significant cost and would lose seats unless something interesting was done - steeper seating, second narrow deck?  Adding concession stands and redoing the ceiling are other elements that by themselves wouldn't be too much.  

Just my uneducated in this area thoughts...

[TheArtist]

quote:Originally posted by joiei

Out of curiosity, just what is wrong with the old arena at Maxwell Convention Center?  Be specific, talking in generic terms like it is a ****hole is not helpful.  I have been there and yes, it is visually outdated in the reception hall area, but that is a matter of updating.  I am sure that in the 60s and 70s, all those old buildings downtown were considered outdated and needed to be replaced.  So they were leveled and the replacement was never built.  Now people wax poetic about what was lost.  Is the building structurally falling apart?

Have you been in there?  It looks like something from a prison movie or one of those..."This is what is left after the end of the world, Mad Max" movies. Its dark, dank, dreary and unwelcoming. Unless your goth and into that sort of thing. You walk in there and have the urge to slit your wrists, curl up in some cold little corner and slowly die. Its hardly a bright, uplifting, facility where you would want to have an event. I remember going there as a little kid over 30 years ago and feeling that I didnt like it then and was happy to get out of there as soon as possible.  Who needs specifics? Just use your eyes and feelings.  How does that space make you feel when your in it?

[Hoss]

quote:Originally posted by joiei

Out of curiosity, just what is wrong with the old arena at Maxwell Convention Center?  Be specific, talking in generic terms like it is a ****hole is not helpful.  I have been there and yes, it is visually outdated in the reception hall area, but that is a matter of updating.  I am sure that in the 60s and 70s, all those old buildings downtown were considered outdated and needed to be replaced.  So they were leveled and the replacement was never built.  Now people wax poetic about what was lost.  Is the building structurally falling apart?

Being a patron of countless Oilers games since 1996, I can tell you, in visiting other CHL teams venues that Tulsa's, for a city and metro area our size, has a sh*thole of an arena.  It seats for in the round events about 9000, and for AF2 football and hockey, it seats around 7100.  I've been to arenas in cities far smaller that make ours look like a rodeo barn.

I can count on numerous occasions during hockey games, when parts of the ceiling would just fall out.  Several instances of having to wait 10 minutes or more while the lights warmed up.  The sound system stinks.  The icemaking plant is the original one that was put in it in 1964.  The building is dated.

I had friends come to town to watch hockey and were amazed, for a city of our size, how small and old the arena we currently have is.  They went on to mention how nice the Mabee Center looked; I had to explain to them that the city did not own that, so there was pretty much no say in what came to that arena past what the Roberts would approve of.

For me, getting the arena is something I've been hoping for since before the turn of the millenium.  But it's not just for hockey; it will be for concerts that I will no longer have to drive to OKC or Little Rock or Dallas or KC for, because now, those venues will come to Tulsa when they see we have a building that will seat 18000.  It will be for NCAA events, exhibition NHL and NBA events and the like that would never have come here to begin with.

I always wondered why so many people were against progress.  The building won't be just for the people that live in this county, but the entire metro area, and I would expect people as far away as Independence KS and Joplin MO would make the journey here for an event or two.

Face it.  We were losing events to places with newer and larger facilities, like Omaha, OKC, Little Rock.  And that's just to name a few.

I'm off in the morning with camera in hand to take some photos of the new versus the old.  I've seen recent photos of the progress, and knowing that the grand opening of the arena is in a little less than 13 months has me excited.  The Oilers will be the first full time tenants of that building.  I doubt they'll draw consistently enough to fill the arena, but most arenas are designed to block the upper deck off.  OKC does it with the Blazers in the Ford Center.

I'm tired of friends coming here and asking me why I stay in Tulsa outside of other obvious situational reasons.  I lived in Houston for three years and liked it for the most part, but it wasn't Tulsa.  I hate having to try and rationalize it.  Tulsa is my home.  No matter where I live further in life, Tulsa will always be my home.