(09-30-2014 09:41 AM)vandiver49 Wrote: Paco,
If Pitt had tried to rehab the old stadium (unlikely to be sure) would the Panthers have just teamed up with the Penguins on the Consol Energy Center?
No.
Pitt had a "Convocation Center" on the drawing board since the 1980s to supplant 6,798 seat Fitzgerald Field House built in 1951. By 1992, a stimulus project had allocated state funds for three arenas across the Commonwealth: what ended up being the Bryce Jordan at PSU, the Liacouras Center at Temple, and a proposed Convocation Center at Pitt. $30 million in state funding authorized for Pitt's arena. The money was there...as you know, if you don't take state appropriations, you lose them, so there was no chance of Pitt not building an arena of some sorts.
Here's the scoop of what happened in detail, it's a bit complicated...
In the 90s Pitt had terrible fundraising, and had recently failed to raise enough for a proposed $90 million renovation of Pitt Stadium that would have domed it and housed both basketball and football ala the Carrier Dome. So in order to attempt to jump start the Convocation Center project, the then incompetent administration at Pitt cut a deal to take less money, $13 million up front, on the condition that no additional state funds would be requested. Pitt was therefore on the hook to fundraise the difference for what was then estimated at a $35 million project, although that estimate was realistically too low. Almost laughably, Pitt still was unable to fundraise even that difference. In addition, Pitt had rolled $7+ million more state money into the project by including a much needed central chilled-water plant (to also serve nearby buildings) within the arena. The combined project languished in no mans land while Pitt sat on $20 million in state funding because it couldn't get the project off the ground. That Pitt Chancellor (who by the way came by way of UNC) was essentially fired, and the Convocation Center debacle is seen as one the largest of his many blunders.
Enter our Chancellor (that just retired this July) in 1995...during one of the low points of morale for the university both athletically and in just generally overall. By 1998, the estimate for the Convocation Center project was up to $65 million, with Pitt now on the hook for $45 million of it.
Pitt had desperately needed some sort of convocation center. As I mentioned, it went 30+ years without even being able to hold commencement exercises on campus. It needed an indoor facility to hold events other than athletics as well. Its existing sports facilities were terribly outdated and completely overcrowded...basketball and every olympic sport except swimming was crammed into the old Fitzgerald Field House...and little had been done to improve any of the facilities, literally, in decades...really since they had been built.
Around this time in the later 1990s, plans were floating around for new stadiums for the Steelers and Pirates in order to get them out of Three Rivers Stadium, which was a horrible multipurpose cookie cutter stadium. The Pirates were on the verge of leaving town. The Steelers were looking to move to the suburbs. The state again had allocated funds for new professional stadiums in Pittsburgh and Philadelphia. The first plan to pay for the two new stadiums in Pittsburgh, plus a new convention center for the city, was with a publicly funded half-cent increase on local sales tax. The plan caused outraged and failed miserably in a referendum. Politicians and community leaders scrambled to save the projects (and state allocations). What they came up with was called "Plan B" that instead circumnavigated referendum by using funding from the Regional Asset District that itself was funded by city and county sales tax. Of course, this took deft political maneuvering at both the local and state level. This is where Pitt was brought in, because at the same time the new Chancellor was trying to fix the blunders of his predecessor and get the long-stalled Convocation Center project off the ground by attempting to get more money from the state even though the prior administration pledged not to ask for more.
Keep in mind the setting: Pitt Stadium was in terrible shape. The football team had actually already made plans to move its center of operations across the river to the new practice facility being built for it and the Steelers by the University of Pittsburgh Medical Center. The remainder of Pitt's athletic facilities were laughable for even MAC level division 1, and were terrible overcrowded. Intramural facilities were also antiquated. Pitt was struggling to fundraise for even small projects, and was having trouble filling its beds. Land in Oakland is beyond scarce and the university is physically landlocked between residential neighborhoods to the south and north and other institutions to east and west. Fiscally, the university was a sort of a mess and the athletic department an outright disaster.
The political deal that Pitt was able to work itself into by jumping on board with Plan B was a commitment to play at Heinz and thus providing more permanent events dates for the stadium and thus more justification for public funding for the entire Plan B project. In exchange for playing ball with Plan B, it got the state to release additional funds for the Convocation Center project, particularly the original amount that had been allocated 8 or more years prior. Because the university was no longer was going to use Pitt Stadium for game days and had already abandoned it for practice and day-to-day operations, the decision was made to move the Convocation Center site from the problematic hillside location to the footprint of the stadium. This allowed to the scope of the project to double, including more offices, a food court, and importantly, a new student rec center. It also created a new quad and provided much needed space for the construction of desperately needed dorms that were literally 30 years behind schedule.
Thus Plan B was eventually approved and Heinz Field was constructed as a home for both the Steelers and Pitt, which is why the infrastructure has permanent Pitt signage cut into the steel and molded into the seats, etc. Pitt Stadium was torn down, and the state ended up taking over Pitt's Convocation Center project, which now included not just an arena, but also the chilled water plant, the student rec center, and expanded athletic offices and food courts. Pitt ended up with a $119 million dollar arena project, that is obviously now called the Petersen Events Center, with public funding rising from the previous $20 million to about $67 million. It contained multiple, much-needed projects, and today it is actually a facility that is used every day of the year by students and hosts major commercial and university events all year round. Moving the basketball teams out of Fitzgerald Field House freed up copious space that allowed for a complete renovation that re-dedicated the facility to Olympic sports, and allowed the university to move forward with renovations of wrestling, gymnastics, and swimming facilities, and eventually, construction of the soccer/softball/baseball complex.
By getting a pro-football quality stadium for free, its football practice facilities for free (built by UPMC), and more than tripling the amount state funding for the arena projects and knocking them all out at once, it freed Pitt up to renovate the other athletic facilities and move ahead on other projects. The Plan B deal was an opportunity with a short window. If Pitt had decided to not work that deal to its best interests, it could still be trying to fund raise for Pitt Stadium renovations, and instead of having what is regarded as one of the nicest on-campus arenas in the country that undoubtedly helped jump start its basketball program, it
might by now have one that was instead merely adequate (if that). But realistically, I really don't think Pitt would be in the ACC right now if it hadn't moved on the athletic facilities overhaul when it did by jumping on bard with Plan B to get the various projects underway.