Fieldhouse is worth preserving
, , Published Wednesday, March 2, 2005
John Gaunt is dean of architecture at The University of Kansas. Hundreds of times a year, he drives past Allen Fieldhouse. Never does he look at it through the eyes of an architect. "It's an icon that transcends building," Gaunt said. "It's got that very special aura."
As KU celebrates 50 years in its home on Naismith Drive, the arena also has its limitations. In an era when state-of-the-art translates to luxury suites, stadium clubs, creature comforts and multi-media entertainment, Allen Fieldhouse offers none of the above. The closest thing to suites are the cramped offices crammed under the maze of stairwells. The richest donors have to walk across a parking lot to a student union for anything that resembles a lounge.
Creature comforts are a box of popcorn and a narrow seat on a wooden bleacher. Multi-media means Bob and Max on a transistor. Such is life in a 50-year-old limestone building.
But just as Gaunt once worked for the company that made major changes to Notre Dame Stadium, architectural firms have, over the years, conceptualized and pitched plans that would update, enlarge and modernize Allen Fieldhouse. None merited serious consideration, said university architect Warren Corman, who, early in his career, worked on the original fieldhouse drawings. "A lot of times, they would donate drawings or designs," Corman said. "They were all too expensive and made no sense."
The problem is that Allen's past necessarily affects any plans for its future. Allen Fieldhouse stands alone in a prairie south of Mount Oread in 1956. It took four years to build the fieldhouse at a cost of about $2.5 million. Because an indoor track once ringed the basketball court, the building has a long and relatively narrow footprint. Gradually, other structures have filled the space around it.
Several years ago, Rosser International, the Atlanta-based conglomerate that renovated Oklahoma State's Gallagher-Iba Arena talked with KU officials about adding concourses, seating and suites by expanding upward and outward on one end. More recently and closer to home, Kansas City's HOK Sports+Venue+Event seriously considered the fieldhouse question at the request of former coach Roy Williams.
The idea Jim Swords, an HOK principal and project manager, and a group of fellow KU grads came up with was drastically different from previous concepts. While Rosser's renovation at OSU created a new structure around Gallagher-Iba's existing interior, HOK's plan for Allen was to gut it completely, leaving only the steel and limestone shell, and build a new seating bowl that would be deeper and steeper than the original. "You're building a ship in a bottle," Swords said.
That kind of renovation would use the extra space in the end zones for clubs and a limited number of luxury suites. It also would allow the installation of chair-backed seating throughout, wider concourses, bigger concession areas and improved access, exits and stairways. "I tell everybody, you've got a 1955 Chevy there," Swords said. "What we're asking you to do is have airbags and ABS and do all the things a 2005 Chevy will do and still have it look like a 1955."
To make such changes though, they would ask the Jayhawks for more than it could afford. Not only would the cost be prohibitive, the timetable would mean closing the Fieldhouse for more than a year. "People say, 'They could play at Kemper for one year,'" Swords said, "and I say, 'Yeah, right.'" Which puts the school and the building right back in the present. And that's where they will stay. With HOK's help, KU plans about $16 million in improvements in the foreseeable future.
Between now and the beginning of next season, a two-story structure will be built along the length of the east side to house the new Hall of Athletics, a booster room and another smaller lounge. Also, in coming months, the athletic department envisions a list of improvements that includes painting, cleaning, replacing the 50-year-old windows and installing new lighting, a new sound system and a new scoreboard with video capability.
"I've been to a lot of beautiful old houses that have been restored," athletic director Lew Perkins said. "That's my idea of what we're going to do. We're going to protect the integrity of Allen Fieldhouse. We're going to preserve the history and tradition."
The seats will still be hard and the space will still be cramped. It will still get steamy on unseasonably warm days, and it still won't offer suites where captains of industry can wheel and deal. It'll still be Allen Fieldhouse, and that's the idea.
"You've got a building that's got weaknesses in some ways, but it's got strengths that other people would kill for," said Rosser International vice president Fred Krenson, who worked on Gallagher-Iba. "Don't try to fix something and end up breaking what you have that's great."