Lynah remodel - keeping up with the Joneses

Another hockey program finds its newer- and bigger-than-Lynah Rink inadequate to the task. The Bulldogs' DECC, built 1966, capacity 5,233, isn't up to snuff for Minnesota-Duluth:

[q]2-3-2005 ... The Duluth (Minn.) Entertainment and Convention Center has chosen local architects in conjunction with renowned HOK Sport to design a new arena that would, among other things, house the UMD hockey programs. According to the Duluth News-Tribune, DECC officials are looking to get planning money from the state Legislature this year and construction money in 2006. Arena construction could start as early as July of 2006 and open for hockey by October of 2008. The DECC anticipates a cost of $45 million for an arena that would see 6,500 for hockey. [www.uscho.com] [/q]

They rank 14thin attendance but they're not playing to capacity crowds right now:

Team	            Dates	AvgAttend	Capacity	% Cap.
Wisconsin   	18	12615	14,385	87.7
N Dakota    	16	10690	11,500	93.0
Minnesota    	18	10490	9,700	108.1
Michigan    	14	6810	6,637	102.6
Colorado C  	18	6736	7,343	91.7
Ohio State  	17	6493	17,500	37.1
NHampshire  	15	6332	6,110	103.6
Denver      	15	6058	6,200	97.7
BC         	           11	5901	7,884	74.8
Neb-Omaha   	16	5899	14,700	40.1
St. Cloud St	14	5863	5,763	101.7
Michigan St 	13	5733	6,470	88.6
Maine       	17	5630	5,587	100.8
Minn-Duluth	           16	4935	5,233	94.3
Boston U     	14	4576	3,684	124.2
Minnesota St	15	4446	4,832	92.0
Alaska-A’age 	14	3974	6,206	64.0
Vermont     	16	3864	4,035	95.8
Dartmouth   	15	3847	4,500	85.5
Cornell     	12	3836	3,836	100.0
Mass Amherst	16	3588	8,389	42.8
AlaskaF’anks	12	3494	4,324	80.8
N Michigan  	14	3417	3,754	91.0
Rensselaer  	17	3221	5,217	61.7
Yale        	13	3098	3,486	88.9

[www.uscho.com]

In other words, $45 million to increase seating by about 1300 (24%) at a time when they're playing to less than capacity crowds already.

Would that this USCHO table have columns for year built and cost in current dollars. Does anyone recall Lynah's construction cost? Multiply that by about 6.2 to get the cost in today's dollars (using a generic CPI calculator, not a construction price index calculator). Yale's Ingalls' rink, also 1958, came in at twice the projected cost, but that was just $1.5 million or about $10 million in current day dollars. The 1975 Dartmouth rink cost $4.4 million or about $16 million (2005 dollars).

Makes we wish Cornell dusts off plans to turn the west end into seating not a white brick wall.

Right at $7k per seat in construction costs. Figure Cornell could do a little better than that - we don't need a Taj Engelstad, say 5k per seat. At $120 per season ticket, it would take 42 years just to pay the initial construction costs. Can't really count on NY, Thompkins County, or Ithaca building a rink for us (maybe we SHOULD start calling ourselves SUNY-Ithaca!). Private donations are obviously the only way to go, unless we want to see how many townies would pony up a $5k seat license [i.e. extortion] fee...

I can't see Cornell needing/wanting more than about 5k seats - 6k is certainly on the high side, so that's $25-30M needed right up front. Pretty steep when Lynah probably meets 80-85% of the current demand "for free."

And Lynah exceeds, by a huge margin, any future facility in intimacy, tradition, etc.

Lacking the desire to replace things just for the hell of it, I have never been able to understand the drive to replace Lynah. It's ideal. Leave it alone.

[Q]Trotsky Wrote:

And Lynah exceeds, by a huge margin, any future facility in intimacy, tradition, etc.

Lacking the desire to replace things just for the hell of it, I have never been able to understand the drive to replace Lynah. It's ideal. Leave it alone.[/q]
While I share that sentiment, I must admit to not knowing whether a 47-year-old rink of sub-4,000 capacity is a detriment to recruiting the kind of player needed to get Cornell hockey to the level Mike Schafer wants--and intends--to take it.

[Q]Trotsky Wrote: And Lynah exceeds, by a huge margin, any future facility in intimacy, tradition, etc. Lacking the desire to replace things just for the hell of it, I have never been able to understand the drive to replace Lynah. It's ideal. Leave it alone.[/q] The suburbs are the place where, once you and your kind get in, you and your kind want to keep out everyone else and their kind. If you have season tickets, you're a happy camper. It's reasonable to wonder if Cornell could not bring the joys of Cornell ice hockey to 5,000, not 3,800, fans each winter. That the waiting list is, say, 500 names long (I'm making that # up) doesn't mean there aren't two or five times that many people who would buy season tickets if they had the chance. And who's to say Cornell couldn't grow the audience? Wisonsin more than doubled its facility in 1998 and it's still just about full.

The most cost-effective step would be to put seats in the west end, assuming that doesn't make the rest of the roof fall in. And the most cost-effective way to do this cost-effective step would be to troll for one donor who wants the wing named in his or her honor, or maybe they share the building name. I don't think you're going to be able to raise ticket prices to the level that includes the mortgage payment on the seat.

All this happens after Cornell fixes up the locker rooms so they're competitive with other Top Ten D1 schools have.

And yes, maybe there is a place for an upper tier box, glassed in, for well-heeled hockey supporters. People who grouse about corporate boxes at pro sporting events are the ones who haven't been invited into them. I'm proud to say I love them and I wish more people invited me to them, not just once every couple years. By the way, the Yankees' corporate boxes are dumps. You have to - gag - eat pretty much the same food as the regular fans. On the other hand, it's free (excluding the implicit quid pro quo of your business or your friendship that the box holder is looking for), and somebody brings beer to you. If it rains, you stay dry. If it's humid, you keep the glass windows shut and crank up the air conditioning (which causes the windows to fog up - see, luxury boxes aren't without their drawbacks). If you miss the play, it's on instant replay and not the crappy low-res jumbotron 400 feet away. If you have to go to the bathroom, it's a few steps away. The only drawback is you have to shake hands and exchange business cards very properly with Mister Yoshimuraki, or tell the folks at Carter-Fladstone Industries how much you think they're developing a new paradigm for the future of in-place concrete cast highway barrricades.

More seriously: If I did a luxury box, and I'm not the guy with the pockets to pay for it, I'd make it seat 100 and half the seats would be for the backers. The other half would be for players' parents or girlfriends *if that's where they want to sit* and maybe ten seats are drawn per game or per year by lottery to members of the Ithaca Hockey Boosters who couldn't afford this kind of stuff but who are loyal fans. Or maybe by lottery to anyone who's been a season ticket holder for ten years.

One of the things I dislike about present-day America is the belief that it's immoral for those who are well off to, once they've paid and paid their taxes, to lead the good life. Sure, if you buy a Ferrari, you're drawing down our hydrocarbon reserve, but only 1,000 Ferraristas a year do that and most of them drive < 3,000 miles a year, by the way. Bill Gates does not endanger America's highway safety buying a Porsche 959 that doesn't have 5 mph bumpers.

So, no, I'm not necessarily pushing for Lynah Rink II. But I do hope Cornell gives serious thought to adding on to Lynah now, while the team is hot, while we have a hot coach, while we have a president who loves hockey (Jeff not George).

[q]While I share that sentiment, I must admit to not knowing whether a 47-year-old rink of sub-4,000 capacity is a detriment to recruiting the kind of player needed to get Cornell hockey to the level Mike Schafer wants--and intends--to take it. [/q]One of the big selling points of the Cornell program is the Lynah experience. I keep reading quotes of players who were sold on Cornell after coming to their first game at Lynah. Now maybe there are plenty of others who walk away saying "That place is pretty loud, but they don't have a weight room in the building and the coaches office is upstairs, so lI think I'll go elsewhere."

I assure you, 3800 filled seats are better than 4500 capacity without sellouts.

the plans to increase lynah have taken a hit with the new life sciences building going on line.. of the 3 projects that were in the works the south west annex is a go, the west end project that may or may not have included seating is pretty much a dead deal and the north west end project probably will get the go ahead but may get changed when the final life sciences plans go in.. it seems to me that if/when a new lynah ever goes on line it will happen at a new site probably towards the south of campus.. it also seems that you could could add some seating (maybe 5000 tops) and still create a building with the same lines and feel... but i also doubt we could sell 5000 on a consistent basis, right now the demand for season tickets only adds a few hundred people..

interestingly enough when I was back on campus last year most weekends visiting my now wife at the vet school, I heard a lot of talk about cornell moving athletic facilities further off campus, near where the new baseball fields are going over by game farm road. it seems strange considering the new stands, the new wall, the wrestling center. i dont know, there were rumors. no clue about itl, though, and no validation. anyone heard any of these musings?

I think its going to eventually become necessary. In the next few years the alumni fields behind Bartels are going to be filled in with buildings, and that will leave all the grass sports without practice fields. They are going to have to make up for that with some sort of practice fields somewhere else. I think Cornell's drive for state of the art research facilities is stronger than their drive for good atheltic programs.

Ugh. I think an off-campus rink (ok, so Cornell probably owns land contiguously out to the game farm, but that's still off-campus as far as I'm concerned) would be a serious blow to Cornell hockey fandom. I just can't see any way that I'd be convinced that a 5000 seat off-campus sterile box could be better for the Cornell hockey program than playing in Lynah Rink.

After 23 years of seasons tickets and 23 years of knees in the back, it is time for some comfy seats, even if it is a few bucks more than what we are paying now. I buy four seasons tickets ( for two adults and two of my kids). If BU can do it, so can CORNEll! When we have seen the good, the bad and the ugly, lets have some good for ourselves for once. We deserve it as fans and our team deserves it . It could be a great recruiting tool as well.

I couldn't agree more! Yes, make improvements--better and more seating; improved locker, training and fittness rooms; improve the press facilities and offices, and, sorry, install netting, etc., but PLEASE keep the character and location intact. To build a new rink out in East Ithaca somewhere would be an unforgivable insult to everyone (players and their families, coaches, "bandies", fans, etc.) ever associated with Lynah since 1957, and the Cornell Hockey programs would suffer.

I think it'd be too bad to keep moving fields off campus. As a student and huge sports fan, I enjoyed taking a stroll up to watch an occasional track meet, soccer game or baseball game. I always wanted to go watch a friend play tennis or catch one of the softball or polo games, but they are played too far away for just the spur of the moment stroll to watch a game. While Cornell is committed to being a research university and academics come first, it still needs to think about it's students and their happiness (we do pay a few of the bills). For a lot of us sports are a big part of our lives and supporting our classmates on the playing field is just as important as cheering on the microbiology researchers.

[Q]Nate 04 Wrote:

I think it'd be too bad to keep moving fields off campus. As a student and huge sports fan, I enjoyed taking a stroll up to watch an occasional track meet, soccer game or baseball game. I always wanted to go watch a friend play tennis or catch one of the softball or polo games, but they are played too far away for just the spur of the moment stroll to watch a game. While Cornell is committed to being a research university and academics come first, it still needs to think about it's students and their happiness (we do pay a few of the bills). For a lot of us sports are a big part of our lives and supporting our classmates on the playing field is just as important as cheering on the microbiology researchers.[/q]

Seconded. I've actually stopped to watch a baseball game because I was walking by it. And honestly, while I'm sure nanotechnology is important, I couldn't tell you why Cornell built a building for it, or why they had to put it in the middle of a perfectly nice, grassy engineering quad. Same goes for any buildings planned for Alumni Fields - why can't graduate research go further off campus?

Cornell certainly is suffering some growing pains, and space is at a premium these days. That said, there are tons of politics involved in getting anything built and master planning is a minefield. I heard very few good reasons for why the new biotech center is being built on the practice fields instead of on the Ag quad which really needs a building to close the space where Roberts/Stone Halls used to be (North of Trillium). There seems to be plenty of odd decisions happenning recently (what ever happened to that monstrosity of an idea for replacing Rand Hall?) and there is a lot of work that must be done (I know that there has been talk of upgrading and relocating the physical plant (power plant) at a location further south of campus (the "orchards" already have ceded some land to librayr storage among other projects). When the new nanotech facility was being proposed I recommended that it be sited where the powerplant is now, a great flag ship building at the entrance, easy access for chemicals delivery on Rt366 and reuse of an already chemically impacted site).

I suppose a kick ass hockey rink and parking structure could also be placed at that entrance as an alternative ???

[q]I suppose a kick ass hockey rink and parking structure could also be placed at that entrance as an alternative ???[/q]We already have a kick ass hockey rink...

[Q]Liz '05 Wrote:
why they had to put it in the middle of a perfectly nice, grassy engineering quad.[/q]

To hide the rest of the engineering quad?

The nanotech facility was sited where it is because it's multi-disciplinary, and they hoped to encourage cross-pollination among the departments most likely to participate.

Beeeej

[Q]KeithK Wrote:

I suppose a kick ass hockey rink and parking structure could also be placed at that entrance as an alternative ???[/Q]
We already have a kick ass hockey rink...[/q]

A kick-ass atmosphere, yes...rink? Certainly the rink helps create the atmosphere (banners, fans packed on top of each other), but still the concessions, restrooms, walkway, sound system are woeful. I don't know how the weight room, seminar/study rooms, offices, hall-of-fame room, and training room is?

My first choice would probably be to try to build a palace around Lynah, giving the program the first-class support facilites the coaches, players, and fans deserve (and recruits seem to love). I'd like to see some expansion to add seats on the west end, however. Such an approach should be able to retain most of the atmosphere inside the rink, maybe even add to it.

There will come a time, however, that Lynah will need to be replaced. I hope Cornell doesn't wait too long and find themselves having to build a facility on the edge of campus because all the land is built upon -- or, having to have the hockey team play all their games on the road for a year or two while Lynah is replaced on the spot (which happened to the Syracuse football team when the Dome was built). As much as I understand students wanting to be able to walk to a baseball game, I'd move that field in a second if I could have a state-of-the-art hockey facility attached to the parking garage.

I also believe that if marketed aggressively Cornell could fill a 5,000 seat facility with ease. It's the best game in town regardless of the time of year.