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[Section A]

Bartels FieldHouse

[Jim Hyla]

There have been discussions about renovation for a number of years. First, Matt is right, you can't do much without tearing it down. A few years ago there was a "plan" to add a second outer wall so you could put concession stands behind the seats and move the people who were walking around outside the current building.

Then, add seats at the open end and some rooms above them for the CHA "boosters" in-between periods. Locker rooms could be redone, etc..

However, as Matt said that would require bringing it up to code. So long to the tight to the ice seating, hello to Cheel-style facility. Are students going to stand on seats that flip? Would the U enforce sitting down? You get the picture.

I personally like it as is, with the proviso that locker rooms and such be made as good as possible, and then working with the county to see what could be done on the west end or an outer wall to move people around faster. That might get approval as improving exit for fire.

As far as Greg's idea about an NCAA regional facility, well, to me that is pie-in-the-sky. CU at one time tried to have their own holiday tourney and it flopped. If the team were there we could get fans from Ithaca. If no CU, then forget it. Relying upon other fans to travel there, would in my view not work. Are the casual fans from HE, or other places going to travel to Ithaca for a weekend? I think not. Yes there are other on campus regionals, but they tend to be within commuting distance of major metropolitan areas.

[Josh '99]

Jim Hyla '67 wrote:

However, as Matt said that would require bringing it up to code. So long to the tight to the ice seating, hello to Cheel-style facility. Are students going to stand on seats that flip? Would the U enforce sitting down? You get the picture.

Out of curiosity, is there any reason a renovation to bring the building up to code would HAVE to eliminate bench seating?  Maybe they'd have to be metal benches for fire safety, but I don't see why they'd have to be flip seats.

[Cop at Lynah]

What I would like to see is the expansion of the locker rooms; a seprate room for personnel training (biking,weight lifting, etc.) and a few hundred seats along the west end of the rink.  I believe all this can be accomplished by moving the west wall out to about the area of the sidewalk.  I would like to see a max occupancy of 4200 or there about.

As far as the building codes go, I believe Cornell got some variances when they connected Lynah to the Fieldhouse.

[Keith K]

I don't see the need for expanding the seating in Lynah.  Yes, the games sell out, but I don't think there are hundreds and hundreds of people who get shut out of buying tickets.

Haven't the locker rooms been renovated at least once in the last ten years?  Have people on this board been in the locker rooms to report on the quality of the facilities?  Are they really sub-par and if so how?   Yes, the visiting locker rooms are woefully inadequate, but I think that's a feature, not a bug :-D.

Maybe I just don't get it, but I don't really see the need for a separate training room for the hockey team(s).  Didn't Cornell just build a facility for athletes attached to the Fieldhouse formerly known as Alberding?  Is that not sufficient?  Yes, they have to walk several hundred yards to get there, but...

[Keith K]

There probably is no reason why you couldn't install bench seats in a new/renovated building.  I imagine wood would fine as well, as long as it's suitably treated.  But can you imagine for an instant that the Athletic Department would open their new/renovated facility with old-fashioned bench seats?  Heck, new baseball stadiums are putting backs on the bleachers now!

[Greg Berge]

A good question was asked: what does Mike want in a new building?  Basically, I think whatever he wants he should get, because I trust his judgment about retaining the value of the home crowd.

The drawbacks cited by previous coaches have been:

1. Really crappy locker rooms
2. No weight rooms facilities
3. Virtually non-existent staff office space
4. A generally old, run down building with all the problems that implies (electrical, HVAC, etc...)

From what I can piece together, the various renovations over the years have addressed these partially.

1. The locker room are supposed to be better.  Note that the Ithaca tourny was horrible because there was only space for two lockerooms, not the four you need for a tourny.  Leaving that aside though, I have heard that the home lockeroom is much better than it used to be.

2. The weight facilities at the Field House are something everybody raves about.  Whether or not they are sufficient to the team's needs, I dunno.

3. They remodeled the section A corner of the building several years ago and upgraded the office space.

4. Not a lot you can do about this.  I mean, yeah I'm sure they upgrade equipment as necessary (they redid the roof reinforcement about a decade ago), but it's an old building aint nothing's gonna make it young.

The best solution would be to keep the seating exactly as it is (although they should put the benches back in C), and just nuke the whole rest of the structure -- take down the walls and extend the building outward in all three directions other than the field house.  House the old seating in a brand new outer shell with all the fan amenities and more importantly all the neat stuff Mike needs.  Can they do that without having to destroy the inner seating?  Hell, we have a Law School -- get Summers (the resident Contracts deity) on it.

[Jim Hyla]

I doubt that the closeness of the current rows conforms to code. However, I don't know for sure. It just seems to me that if I were specifying code now, then the rows would have to be further apart to allow faster exiting in an emergency. Obviously we are all speculating about things we know little about. However, when I spoke to a CHA booster about this before, all of the mentioned issues were problems with renovation.

[jtwcornell91]

Doesn't blowing away the building structure make it likely that the roof will be replaced with some vaulted cavern from which a giant scoreboard is suspended?  I think part of the charm of Lynah comes from the closeness of the banner-festooned rafters.

Back in the 1990s, there was a backlash against antiseptic dual-sport baseball stadia, as Camden Yards and its successors strove to create new ballparks in the style of the quirky older generation of Fenway Park and the Polo Grounds.  (There was also some urban renewal involved; the eccentric nooks and crannies of the older parks came about because local geographic features were in the way, preventing the symmetric/generic construction which tracts of suburban sprawl allowed for.)  So the question is, is there any way to start such a movement in hockey arenas?  Can a modern facility be constructed with the intimate feel of the older rinks?

[DeltaOne81]

I don't see why their couldn't be. On the NHL level it wouldn't fly in the current market because attendence (especially luxury box space) is still a major factor. The NHL makes a decent percentage of it's money off of actual ticket sales, as opposed to baseball where moving from a 55k to 40k stadium is no big deal, because they get millions and millions from TV.

On the college level, it's definitely possible, but generally if you're gonna replace an old rink, it's because you want more capacity. Though I'm sure there are some purists out there who just want a new place but want it to have the same feel. Of course, people who are willing to shell out millions for essentially no change aren't easy to come by. When the new modern monstrosities are ready to be replaced (30, 40, 50 years from now) maybe we'll see a trend back (hopefully), but things have to get bad before their a yearn for the old days - like it did will all the "cookie cutter" baseball stadiums.

[Anne 85]

Appleton, the rink at SLU, was renovated not too long ago, and the seating area wasn't touched.  The gorgeous wooden risers are intact, but the restrooms, concessions, etc. are much more accommodating for fans.  Of course, I don't know anything about whether the locker rooms, etc. were upgraded.

[Lowell '99]

The home locker rooms were renovated no more than six years ago.  While space may still be an issue, aesthetics are not.  Other updates to Lynah (aside from the aforementioned replacement of the cooling system) have included the new boards and seamless glass, a new pressbox, repainted red/white walls, a new hockey office (again, space may still be an issue), a new sound system, the new plastic banners (I like the "yellow" cloth ones myself), and the new scoreboard this year.  Additionally, the Friedman Center for Strength and Conditioning (attached to the Field House, as Keith alluded to) is quite swank.  Perhaps Coach wants a hockey-only gym; I don't know.  

I agree that "new facility" does not necessarily mean "Cheel-like cavern."  Of course, there's always that danger, but perhaps it is possible to have a modern barn.

As far as seating goes, I firmly believe that seating capacity should NOT be increased.  During the Red/White game this year, a friend turned to me and said something to the effect of: "This was a good turnout for regular season games when I was here."  That was the mid-nineties, folks, and while we may sell out now, we're not going to be #4 in the country every year.  As I see, it ~3600 is perfect.  It's not too empty in the leaner years (although I'll admit I haven't seen the worst of times), and we sell out when we're good-to-great.  

When I sat in section A all the time, I never saw Lynah's faults.  I never had to deal with the absurdbly cramped walkways, the ridiculously narrow seats, and the complete lack of leg room (trust me, standing for the whole game is BETTER).  If I had my druthers, I wouldn't touch it, but I can see why someone would want to, as I'm sure there are plenty of hockey-related deficiencies in the place as well.

As far as funding goes, I don't think that the hockey team's success this year really matters.  The type of people wealthy enough to fund a new facility are not the type of people who are holding back for a winning team.  Sure, some of us peasant folk might give more (or rather, more peasant folk might give), but even our combined contributions don't amount to much.  Unless some of you guys are multimillionaires, our donations are irrelevant to the financing of a new building.  It's all about one or two rich guys.  Ten, twenty, thirty thousand dollars... maybe it'll pay for the paint.

[Greg Berge]

The baseball example is instructive that the cosy feel of charming sports arenas is itself a huge draw.  People go to Camden, Jacobs, PacBell, and Safeco because they are intimate, just as Wrigley and Fenway are still huge attractions precisely because they are funky and small.  Smaller can thus equate to bigger attendance and more revenue positive, which will ultimately be the university's only criterion.

There must be an architecture genius sleeping over at Sibley who can string a low, taut, corrugated-some-alloy roof over a hundred thousand square feet without interior supports.  Hell, put the whole arena in a large, overturned garbage can and bang on the outside.  Just make it loud.  ;-)

[DeltaOne81]

I dunno about that one Greg... ever been to UConn? that's what a rink made from a garbage can turned over feels like. And while I'm sure garbage-can Lynah would be louder, it still wouldn't be a nice place  ::nut::

[Greg Berge]

I actually have been to the old UConn rink.  It feels like Cass Park, complete with space between the roof and walls for the winter wind to blow in.  UConn used to issue a frostbite advisory to visiting teams who thought they were kidding... the first time.

For my money, the closest there is aethetically to a true overturned garbage can is Starr.  It's like the Quonset hut living quarters on Gomer Pyle.

I'm all for leaving seating capacity and seating itself completely alone, and just working on the hockey facilities.  Put up an auxiliary building in the west parking lot.  Invent anti-gravity and hover it.  *Anything* so long as they never ruin the atmosphere.  Given Cornell's penchant for erecting structurally and aesthetically horrible buildings since 1960, I definitely do not trust that "brain trust" with this one.