The Arizona State Campus multipurpose arena will be operated by Oak View Group.Courtesy of Arizona
The anchor of the Novus Innovation Corridor, a 350-acre new development in the northwest corner of the Arizona campus, is, unexpectedly, an ice hockey arena. The $115 million venue, scheduled to open in November, will house the Sun Devils ice hockey program and their wrestling and gymnastics teams and host concerts and other events. A second ice sheet will open in the community for 19 hours a day.
“For all of this to work, you can’t just unlock the buildings and expect them to survive. You need people,” said Frank Ferrara, AD chief aide and chief financial officer for Arizona State. “The arena is a key component to getting people here.”
Across the country, in Storrs, Connecticut, a new hockey venue will open in the fall on campus at the University of Connecticut. Coincidentally, two others, one is a multi-purpose circuit at Austin Bay State University in Clarksville, Tennessee, (see the story) and another dedicated to hockey and figure skating at Sacred Heart University in Fairfield, Connecticut, will open in early January 2023.
But it is the 5,000-seat arena in Tempe that is attracting interest from the sports industry, and at the college level in particular. Arizona, the nation’s largest university, has taken advantage of state legislation aimed at promoting the development of sports facilities on college campuses. By law, many of the property taxes normally paid to local municipalities or the state revert to the university for express use in the sports facility project.
A glass facade at one end of UConn’s $70 million hockey rink will show movement within the building.jcj architecture
Arizona State University also used the bonds to fund construction; The debt service is funded by the circuit’s revenue, donor donations, and the proceeds of the Novus Corridor, which the school is developing in coordination with Catellus Development Corp. No tuition fees were used in the hockey facility project.
Oak View Group has a 30-year operating agreement with Arizona State University and sells the naming rights to the ice sheets to the community. The larger venue has already been named after one of the project’s donors, though the name has not been revealed. ASU gets all revenue from its events and has a profit share with OVG for non-ASU events. Ferrara said the arena will be cumulative to the school’s budget.
The place consists of three floors with an open foyer on the second floor. The upper floor has 10 private suites suspended above the ice on each side, with a party platform at one end that can seat about 200 people.
“If it’s just about actual events, you use it 40 times per year,” said Chris O’Reilly, architect and partner at SCI Architects, which designed the building. “This is kind of a global problem with these facilities: How do you make them active every day?”
Fan experience was also central to the design on the three-story UConn building, located at the bottom of a hill, with a large glass facade that welcomes fans with a view of the bustle inside the building. When Husky dogs joined the Eastern Hockey Association in 2012, one of the conditions was that the school eventually build a new hockey rink. The resulting $70 million, 2,600-seat venue funded by the university and private philanthropy has many styles of seating options, according to designer Jim LaPosta of JCJ Architecture.
“What we’ve done here is offer a lot of different experiences in one building and the goal is to make it a place where it’s sold out every night,” said David Benedict, UConn athletic director. “We want this to be a tough ticket to get. We feel like this is such a beautiful place here that we can fill up every night.”