On Monday morning, at about the spot where Georgia Tech guard Mfon Udofia will lead fast breaks in less than a year, a cement truck mixed what would eventually be the foundation for club seats.
Where fans will sit and watch the Yellow Jackets, a 110-foot concrete ramp gave cranes and trucks passage from street level down 30 feet into the depths of what is gradually transforming into the new home of Tech basketball.
“I take the long way in to work every day just to see what happened the day before,” Tech coach Brian Gregory said.
On Saturday, the Jackets will play Wake Forest at Philips Arena, their final regular-season game at their temporary home during the renovation of what was formerly Alexander Memorial Coliseum and will be called McCamish Pavilion. Philips Arena has been satisfactory, though not familiar. The new building should prove worth the one-year eviction.
“I think by the time we put the court down this summer, it’s going to feel like one of the tightest, most intimate kind of environments that you’ll see, certainly in the places that we travel to and play,” senior associate athletic director Paul Griffin said.
Griffin has served as Tech’s point man for the $45 million project, which broke ground in May and is on schedule for occupancy in October. Working with the construction company of Whiting-Turner, Griffin’s job has run the gamut.
His tasks range from determining the seating width of the roughly 200 courtside seats set aside for students to purchasing the basketball goals to tackling the challenge of diverting the 3,000 gallons of water that usher forth daily from a spring under the arena, not to mention handling demands from across campus.
Griffin compares it to managing the Final Four, which he has done three times and will do a fourth time next year when it returns to the Georgia Dome.
“That’s the real role that I play, is herding cats,” he said.
If you’re wondering, the seats likely will be 19 inches wide, the goals will be brought over from the NCAA regional tournament being held at the Georgia Dome in three weeks and a thin layer of porous volcanic material will help wick away seeping water.
The arena, which will seat about 8,600, is taking shape. The foundations of the lower bowl and upper deck are nearly complete. Starting next week, the ramp into the arena will be broken up and the remaining section of the bowl and deck will be finished.
On Monday, the roughly 200 crew members were pouring concrete for club seating, installing electrical conduit along the catwalk, replacing the formerly copper roof with aluminum panels and constructing bathrooms and concession stands in some of the 30,000 square feet that will be added to the arena footprint.
Fan amenities such as the four-sided video board that will hang over center court, the high-tech sound equipment, the lighting system that will illuminate the court in theatrical style and the array of high-definition televisions that will hang along the concourse are further down the punch list. The seating, which will overall bring fans closer to the court, has been selected. One distinction, the open layout that will enable fans to see the court from the concourse, already is evident.
“I can’t imagine anyone having the sense that it’s the same building,” Griffin said.
For $45 million, they’d better not.
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