New Convo: 8,500 Seats, On Campus
Bourne Details Arena Plan
Posted: April 27, 2015
By NICK SUNDERLAND
Daily News-Record
HARRISONBURG – James Madison University has decided on a campus-friendly location as the site for its proposed new $88 million Convocation Center.
JMU athletic director Jeff Bourne said Monday that the 8,500-seat basketball arena – which is still likely years from fruition – will be built on the northwest corner of University Boulevard and Carrier Drive, assuming the school raises enough money to fund the project.
After years of being on a backburner at JMU, the new Convo was thrust to the forefront Monday when the university announced more details of its plans and made a direct appeal for donations to help pay for the arena.
"It's critical that our supporters make commitments so this project becomes a reality," Bourne said in a statement.
JMU settled on a campus site after flirting with the idea of building the arena near the Sentara RMH Wellness Center beside Interstate 81.
In addition to finding an on-campus location that would be convenient for its students and athletes, Bourne said in a telephone interview, the decision to build adjacent to the Festival Conference and Student Center was based on traffic flow and adequate parking space.
The current Convo, located on University Boulevard near Port Republic Road, was built in 1982 and seats 6,426 people.
“One of the things that’s extremely challenging in the current Convocation Center is our ability to get patrons in and out of that facility from a traffic-flow standpoint,” Bourne said. “We pick up several different options by moving up to the current site. It will allow us to use Reservoir [Street], Carrier Drive, University Boulevard – all those options that right now we aren’t in a position to take advantage of.”
Although JMU received approval from the General Assembly in 2011 to raise $88 million for the arena, it still hasn’t collected the seed money it needs to kick-start the project.
Bourne said $12 million needs to be pledged – with $3 million of that in hand, according to JMU Vice President Charlie King — before the project can even enter its architectural design phase. The rest of the project will be financed through bond offerings that JMU will repay with interest to the Virginia Department of Treasury over 20 to 25 years, King said last May.
Bourne said JMU has raised $2.5 million so far, mostly over the past “eight or nine months,” with King adding those donations have come “primarily” in the form of pledges rather than cash.
Once the $12 million has been raised, JMU expects it to take three years for the arena to be ready for business. Architectural renderings would take 12 months, Bourne said, and construction another 24 months.
There is no cut-off date for JMU’s fundraising needs to be met, Bourne said.
“No, because we’re going to reach the $12 million,” he said. “And when we do, we’ll move forward quickly.”
Last season, the Madison men’s basketball team drew an average of just 3,416 people to its home games, a figure that has remained constant for several years. Bourne, though, said he had no concerns about whether JMU would be able to fill an 8,500-seat arena.
“We’re going to fill it,” Bourne said. “Our teams, as they continue to get better and perform at higher levels of competition, there’s no question that we will.”
JMU does have a track record in that regard. When Bridgeforth Stadium was expanded by about 10,000 seats in 2010, there was some skepticism about whether the Dukes would come close to filling it. Madison did so in its first year at the renovated stadium and has continued to be among the national leaders in FCS attendance, though the numbers have fallen since that debut season.
The proposed basketball arena — which Madison’s release said will feature a four-sided video scoreboard, full-court practice facility with six shooting stations, club-level seating and private suites – is also expected to host concerts and other entertainment events.
And if the Colonial Athletic Association were ever to consider using a member campus site to host its conference basketball tournaments, Bourne said he was hopeful JMU’s proposed facility would be in a prime position to do so.
King had previously said Madison was considering a new arena with a capacity of 8,000 to 10,000 people.
“The important thing I think, from my perspective, is having a facility that you can keep full and that is at capacity, versus a facility that may have plenty of room but you rarely fill it,” Bourne said. “So we feel like we’re picking up another 2,000 seats in this facility that will adequately fill our on-campus needs.”
Bourne said Old Dominion University’s Convocation Center — which had a similar price-tag to Madison’s proposed new arena, seats 8,639 and opened in 2002 – was among the model sites JMU used as a reference during its planning process.
The timing of Monday’s announcement, which Bourne felt would help with fundraising, came with the school’s Duke Club Coaches’ Caravan Tour ready to begin Wednesday. The tour is a series of meet-and-greet events usually featuring Bourne, men’s basketball coach Matt Brady, women’s basketball coach Kenny Brooks and football coach Everett Withers.
Brady said in a telephone interview Monday that a new arena will help attract enhanced talent to his program, though he said he has not yet begun using Madison’s proposed facility as part of his pitch to prospective recruits.
Brooks has said in the past that the current aged Convo hurts recruiting. Bourne agreed it’s time for a new arena.
“We’ve not necessarily been harmed by our current facility, but we certainly are not making strides or moving forward with it,” Bourne said.
An independent study that gave JMU a thumbs-up on a potential move from FCS (Division I-AA) to FBS (I-A) in football – the financial engine in college athletics – said a new basketball arena was crucial to making the university attractive to existing FBS conferences.
As for the current Convocation Center, Bourne said a study would be conducted by JMU to figure out an appropriate use for the 32-year-old facility when a new arena is built.
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