I don’t have an issue with renovating Bramlage because of its age. I actually wish it was older so it wasn’t built at the height of concert tours hitting college towns & built as a multi-purpose arena. I know they’ll never build a new basketball specific facility, but I also hate spending 9 figures on a multipurpose arena that has been solely for basketball for 25 years. I don’t care how nice the rest of it is, its still a cheaply, poorly built multipurpose arena where they didn’t want to dig too deep or build too high, so it’s too shallow, the seats from baseline out are horrible & maybe 20% of the seats are decent. We’re still going to end up with a 10k seat arena where 60% of the seats are way too far from the court & unless the team is really good they’ll have trouble filling it.
The bi-center in Salina was built in 1976, holds 7,500 & is a much better facility to watch basketball in. I’d much rather be starting with it as the base for a $100,000,000 renovation than Bramlage. The only pro to Bram is that it’s poor design for watching basketball turns it into a loud drum the 1-2 games a year it’s full enough to get the sound effect, but is dead quite the rest of the games.