Freedom Hall in Louisville is like Blackham in that it was home to University of Louisville Basketball as well as many regional and national horse shows. While Freedom Hall is still multi-use, U of L now plays in the KFC-Yum Center.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Freedom_Hall
Early in the thread, MAT said he spoke to engineers that estimated it would take $10-12 million to renovate Blackham, which (he said) was also the cost of the Cajundome renovation.
If memory serves me correct, the Cajundome renovation was actually over $20 million.
And that was really just internal re-arranging; nothing structural.
But renovating Blackham would seem to involve a much greater effort. I would imagine a building built in 1950 would pretty much require a complete gutting of the facility, and would cost considerably more than $10 million.
I'm pretty sure you're an engineer. Care to make a guess on what the cost might be?
I would love this for so many reasons. That place holds so many memories for me. I'm 49 and Can remember attending games as far back as the Andrew Toney days. Dropping the floor and extending seating to the court would be insane!!! Would love to see this happen!
I agree that it won't happen but should. Only disagreement I have with what has ben said here is capacity. I would make it 6000 but no more. Way I came up with that figure is we were approaching crowds of that nature when the 2018 team was doing well. I am sure if someone went to Dr. Maggard and Dr. Savoie with a donation of 20 million for this purpose it would happen.
At this point, I would say if they don't want to renovate Blackham; DO SOMETHING in that location. It's prime real estate.
The Admin should, at least, go public with an announcement of intentions to renovate/rebuild Blackham. No time frame would need to be given at this point. This would just be UL throwing down a marker, a Vision Quest, if you will.
Things that nobody thought would happen have a weird way of happening here. Omaha, National Rankings in football. R1 status, etc. etc
Imagine this…
In 10 years, we are playing the majority of our home games in Blackham. Brad Boyd is the coach, the team is consistently in the top 25, and Blackham is rockin on a weekly basis. The Cajundome is still reserved for the biggest 1-2 games a year, and because now a special occasion, we put 8-10K in there.
Every single person on this board would take that future. Every single one.
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