Everything Greg Byrne Said About Alabama's New Basketball Arena

The Crimson Tide athletic director is excited about the new state-of-the-art facility that will host Alabama's men's and women's basketball as well as gymnastics.

TUSCALOOSA, Ala. — The first major hurdle to building Alabama’s new basketball arena has been cleared. Friday, the Alabama Board of Trustees voted to approve Stage I of the plan for a new on-campus arena which was presented by athletics director Greg Byrne on Thursday.

Following the approval, Byrne took some time to meet with members of the local media to discuss plans for the new 10,136-seat arena which cost $183 million and will play host to Crimson Tide men’s and women’s basketball as well as gymnastics.

Here is a full transcript of the roughly 16-minute interview

Byrne’s opening statement

“Good afternoon. Good to see ya. Obviously had an important day yesterday for our athletic department and our men’s and women’s basketball program and our gymnastics program and we’ve certainly appreciate the support of our board of trustees, our chancellor St. John and president Bell to allow us to move stage one forward in the exploration of a potential new arena. It’s obviously something that’s been talked a lot amongst our fan base about and tried to give the best answers I could over time knowing that there’s processes that we have to work through for all things involved. That’s what we have been doing. Yesterday as a big step in that. Appreciate y’all having the interest today. Be happy to answer any questions you have.”

On a potential timeline for construction

“Well, so basically yesterday was the approval of stage one, which allows us to start getting more detailed about everything you saw, which will include construction and project costs. We have the early estimates of where we think it will be. There’s going to be a number of processes that we go through, through the board of trustees, in the building of any facility, including this one. We’re gonna need to continue to raise money for the projects.

“We’ve been fortunate to have some success from the generosity of our donors and feel there’s more opportunity for other people to get involved to make this a reality. But those will be ongoing. We’ll be starting to talk more directly with architects and get further ideas and designs put together on what it can look like to hopefully, eventually, get a shovel in the ground on this.”

On the naming process

“There’s a naming process that you go through through the board of trustees and we’ll obviously be identifying different things that we can recognize people who support the project through. That’s early on in the planning process now and that will continue.

“ As far as – obviously getting this announced was a big step and to be honest, now a lot of work really begins to really be able to continue to move this forward. If you watch the trustee meeting yesterday, there are multiple stages for any project. Yesterday was the first one. We’ll have multiple more to go through in the comings months and year. And so that’s what we’ll be focused on is making sure we’ll be staying within those processes.”

On if he sought input from Nate Oats, Kristy Curry and Dana Duckworth

“Obviously, you don’t want to do this in a vacuum. You want to make sure you’re inclusive in the process. So Nate and Kristy and Dana, we all had regular conversations. We had them involved fairly early on on ideas and thoughts and concepts. And so we were able to take all their input and help develop these initial ideas.

“I think one of the things that makes college sports so fun is the environment that the students help create. I think that was one of our major focuses and what we were doing here, and I think you can see from the early, preliminary renderings on this, this certainly takes that heavily into account and I think that’s something went want for all of our programs, but especially with the men’s and women’s basketball and gymnastics.”

On deciding the capacity

“Couple things on that. One, I think I’ve been pretty consistent on messaging. You build your church not necessarily for Easter Sunday but the other 51 weeks of the year. There have been some games where we’ve exceeded that capacity. Not many, though. So we want to make sure we keep the demand. We want to make sure it’s an intimate environment, what we do. But then even another step, and I’ve heard some of the feedback, ‘Hey, you need to have … whatever the number is. 12,000. 15,000.’

“Do you know what the most challenging seats are to sell in an arena? The ones up top. So the other thing is, as you add to the height of the arena, the size of the arena, that significantly drives the costs up, which also is going to get passed along to the fans. So from a construction standpoint, from a fan affordability standpoint, from an atmosphere standpoint and looking at our historical data from tickets getting scanned in, tickets sold, all the different things … we really feel like this is a good solid number, and it doesn’t matter if your arena seats 5,000, if your arena seats 15,000. The ones that are hardest to sell are the highest seats in the arena.

“There is a perception about that that is not unique to Alabama. So we had a lot of internal discussion about that and really do feel like this is a good balance between trying to make this be as affordable project as possible, affordable to our fan base to be able to come to the games, and then at at the same time too, create the atmosphere we want to have for every single game, no matter who we are playing. And obviously not saying this can’t change a little bit. It potentially can.

“But we really feel from the research we’ve done … I’m not going to name the school, but one of the arenas we went and visited, and we’ve listed most of the ones we went and visited, but we didn’t list all of the conversations we’ve had. If they had to do it over again, most of the ones we talked to would be much more efficient with their numbers or a little bit smaller than what they’ve done. Not all of them but some of them.”

On the future of Coleman Coliseum and Alabama’s practice facilities

“Tried to point that out yesterday. We have a lot of infrastructure in Coleman that we use all year round. Our men’s basketball practice set up in there is really good with the weight room right next to it. We actually would like to move women’s basketball to Coleman long-term from a practice standpoint. Weight room. Day-to-day locker room. Like what we said, the new proposed arena would be a competition only facility.

“Not to say you couldn’t practice there. They will at times. I used to work at Kentucky a long time ago, and they played at Rupp, men’s basketball did and women’s basketball did occasionally, but then they practiced day-to-day on campus. Kind of like we have at Bryant-Denny. Have practice right here at Mal Moore and then we go play our games and occasionally practice at Bryant-Denny.

“We’ll still have all the infrastructure that we have at Coleman still be in use. Hopefully move women’s basketball over to Coleman and build them a practice gym equivalent to the men’s. And then we would have Foster become a volleyball only facility. And you can do things with the court and all the space around there can be really beneficial to Rashinda [Reed] and her program.

“Then on top of that, we did do some study of what does it look like if we brought some of these operations up to a new arena. Just from a day to day standpoint, it’s a lot more efficient to keep it right where it is from strength and conditioning to nutrition to medical, all the different things. That’s the path that we went down with that and decided that we needed to continue to use Coleman on a regular basis.”

On if Lucas Oil Stadium was an influence

“Yeah, I’ve actually been to Lucas many times over the years. They did host a final four. I think that may have been the first time I ever went there, and I’ve been there several times since then. I’ve always thought, driving up there the first time seeing it, that had a really good look it, and we think some of the architecture of that fits very well within our campus.

“Make sure I say it right — it’s the classic revival look, right? So we did take that into consideration. We thought the idea of having a roof that looks different than what we have with Coleman would be a good thing. So we spent quite a bit of time discussing what the roofline and everything else would look like, and this is our preliminary look at it and [I] think that it’s a very good start.”

On important factors when considering location

“Well, obviously the Board of Trustees has processes that we go through that, so we did some initial looks. I think conceptually we want something that our student body can have easy accessibility to. One of the ones that we put forward as a potential site up above the RV parking and softball, obviously a lot of the new dorms can walk there easily. A lot of the fraternity houses have access there. Our campus shuttle system goes right by that area.

“But I think accessibility for the students, ingress and egress for the general fans to be able to get in and out of there is helpful. Coleman does have a lot of challenges with that. Even as I pointed out yesterday —even with the new parking garage right here, not too far from where I’m sitting here — on game days when you have an event when everyone leaves at the same time, it’s not made for that. It’s designed to have traffic flow throughout the day in and out. So we think parking to our fans and accessibility to the main arteries is a good thing.

“So all those things will be taken into consideration, and I know our recommendations will be listened to. We’ll see if maybe there’s something out there that we haven’t thought of yet as far as the sit goes, but we did try to do some due diligence on that and give some feedback on what we think makes sense for both our student body and our fans. And I do think having it on campus is a good thing for everybody.

On whether there has been thoughts of turning Coleman into an events venue

“As far as Coleman, we’re really early on that. We have some ideas. I think the idea of making sure the day-to-day operations we have there continue at the level we expect is a high priority as well potentially moving over our women’s basketball program and then updating what we do for gymnastics as well. So those are the forefront.

“What that means for everything else at Coleman and the space that we have, we may end up utilizing — make sure I say may — we may end up utilizing some of the court space that’s currently there. Do you look at some of the seating that’s there because we can make better use of the space? Again all of that, please if you’re going to write that, include this part: all of that is early on in preliminary discussions, and we have a long ways to go and processes to go through before we have a landing spot there.”

On how difficult this plan was during a pandemic

“As far as doing this in a pandemic, yeah, obviously our world was very disrupted by the last two years and everything going on with COVID, and we’ve tried to do our very best as a department to respect the virus, respect one another and do everything we could to move forward safely. I think we’ve done a good job of that. Proud of the efforts of our student-athletes, our coaches, our staff and our fans have done a really good job adjusting to the realities that we’re all facing.

“And at the same time, too, the momentum we have as a department is something that we just can’t sit back and say, ‘Hey, we’re Alabama. We’re gonna be fine.’ We wanna continue to reinvest in our success, and so while we have tried to be very respectful of everything going on, we wanted to do everything we could to move forward. And I think what took place yesterday – and I know the board of trustees’ official approval today – certainly shows that we’ve continued to do everything we can to move forward in spite of the challenges that are out there.”

On if Nate Oats’ success led to acceleration; gymnastics…

“I’ll start with Dana. Obviously, had a great year last year with her gymnastics program, winning the SECs and incredible success in our history. We need to make sure we do everything we can to continue to move that forward for the future. It’s important to our university, it’s important to the young women in our program and all the alums. And so I think this type of environment will be very, very good for our gymnastics program.

“As far as the success of Nate, he hit the ground running from the second we landed in town, has brought a lot of energy and enthusiasm to our men’s basketball program. I always say a positive attitude, energy, enthusiasm is contagious, just like a negative attitude is contagious, too, and I think there is a lot of enthusiasm. We had Phase II of the Crimson Standard on the books as an idea before most of our fanbase knew who Nate Oats was, right, and so this is still within the timeframes of what we’re talking about as far as a priority. But I think the enthusiasm for what he has done and the team and the coaches have done is certainly something that gives us momentum to move these things forward, and we’re trying to do our very best to make sure we take advantage of that. And very pleased with the progress of our men’s basketball program, and last year with our women’s program, getting back to the tournament for the first time in 22 years. That’s important as well because we wanna have success across the board here at the University of Alabama in everything we do.”

Alabama New Arena/Facilities Proposal

Alabama Athletics

Renderings are conceptual and subject to change. All projects are subject to approval of the University of Alabama System Board of Trustees and dependent upon fundraising success.

Alabama Athletics

Alabama Athletics

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