All I need to know is this, it was the Taj Mahal of refurbishments, and it was a government estimate (Sedgwick County at that).
Government Estimate? I can point to 6 LOCAL architectural, engineering and construction firms that worked on the estimates....not once but twice.
As for the "Taj Mahal", what people did not understand about BBA was the extent to which the facility was non-compliant. When you touch a non-compliant structure, by law EVERYTHING has to be corrected to CURRENT codes. Unless you are talking about a historically significant structure there is no wiggle room on that. A 30 year old structure, ANY 30 year old structure was built to different codes and will be by its very nature non-compliant in many reasons. In the case of BBA that meant renovations starting at the parking lot with the approaches to the building and continued well through out the structure.
You also say "Just fix the bathrooms", but as an example of extensive the rennnovations would have been, understand that the space underneath the existing bowl structure was inadequate for compliant bathrooms and there would have to be new facilities constructed OUTSIDE the concourse requiring that the architectural shell be expanded. Factor in that the concourse on BBA is on the "second floor" and in many places you were now extending structure to support the new restroom facilities some 30+ feet.
Please don't think that I am trying to say that you are "stupid" or anything, but many people simply don't understand what that rennovation would have taken. It was a HUGE project.
I don't beleive they were required to spend any monies on ADA until such time as the existing building was put under reconstruction. All ADA codes would have had to be complied with, following. The Coliseum could be operating today as a stand alone venue, as is, if there wasn't an Intrust.
Nope, the ADA settlement had a strict compliancy date at which time there needed to be a plan to either rennovate, replace or close the structure.
I hope everyone will come to realize just how great of a facility that place was, particularly for our sport.
No one is arguing that, at least not me.
What I am saying though is that when given the choice of spending $49m (taking out the $6m for the pavilion renovations that happened afterall) to rennovate that facility or construct a new one, I became (I was not originally) a supporter of replacement.
I am not saying that I support completely the new arena either, I have issues with several things about it. But, it is hard to argue with the success of the arena:
INTRUST BANK ARENA RANKS IN TOP 50 WORLD TICKET SALEShttp://www.intrustbankarena.com/news.asp?id=10&pid=285&task=display&pcatid=Just some additional context,
Chuck
