What’s next for the University of Utah’s Jon M. Huntsman Center?

It took Greg Kelser 37 years to return to the Jon M. Huntsman Center, so he took his time absorbing the nostalgia on a day in 2016.

He looked down at the shiny maple hardwood and surveyed the 15,000 signature Utah-red seats. He then gazed up at the dome that towers over the steep concourse.

This was where Kelser hoisted the 1979 national championship trophy as a forward for Michigan State. It’s where Hall of Fame dynamos Larry Bird and Magic Johnson etched the first chapter of what would become a legendary rivalry in the most-watched college basketball game of all time.

Memories surely flooded Kelser’s mind until a voice interrupted the daydream.

“Are you back here to go down memory lane?” Utah facility manager Steve Pyne asked.

He walked with Kelser down to the floor where he recreated plays from his glory days. Then Pyne presented Kelser with a piece of the old 1979 hardwood that had been stowed away in a storage closet for over 35 years.

“It was a highlight, reflecting back on the 35-40 years of the arena’s history,” Pyne, now retired from the job he held for years, said recently as he recalled the interaction.

The Huntsman Center still serves as a cathedral for some of the University of Utah’s most memorable moments. From hosting 81 NCAA Tournament games to Rick Majerus’ legendary Runnin’ Utes run to the Red Rocks’ run to 10 national championships, the 55-year-old arena has seen it all.

But — now standing at over a half-century old — the arena has fallen behind the standards of time. The once jam-packed seats are often left empty by Utah fans. It lacks suites, loge boxes and modern concessions.

Its pregame atmosphere consists of a crew of four arena employees manually flashing spotlights around the arena, while a hype video plays on the video board. During halftime, the Utah’s PA announcer begs fans to pack the lower concourse of the arena.

The Huntsman Center’s last renovation was $6 million in 2014, when the university added a new super-grid ceiling structure, LED lighting, a new sound system, and a maple wood floor, and another in 2017-18, when it added a $4.1 million, new video display system.

More changes are needed, however.

“Our focus continues to be centered on exploring everything we can do to make our games in the Huntsman Center the most attractive experience they can be for our programs and our fans,” Utah athletic director Mark Harlan said in a statement to The Salt Lake Tribune.

“It is also a building that was constructed before certain standards that are expected now, and it’s challenging with regard to elevators and some amenities. So it’s also our responsibility to continue to look at what the future possibilities might be, within the context of the overall campus planning for facilities and growth.”

Could a long-term renovation project be on the way?

Will the U. look toward building a new arena?

Remodeling or rebuilding?

In 2024, Baylor opened the doors to the new $213 million Foster Pavilion.

After years of playing in the 10,437-seat Ferrell Center, a bowl-shaped complex with plenty of similarities to the Huntsman Center, the Bears decided they were ready for an upgrade.

What was the reasoning?

“We just couldn’t offer different experiences for different guests,” Henry Howard, Baylor’s associate athletic director, told The Tribune. “Obviously, you’re hosting students. They want a different experience than your high-end donor. And then you’ve also got your general fans.”

In its old building, fans had trouble walking around the tight concourse. Its dome leaked following rainstorms in Waco. There were also no premium seating options, and even if there had been, people were not interested in filling the open spots anyway. Hosting late-night games on a weekday, when the casual fan had work the next day, meant the building often had too many open seats.

Baylor now has a steeper arena with 3,000 fewer seats. Instead, it has a 24-seat suite, 70 loge box seats. As part of an improved fan experience, the remodel upgraded the Bears from 70 courtside seats to 160.

The last row of seating in the Foster Pavilion is also 54-feet closer to the court in comparison to Baylor’s old venue.

“You may have less people, but they’re closer to the court,” Howard said.

The U. doesn’t have to follow Baylor’s lead whenever it decides the future of the Huntsman Center. A new building comes with a hefty price tag: The University of Texas’ new Moody Center cost a reported $338 million, and the University of Oklahoma’s proposal for a new arena has clocked in at $330 million.

In 2014, the Utah Board of Higher Education conducted a study about potential improvements to the Huntsman Center, which was expected to be constructed in three phases. Phases two and three would potentially blow out the walls of the arena’s concourse, add different seating options, and downsize the capacity to 12,500-11,500 seats, according to Pyne.

According to the 2014 study, a new arena was considered but “was deemed not feasible [due to] a cost and schedule standpoint.”

Other schools have had success with remodeling their existing arenas.

Sara Boyer, an architect at Moody Nolan — the largest African-American-owned and operated architecture firm in the United States—helped lead the 2018 renovations of Cincinnati’s Fifth Third Arena. The university’s privately-funded venture cost $87 million.

“There are probably three big reasons why they didn’t build a new arena,” Boyer said. “One of them was cost. It’s a lot more. You have to pay for the cost of the demolition and then the whole cost for an entirely new arena. The other one was because of where this building was, there was a lot of utility.

“The last thing was the building wasn’t that old. It was built in 1985, so it just didn’t seem to make a lot of sense.”

Craig Hardee, the senior project manager for the restoration project of Butler’s Hinkle Fieldhouse, shared a similar sentiment. Building new always costs more, he said. But, when there’s history involved, there have to be extra considerations made before moving onto a new arena.

“We’re dealing with a National Historic Landmark,” Hardee said of his work on Hinkle. “It’s not only a figure on our campus, but in the city of Indianapolis and in the state of Indiana. Building a new arena wasn’t even a consideration.

“The main cost for us [and goal] was just providing the other amenities that the fans are expecting in an arena.”

Gary Sparks, the lead architect for Oklahoma State’s Gallagher-Iba Arena, led a similar venture in the late 1990s. He stripped out and replaced old electrical wiring, plumbing and HVAC of OSU’s original arena.

He then built a shell on top of the arena, which increased the capacity. He says he’d do the opposite to the Huntsman Center if he were consulting on the project.

“I’d probably start at the concourse level and renovate everything above it,” Sparks said of renovating the Huntsman Center. “Then you’d have to demolish those seats. Then I’d turn all that into really luxurious suites. I think that’s what you would have to do.”

Sizing up or sizing down?

In 2015, when now-Oklahoma State athletic director Chad Weiberg joined Texas Tech, he toured the United Supermarkets Arena in Lubbock, Texas.

The Red Raiders had only made March Madness one time since 2007. They were struggling to fill their venue’s 15,098 seats and talks of downsizing the arena were already in motion.

“One of the things that they were saying was, ‘Well, I think we built this thing too big, and we probably need to look at how we can reduce the capacity,’” Weiberg told The Tribune.

Then the Red Raiders hired Chris Beard.

The wins started piling on. Texas Tech made the Big Dance by his second season. The program’s average attendance jumped from 8,994 fans per game in 2016-17, Beard’s first season, to an average of 10,739 fans in 2017-18.

“Now they’re happy they have every one of those 15,000 seats,” Weiberg said. “I think that’s just the perfect example of just what winning can do.”

Weiberg is now facing a similar problem with Gallagher-Iba Arena in Stillwater, Oklahoma, which has 13,611 seats. The Cowboys have the second-worst attendance record for men’s basketball in the conference. They also haven’t made the NCAA Tournament since 2020-21.

“Fans will come when you’re winning,” Weiberg said. “It’s a little bit of a chicken and egg thing too. You need the crowd, and particularly the students, to show up to create that home-court advantage and help you win those games.”

This season, Utah men’s basketball has seated an average of 8,015 fans per game, 10th among the 16 teams in the Big 12. The Huntsman Center has also averaged 3,869 and 12,207 fans per contest for women’s basketball and women’s gymnastics, respectively.

But even winning basketball programs have had to consider downsizing in recent years.

The Baylor Bears won the NCAA title in 2021. But their new Foster Pavilion has 70% the capacity of the school’s old arena.

“It helps the guests, it helps the coach and it helps the fans create that hostile environment,” Howard said. “It just made sense to downsize.

“With the new acoustics of the facility and with the slope of the risers, even if we have half of a crowd on a Tuesday night at 8 p.m. that’s better than having a place that looks empty.”

Iowa State AD Jamie Pollard told The Tribune that he’s tried being ahead of the curve in the fan experience market, recently breaking ground on a new sports and entertainment district, CYTown, to generate revenue for the campus when basketball and football are out of season.

The Cyclone’s Hilton Coliseum seats more than 14,000. But Pollard still sees the appeal of a smaller building.

“Scarcity is a great motivator, and we prey on that in our industry because of the donation levels that you require people to give to get the best seats,” he said of downsizing arenas. “That also helps in those lean years, because they know [it’s not worth] giving those seats up.”

Focusing on the future

As pre-game music reverberated off the ceiling of the Huntsman Center on Feb. 15, Mike Ohlin scarfed down a cookie while wearing his signature black Utes pullover, as crumbs scattered on the ground.

Ohlin has been attending games in Utah’s famed arena since the 1960s. When his parents went out, he’d listen to the radio broadcast to catch the live scoring updates on the Runnin’ Utes. The next day, he’d read the paper to digest a recap.

“I’m just used to coming,” Ohlin said, as he watched Utah’s team warm up. “The present situation bothers me, because — I’ll be honest with you — we probably are the most unathletic team in the conference, and I don’t see a future. I think that’s what’s hard.”

Ute fans hope new basketball coach, Alex Jensen, will usher in better times.

Meanwhile, inside the 55-year-old arena, Utah officials said they were focused on small changes to improve the fan experience this year.

“Our focus is on what we can control, and that, to me, is our concessions; that’s our parking, that’s our in-game entertainment. Those are areas that we continue to focus on and innovate,” Patrick Nowlin, Utah’s new deputy athletic director and chief revenue officer, said.

This season, the Utes added grab-and-go concessions, so fans could get back to their seats quicker during games. They also sent out fan surveys and held focus groups with donors to understand what Utah fans like, and don’t like, about attending games in the Huntsman Center.

“Whether it be through how [fans] enter the building to how they consume the game to how they are entertained,” Nowlin said. “We are going to challenge ourselves to continue to find new ways to innovate, but we also want to understand what it is that our fans find value in because that right there is what we want to invest in.”

But the U. is currently surveying what’s next. Is it out with the old and in with the new, or are renovations of the Huntsman Center still the main focus?

Pyne doesn’t know.

“I don’t know what can be done to bring that excitement back, especially when there’s not a good product on the floor,” Pyne said.

He still regularly comes to Utah games when he has time and is also a strong proponent of bringing back the black curtains that cover up the top half of the arena’s seats.

Like most Utah fans, he longs for change in the building he has dedicated so much of his life to.

When Pyne thinks back on the 40 years he’s spent working in the Huntsman Center, he smiles at the memories, whether it be Majerus’ NCAA Tournament runs or watching Kelser relive his 1979 championship.

As Pyne handed Kelser the red-painted piece of wood from the Huntsman Center in 2016, he bartered in exchange for The Michigan State forward’s signature on one of the original 1979 national championship programs he held onto as a keepsake.

It’s a personal token from one of the most historic moments in college basketball. But it’s also a reminder of what the Huntsman Center can be when it’s at its best.

A place for rowdy crowds. A place for electric basketball.

And, he hopes, a place for more memories.

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