Kohl Center Makes Debut This Weekend

The $76.4 million Kohl Center will officially open Saturday at 3:30 p.m., when the Wisconsin men's basketball team plays Northwestern in front of 16,500 fans and a national television audience on ESPN.

The final bolts are just about in place, the courtside wiring for the media is being hooked up, the cleanup of the lingering construction dust is nearly completed.

“We’ll be ready,” says Al Fish, the athletic department’s administrative officer and arena’s guiding light. “We are on time and on budget.”

The $76.4 million Kohl Center will officially open Saturday at 3:30 p.m., when the Wisconsin men’s basketball team plays Northwestern in front of 16,500 fans and a national television audience on ESPN.

Not that it has been easy to get to this point. Early on, the project was put on a fast-track schedule. When the doors open Saturday, the project will have taken 20 months, start to finish, a full four to six months faster than most projects of this magnitude.

“Everybody asks me about the hardest part,” says Fish. “I tell them it was the day that the electricians came in to this 460,000 square-foot building and said to us, ‘Where do you want the outlets?'”

Fish has been involved in virtually every detail; for the past four months he’s rarely left the building before midnight, carrying a nightly checklist around to monitor the status of the work before checking out to go home for a few hours sleep.

This past Sunday night, less than a week before the official opening, was typical. Monday’s agenda was to include a big media tour and the men’s basketball team’s first practice on the new floor. The basketball court looked great, but there was one small problem – no hoops. The truck carrying the new standards arrived sometime after midnight, with a crew waiting to get them unloaded, assembled and in place. When the press showed up at 1 p.m. and the basketball team shortly thereafter, the court was ready.

“In business, they call that ‘just on time’ delivery,” Fish says.

Actually, the Kohl Center has been a ‘just on time’ project from beginning to end. Just before Christmas, the interior looked more like a construction site than an arena. But every day, some area of the building was undergoing a transformation. The long hallway leading to the eight locker rooms in the basement was transformed from bare concrete to a tile floor in a day; the floor of the arena went in a matter of days from barren to a full-fledged hockey arena, complete with an ice surface, boards and Plexiglas to a vivid red “W” painted at center ice; the ticket area evolved from an empty space to a functioning office over one hectic weekend.

“Those kinds of changes have happened every day for more than a year and a half,” says Fish. “In April 1996, this spot was just a pile of dirt.”

Beginning with Saturday’s game, the Kohl Center will become a new focal point not only for athletics, but for a variety of campus activity. It will be the home for men’s and women’s basketball and, beginning next fall, Badger hockey. But it also will host concerts, shows and numerous university functions, including commencement. Fish says meetings are planned with university deans and directors to explain possible uses of the building. The Nicholas Suites, three versatile rooms just off the main concourse, are suited to fund-raising and department events, and the expansive concourses will work well for such events as large symposia.

“This is a university facility, not just a sports arena,” Fish says.

And an impressive facility. The two expansive concourses – one on ground level, one a floor up – have terrazzo floors and tiled walls of Portuguese limestone. A tremendous expanse of glass provides panoramic views of the surrounding campus.

On the main concourse, just inside the front entrance, is the Mendota Wall, a blown-glass sculpture by artist Dale Chihuly. The quality and spaciousness of the concourse and the sculpture, give the building a special quality.

But the Kohl Center is primarily built for athletics — and for accommodating the large audiences athletics attract comfortably. There are 26 bathrooms, including seven “family” bathrooms that provide a private space for families with small children; 18 concessions stands; a full-service kitchen; a Badger Store selling Wisconsin merchandise; the athletic ticket office; and a 22,000-square-foot basketball practice facility.

And the building is accessible in every possible regard for people with disabilities, from the wide aisles and generous wheelchair seating areas to the accessible bathrooms and ticket and concession areas.

The center also contains a state-of-the-art media center, expected to add to the building’s drawing power for national tournaments; and eight locker rooms, including individual areas for the basketball and hockey teams that were designed in large part by the coaches themselves. In a nod to the players who inhabit those locker rooms, the shower heads for the women’s basketball team are 6 feet, 6 inches high, the men’s are 7 feet, 3 inches.

But the jewel of the Kohl Center is the seating bowl, set in the center of the building and reached by a number of wide entryways. It has three levels of red seats, with the first level spreading back from the court to a series of luxury boxes, and two cantilevered balconies stacked overhead. It is an impressive sight.

“I still get chills when I walk in here,” says John Finkler, the center’s tour director.

The cantilevered decks are an architectural wonder that invoke the intimacy of the Field House by drawing the upper balconies closer to the floor than they are in most arenas without using view-obstructing support beams.

“There’s not a bad seat in the house,” Finkler says, even though the entire Field House could be dropped through the ceiling of the Kohl Center and nearly fit inside the upper balconies.

“We’re happy with this facility,” Fish says. “In fact, the buzz is already out that it is a special place. We’ve had a lot of groups come through here to see what we’ve done. The Australian Olympic Committee planning for the Games in Sydney in 2000 has even come to check us out as they are planning their basketball arena.”

Those on campus who want to check the Kohl Center out in the near future can still get tickets for the first women’s game next Tuesday. As of early this week, more than 12,000 tickets had been sold. But, as will be the case as long as any tickets remain unsold at the Kohl Center, good seats are still available.