The basketball season is over and Assembly Hall is quiet. No fans, no coaches yelling from the sidelines, no shoes squeaking as players run up and down the court. All the noise is outside of Assembly Hall. The 18 month renovation of the historic venue got underway this week.
Assembly Hall has been home to IU basketball since 1971. Three men's basketball championship teams have played here including the last undefeated college basketball team, Bob Knight's 1976 perfect season.
More than twelve million fans have filed through the doors here to watch a game and that includes a lot of students. Assembly Hall has the nation's largest student section.
"It's born to be one of the great home court advantages in all of college basketball and college sports," says IU Associate Athletic Director Jeremy Gray.
Assembly Hall is a far cry from IU's first gym built in 1892, a barn that was then turned into a carpenter shop. In 1917, the Men's Gymnasium was built and in 1928 The Fieldhouse, now Wildermuth Gym became home to the Hoosiers.
The team then moved to Harry Gladstein Fieldhouse 11 years before Assembly Hall opened in 1971. Gray says the arena's unusual design was to accommodate events other than basketball.
"It was actually designed as two theater audiences facing one another."
But the historic venue is showing its age and athletic department officials decided to do a full scale renovation rather than start over. (Assembly Hall's leaky roof).
"It's a unique venue and there are very few of those left in college basketball," Gray says.
A $40 million gift from alumna Cindy Simon Skjodt of Simon Malls is funding the project. The arena will be renamed after the family - Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall.
Another $2 million dollar donation from Bloomington lawyer Ken Nunn is being used to fund a Champions Plaza with new walkways, landscaping, a rain garden and stone seating walls.
Standing in Assembly Hall's south lobby Associate Athletic Director Eric Neuburger says, "This is really the focus of the whole thing."
The most noticeable difference will be a new grand entrance.
"The ramps system will be completely gone, so anything that has a ceiling over it now will be a couple stories high in the new version," Neuburger says.
The new version will add club seating along with event space that could accommodate up to 200 people.
"You can kind of get a sense from this view how grand they might be with a grand stair case and escalators flanking either side on both sides of this building," he says.
The escalators will lead to revamped concourses with larger concessions and renovated restrooms.
"We'll have the same number of fixtures in the renovated portion; we're adding hundreds of new into the new portion." And more food options. "Right now we're able to serve four lines at a time, each of the concession stands after the renovation will be able to serve six."
Inside the arena, each cushioned seat will be refurbished with added accessible seating. And when fans are sitting in their seats, they can see replays on the new video board inside the arena and multimedia displays throughout the concourses.
The new suites in the south concourse are where the national championship banners are hung. Gray says they are still debating whether to move them up or relocate them.
But a big portion of the renovations will take place in areas fans never see. Workers will rebuild the mechanical, electrical, plumbing and HVAC systems.
The renovation is worth the multimillion dollar price tag Gray says. Not only will fans benefit, but it will help the team too.
"Very quickly before Bob Knight's tenure began, Assembly Hall was constructed and you saw how it helped his recruiting," Gray says. "Cook Hall was built and we very quickly got Cody Zeller to commit as a recruit. So I do think constantly investing in your facilities helps recruiting in the long term."
Coach Tom Crean agrees.
"We recruited Victor Oladipo over the jack hammers and things like that when the place was being built to let him hear some of those things along with other recruits to say this is what the future sounds like," Crean says.
The renovation is scheduled to be complete October of 2016. Assembly Hall will remain open during the construction. The Hoosiers will still get to play the 2015 basketball season here.
IU spring graduation – that is scheduled in just a few weeks, will move to Memorial Stadium.
