“We have to balance that with financial realities. During his interview on The Next Round, Byrne wanted to let supporters that UA has “not sat still” and is working on the plan “every single day.” The success of the Alabama men’s basketball program under head coach Nate Oats, who just received a contract extension through the 2028-29 season, has led to increased discussion on the arena amongst Crimson Tide fans. “Well, it got after to about two and a half years into it, we were like, ‘It would be more expensive to build through them in which we would have to give up a ton of control than it would be to go build our own arena ourselves.’” What we went from was maybe, hey, potentially an arena for a very low cost for the University of Alabama to now, when we kept digging on it – and to build an arena to support concerts in the level that they have is a completely different build than building a competition-only facility. “We actually met with those people three years ago in trying to say, ‘Could this be a solution for us?’” Byrne said. But I also want you to know as we were doing this, we have tried to look at every avenue possible as far as what opportunities are there.”īyrne said most of those possibilities don’t go public, but he offered the all-new Moody Center on the University of Texas campus as an example. We actually had a gift that came in this morning. Yesterday, I was in Birmingham trying to raise some money. Now, with that, our donors have been extremely generous. “A quarter of a billion dollars, and that was not what we were expecting. And then the third one is, ‘OK, now we think we could be close to $250 million.’
“So over about two or three more meetings, I would walk in there and they would have very grim-looking faces on them and say, ‘Eh, it’s gone up some.’ ‘Well, how much?’ ‘$25 million.’ Next meeting, another $25 million. “In the architect’s defense, they didn’t anticipate the level of inflation that we’ve been under for the last year,” Byrne said.
Appearing on The Next Round on Friday, Byrne discussed just how much the new building could cost. Alabama director of athletics Greg Byrne can’t go to the grocery store without being asked about the new arena for basketball and gymnastics that was approved over one year ago.įinancially, the proposed venue was initially set to cost $183 million, but due to the pandemic, construction costs have risen, resulting in complications in the planning process.
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