Be grateful for the Pete

[Duneaux Harm]

I watched Arizona play last night at McKale Center. McKale is 50 years old this week. However it needs to go. We had seats in what is the second level. The McKale lower bowl seemed to be about 35 rows of seats surrounding whole court. Some court side seating as well. No boxes on lower level. The upper deck is about ten rows. Whereas the Pete seating has a more vertical structure to seating, McKale slopes back at a slighter angle and you feel far away from court in there than the Pete.

McKale was designed with all of their concessions and restrooms in a concourse between the two levels, but the concourse is inside the bowl as opposed to being outside like the Pete. This is extremely distracting trying to enjoy a game. A ton of commotion.

Also noted there are zero private boxes. That is a shame for UA because they seem more akin to a Kentucky type fan base than us and so tons of money would be spent for those seats.

As to the crowd the Arizona student section was almost invisible. So whoever was ragging on the Oakland Zoo has no real clue. The Arizona civilian fan base is pretty well trained and so does seem more part of the action than the Pete’s crowd.

Really do miss the Pete but cannot complaining about walking to an arena with mid 70s temps on a February night and no hills at all.

 

[Fk_Pitt]

I for one am grateful for the Pete. It’s perfect for us. My only complaint was always about the tv cameras not facing the zoo, and that was fixed. And my other complaint is the food, but that’s solved with a trip to any of the campus establishments prior to the game.

One interesting stadium amenity nugget. I had a diversity, equity and inclusion training module to complete for work the other day, and the course mentioned Lambeau Field. It said when built and for many years, Lambeau barely had any womens restrooms because women didn’t go to games. I’d imagine that was the case for plenty of stadiums, including Pitt Stadium. But I don’t remember.

 

[GaryMcgheeForThree]

For a stadium that’s pushing 20 years old, it still feels incredibly modern and viewer friendly, but not at the expense of feeling like a college basketball stadium. That’s quite an accomplishment by the original designers.

 

[CrazyPaco]

I think the Pete would do well to expand some space for concessions to get the lines away from the flow of traffic in the walkways. Also expand the bathrooms too. This could be done on the upper level by just expanding a little bit over the completely wasted outdoor plaza space that runs along Allequippa St.

The other issue with the Pete is that the Campus View Club is so disconnected and inaccessible from the actual sideline club seats themselves, but I'm not sure how you fix that.

 

[pittchagg]

I think the Pete would do well to expand some space for concessions to get the lines away from the flow of traffic in the walkways. Also expand the bathrooms too. This could be done on the upper level by just expanding a little bit over the completely wasted outdoor plaza space that runs along Allequippa St.

The other issue with the Pete is that the Campus View Club is so disconnected and inaccessible from the actual sideline club seats themselves, but I'm not sure how you fix that.

I wonder how much you can build on top of that plaza, since isn’t that basically the roof of the practice gym?