When they replaced the bleacher seats at Kenan with individual seats, it reduced capacity there from 63K to 50.5K. That is a reduction of just under 20%.
At Kenan, the individual seats mostly have a width of 22 inches, but some in the corners have 20 or 21 inches. This was needed to fix things fix properly. The bench seats were 18 inches wide. Pretty sure that is what we have now at the Carrier Dome. It is the width most commonly used for bench seating.
I am not going to bother to post links but Kenan was known to have very limited leg room before the change and the change made a bad situation worse. Fans got more space width-wise but lost space leg-room wise.
That is the trade off here for people who sit in the upper deck.
Let me start by saying that I sit in the 300 level for football and basketball and have been a season ticket holder on the 300 level for both for many many years. I think this makes me qualified to talk about this with some first hand knowledge.
It is very common, especially for well attended basketball games, for people to sit almost on top of each other, and when you stand to applaud a nice run or to recognize a player who has been playing well and comes off the court, you might not be able to sit down easily afterwards. It regularly feels like someone has snuck someone into our row. There just is not enough room. It is a real problem.
The problem with leg room is, to me anyway, just as vexing. It is probably even more of an issue for me. If you need to leave your seat and you are not sitting at the end of the aisle, it is difficult to get to the aisle. The same problems happen when you attempt to get back to your seat. The people that leave 3 or 4 times a game to get beer/go to the bathroom, etc. are not very popular.
You have to be pretty strong, agile and athletic to move around in the tight quarters. People's knees are inches from the backs of people in the row below. There just isn't enough room.
You can get a sneak preview of what it will be like living with individual seats on the 300 level when you encounter the little padded seats season ticket holders have the option of buying (leasing?) on the 300 level.
These have a very short back and they are very narrow (surely the 18 inch width the seats are allotted). But when you are trying to get through an aisle with some of these things in place, it makes movement twice as hard.
There are rarely more than 2 or 3 in place in a row, so if you can somehow get through those tight gaps, you have a chance to get to or from your seat.
Then there is the constant problem of limited leg room. I am only 6 foot tall and I regularly have people lean back into my knees. And regularly hit my back with their knees. I have to constantly monitor where the person is sitting in front of me and try to keep split my legs around that person, keep my things tilted up by putting my feet on tip toes, just to avoid having regular contact with that person's back. Between this and people constantly trying to walk past me going to or from their seats, these are real nuisances and my biggest issue with attending games in person.
I believe if individual seats like the ones installed at Kenan are installed at our dome, the impact it will have on fan comfort movement on the 300 level will be enormous. Dealing with seats with a normal height for back support is going to be a bear. They lean backwards quite a bit. A lot more into the area where fans use to move back and forth than the 'renters' season ticket holders can get now.
I for one would rather have more leg room than more room side to side. Though both would be awesome.
That said, as
reedny notes, this should only be a problem in the 300 level sections. The 100 and 200 level sections have had backs from day one, and if you look, they have provided more room between each row to accommodate these. That is the real problem here; the distance between rows in the 300 level is too close to accommodate full sized individual seats with chair backs.
The bottom line to be is that I think putting individual seats in the 100 and 200 levels will be well received. Getting an extra 4 inches of space will be very popular. I think a different kind of individual seat should be used on the 300 level. One that has a width of 22 inches and a nice pad to sit on, but a limited height on the back, with a limited angle tilting to the row above. I think solving the width problem might well backfire by making the bad leg room and egress problems even worse.
The problem here will be all the people who will need to be moved to worse seats because of the loss of approximately 20% of the seats.
Virtually everyone will be affected in a negative way. Major donors are going to be unhappy.
And a bunch of the displaced people will presumably end up taking the best seats on the 300 level, displacing many season ticket holders on that level (including me). A lot of us have spent decades slowly moving into the seats we have today, row by row, seat by seat.
I would be fine if they decided for the 300 level, they were going to expand the space given to fans for each seat from 18 to 22 inches and do nothing else. For me, that would have the least impact possible on the leg room and egress problems, and actually solve a problem with width spacing.
My guess is fans on the 300 level will be unhappy if they see people on the 100 and 200 levels with padded individual seats and most will want a padded seat as well. That is fine with me as long as there is no back provided, or the back is very short (8-12 inches high).
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I visited a couple times, usually beer-in-hand, with SU-ambassador and glitterati, Orangeyes (who apparently could sit anywhere he wanted). Once there I could see why the uppers are so popular. Leg room is tight and fans are farther out, of course. But there's a wild west atmosphere, panoramic views and a special camaraderie. My guess . . . they'd be happy with the added width and would shrug off the padded 'lower wimp' seating.
