I posted this in the NC lacrosse thread but since it specifically pertains to the dome renovation, I will re-post it here.
I went the SU-UNC lacrosse game Saturday afternoon.
It was my first time in the Dome post renovation.
Quick thoughts:
The lights are nice but they have the main ones hung low on the north and south sides of the roof, near the top of the walls. They are really bright and it hurt my eyes when I looked anywhere near them. I wish they put them up higher, closer to over the playing field, where they would cause less issues for fans trying to watch events.
The paint job on the parts of the walls exposed above where the seats end in the end zones looks really nice. They have sections of orange, blue and grey. The orange and blue are the right colors. Not a fan of grey but it matches the color of the hard shell part of the new roof and looks great.
They also added color to the concrete ring that marks the top of the north and south walls. Again orange and blue. I don't think they painted them; I think they bolted on a fake wall in front.
I think this is where they moved recognition of all the SU football bowl teams. The font is pretty small and not really easy to read.
They have the NC banners for the sports played in the dome hanging from the roof on the north and south sides. They look nice but are dark blue. Would have preferred orange. Maybe they would be harder to read if they were orange?
There are retired jerseys for basketball played up top on the west wall. Again, I think they were blue, which is weird because we almost never wear blue. Worse still, they chose to use orange for the jersey numbers and player names. It is okay for the player numbers but the player names are very hard to read in orange with a dark blue backing. Big snafu. There is a reason our dark blue normal home football jerseys use white for the player names.
That said, they look nice. They look expensive and high quality. It is good that they tried. Hopefully someday they can do them again, and make them look more like the jerseys the basketball team wears. The coolest thing would be to have different ones for different eras and truly make them look like the jerseys worn during the era the player played. Do that and when we retire jerseys in the future, coordinate with marketing so fans can buy a copy of the retired jersey with the same authentic look of the jersey the player wore while playing.
Other stuff:
The sound system is awesome. You can hear what the announcer says. They had little videos from the parents of the seniors when they were introduced (it was senior day) and you could actually understand what everyone was saying. They had the sound a little too loud for me but at least they didn't blare lots of angry rap and heavy metal songs like one has to endure trying to attend a Crunch game.
The end zone scoreboards are bigger and better than the ones we have before. Good resolution. Video looks very nice on them. I think one of the old ones in an endzone was moved to the northwest corner and is mostly used to show the score, time remaining, etc. Resolution on that one is not great.
The center hung scoreboard is terrific. The quality of the images is fantastic. True HD. Crystal clear. Awesome. My only quibble is that it was hung really high. Way up almost against the roof.
That might be required for football, so punts don't hit it, but there are no such issues for lacrosse. The reason I bring it up is because I, like everyone else in the place, was sitting on the first level. To look at that scoreboard required craning my neck pretty severely. I loved looking at it and because I kept doing it, I quickly became uncomfortable.
It was very much the same feeling one gets when you sit in the first row at a movie theatre and have to look up at the screen at a tough angle the whole movie. I hope we can bring the scoreboard down a bit more for future lacrosse games. From the pictures I have seen, I am sure they had it a lot lower for basketball games.
Glad I sit at the top of the 3rd level for football. That is going to make looking at the center hung scoreboard a lot easier on my neck.
Didn't have a chance to check out the new, touchless bathrooms in the end zones.
Did take a look at the newly expanded and enhanced concession stands in the corners of the lower level. You can see a lot of new ductwork, a lot of new equipment to support cooking and deep frying in those areas and for the first time, I had the feeling that the dome was a big time player in concessions (it has looked awful compared to other athletic facilities I have been to for a long time). Maybe someday soon they will open and dazzle us with new and exciting food options.
Walking in the concourses, you can see there has been a ton of pipes added overhead. Presume all of that is for AC. On that topic, it looked like a couple of suites have been enclosed in plexiglass, presumably to support AC. The arena is definitely not being air conditioned yet.
When we left, they had a bunch of doors propped open so fans could leave easily. No whoosh when we left. The whooshes are gone forever. I already feel nostalgia for them.
It was hard to get to the dome from the Raynor Lot (used to be Stadium) because they did away with a set of stairs that used to be almost directly across from the VA garage that led up to the dome. Had to walk down Irving maybe 100 yards and take another set of steps and then walk south along Falk to finally get to the dome. We wondered why.
On the way out, I think we found out. There is major construction going on west of the dome. There are a couple of trenches and some big pipes being worked on. I took a picture. See below.
View attachment 200040
Pretty sure this is the main feed to and from the main cooling stations for the campus down by Almond. I think this is where the feed for AC is coming from and until it is done, the dome cannot be air conditioned. Great to see it is underway. I thought Peter said he expected it done by March.
At this point, I don't think there is much hurry. It surely isn't going to be ready for the last couple of women's lacrosse home games. Hoping though that the game on Saturday was the last one I will ever attend where I do not feel AC keeping me nice and cool no matter what is happening down on the field.
footballscoop.com
thecollege.syr.edu
