Four months after work was started to renovate FirstOntario Centre, the place looks like you’ve never seen it before, writes Scott Radley.
www.thespec.com
A first glimpse at the inside of the downtown arena renos
The seats are all out. The private boxes are gone. The stairs you'd use to exit from the concourse onto York Boulevard are no more. The scoreboard is wrapped in plastic. And finishings have been removed from every corner of the place.
Four months after renovations began at the building formerly known as FirstOntario Centre (we'll get to what that means in a second), the place looks like you've never seen it before.
"For people who see the outside facade and think nothing's happening," says Oak View Group vice-president of communications Teri Washington, "it is."
It is, indeed.
That's really the story here. After so many delays and a seeming lack of traction for so long, work is absolutely underway to renovate the downtown arena. And it's not just a paint job or some minor touch-ups.
Today, the inside is down to the bare bones. It's a hollowed-out, dusty homage to concrete painted in various shades of grey, all backed by a soundtrack of jackhammers. There are still some walls to come out and some other significant changes to be made but the work already done is significant.
While it takes some imagination to visualize what it'll eventually look like, a tour on Monday helped paint a bit of a picture.
We'll start where those York Boulevard stairs were. The main floor at that spot will become a restaurant that's open to the outside which will be available whether there's an event going on or not. The second floor (which had been a small venue called The Lounge) will be a much bigger, private members-only club with direct access to the bowl.
The entire main concourse - the one you're familiar with if you've ever gone to a game or show there and went looking for some food or washrooms - is being reworked to be more open and more modern.
But the big change is coming in the basement. The "dead concourse" as Oak View Group's senior vice-president of venue development Paul Young calls it.
Had you ever taken the escalator near the box office to the lower level, you'd be aware of the huge open space that typically was used for not very much. It's now going to be the main concession area for those in the lower bowl.
"This all used to be storage," Young says. "This will all be a new concourse."
There will be a number of clubs down there as well. Plus 10 unique private boxes running the length of the arena (this means the arena's unique retractable seats that allowed the floor to be expanded for certain events will be no more) to go along with 10 suites higher up on the old concourse that'll be on the other side.
The stage will remain at the east end where it's always been. But it'll now be cut into the stands which will set it back and allow for more seats during a concert. Roughly 15,000 for a typical show. During a sports event, those will be filled with new retractable seats that'll complete the bowl.
One other major change comes with the modernization of a 40-year-old arena that was built for life in the 1980s.
"One of the things we do now that, quite frankly, didn't even exist then was the technology infrastructure," Young says. "This building basically had none."
In order to have good WiFi, solid cell service, tap-and-go pay systems, modern HVAC and smoke systems, and other things, a ton of adjustments and additions are required.
Does all the endless concrete make that a challenge?
"It does," Young says. "Concrete and cell service doesn't go together."
That's still a ways off, though. The place currently couldn't look further from the finished product. That said, everyone involved says the project is still on time (for a completion late next year) and on budget (set at $280 million).
There are numerous pieces of heavy equipment throughout the building, debris is being cleaned up, concrete has been carved out of the basement floor to allow for plumbing and wiring to be run to the new concessions, and sparks are flying in the stands. Literally.
And there's dust. Lots and lots of dust.
What's most striking is how open the building feels with the suites around the concourse gone. There's so much more light inside as a result. We'll see if that remains once everything is done. But even beyond all the other stuff, it's made the Hamilton Arena feel so different.
Yes, the Hamilton Arena. Throughout the tour, those involved continually called it that. We've heard that name used here and there for a while now rather than the name we've known it as for a decade. It's on the construction helmets and the OVG website and other official items.
Is that significant?
"We are actively talking to several sponsors," says Oak View Group Canada president Tom Pistore, who says an announcement should be coming by March.
Does that mean the place will soon have a new name?
"Yes."
Just when you finally got used to calling it FirstOntario Centre instead of Copps ... ...
