Visitors to the W.L. White Arena will see it as it must have looked in 1939, before the upper level seats were installed. Now, the rows are bare once again after city crews have been working to take out the original seats to make way for replacements.
A total of 1,747 seats have been removed, and facilities manager Ed Rathke says the new seats will be coming in starting on the 17th.
“They are supposed to be totally finished with all the installation by the 4th of September,” Rathke said. “We’re hoping that they’ll be done before that. It would be very convenient to have them so we can go ahead and get along with our fall schedule and get everything in place, get comfortable.”
The seat replacement project, part of the city’s 2009 capital improvement plan, was approved by the city commission in May. It is expected to cost just over $200,000, and is part of an effort to spruce up the arena, one of Emporia’s main attractions that draws crowds from out of town to attend games and other functions. Other recent projects in the arena include the replacement of the scoreboard and a new paint job last fall.
To save money, city employees removed the old seats instead of leaving that job up to the contractor. The new seats will be from American Seating, the same company that manufactured the original seats that were installed in 1940.
“The original seats were American Seating, all of our original floor seats and their replacements” — put in about 12 years ago — “were American Seating and everything in the lower balcony is American Seating,” Rathke said, adding that he has never lost a chair because of breakage. The upper level seats were due to be replaced because of their age and natural wear during almost 70 years of use.
The new seats will be up-to-date versions of the originals, with added lumbar support, cup-holders and a self-return mechanism.
The old seats have gone to Purple Wave, an Internet auction company.