The Emporia Gazette

November 22, 2008

• Headlines
• Sports
• Weather
• Classifieds

• Help
• Log in
• Home

• E-mail story to a friend
• Comments on this story
• iPod friendly version

Because of a new regulation by the National Collegiate Athletics Association, a new scoreboard at William Lindsay White Auditorium is a must. To keep the arena fresh and up to date, the Emporia City Commission sees a new floor, video board and interior paint job as musts, too.

The commission discussed going forward with nearly $270,000 worth of improvements to White Auditorium at its work session Wednesday morning, including new electronic equipment valued at $134,425. The consensus was to pursue all proposed spruce-ups to the home of Emporia State University basketball.

The NCAA recently approved a rule stating that all member-school basketball facilities must have backboards with a red-light strip around the perimeter of the backboard that lights when time expires at the end of a half. White Auditorium’s current scoreboard, installed in approximately 1984, cannot integrate the red-light strip into its existing operating system.

The new four-sided scoreboard hanging over the court would represent a technological upgrade but would look similar to the current overhead scoreboard. A 10-pixel video board, measuring 96 inches by 160 inches, would replace the auxiliary scoreboard hanging over the stage on the south end of the arena.

Assistant City Manager Mark McAnarney said the video board would feature replays and player pictures for team introductions. He said his hope was that White would have one of the best video boards in the MIAA.

“We look at it as an economic development tool,” McAnarney said. “If you look around the cities around us — the Ford Center in Oklahoma City, the Bank of America Center in Tulsa, the Sprint Center (in Kansas City, Mo.), Wells Fargo (Arena in Des Moines, Ia.), Qwest Center (in Omaha, Neb.) — the bigger cities have all built downtown arenas. ... In my opinion, we’re not anything like them, but we have a smaller version of that. It’s an economic development tool for our town.”

Commissioners voiced no objection to updating and refinishing the court, which would cost about $20,000. Facilities Manager Ed Rathke said the only change to the floor that’s mandatory is the painting of the NCAA’s new men’s basketball three-point line, which will be one foot back from the old 19-foot, nine-inch distance. The new men’s line could simply be painted on the existing floor, but the old MIAA logo also needs to be removed from the floor, Rathke said.

“And (the old logo) looks dated,” Rathke said. “It’s been (on the floor) since 1999. The rest of the stuff (with the floor) we could live with, but I don’t really think that we’re gonna be able to get a contractor in here in time this year for me to do the floor. So I’m probably gonna end up just adding a (three-point) line to the surface of it anyhow.”

The old logo featured the states of Kansas and Missouri side by side, but the league now has a new design after the addition of the University of Nebraska-Omaha. The proposed refinishing of the floor would not include the new MIAA logo; instead, City Manager Matt Zimmerman said, the city talked to ESU about putting the logo on a banner. That way, the city wouldn’t incur the cost of redoing the floor again if the MIAA logo changed again in the near future.

The paint job, which would include the walls of the arena and the concourse walls and entrances to the court, would cost about $115,000. John Decker, graphic artist at Emporia State, put together artist renderings showing snippets of what the repainted arena might look like. The arena was last painted in 1986.

Mayor Bob Agler was the only member of the commission to express skepticism about funding the paint job. He saw the project as being a lower priority than the $154,000 of other improvements, as well as other city projects in the capital improvement plan that don’t have funding sources.

“It’s not that I’m against the project,” he said. “... But with all of the other things that are not going to get done, this is $115,000 ... and is that where you’d put your personal money on this building, and at this point in time?”

Other commissioners were clear that their answer was yes.

“I think that there are just times when you have to make investments in your infrastructure or your building,” Commissioner Julie Johnson said. “And this is the time that we have the opportunity to work with various groups, and I think it’s an opportunity we should seize.”

The estimated cost of the improvements is $269,425, with five identified revenue sources: the city’s general fund and CVB fund, the university, the W.S. and E.C. Jones Trust and Emporia Sports Promotion Inc. Just under $100,000 of general fund money would be used. The city is contacting other entities for contributions to supply the last $5,650. Daktronics, a long-time scoreboard equipment supplier to the city and the university, would provide the new scoreboard hardware.

In other activity Wednesday, commissioners:

• Reviewed the city’s 2009-13 capital improvement plan, which doesn’t have an identified revenue source. Agler reiterated his reservations about approving the CIP when it could only be funded in part, but Johnson said she viewed the CIP as the city’s recognition of what it needs to do in the coming years.

• Discussed the desire of the city’s garbage-hauling contractor to raise its fuel surcharge. Hamm’s currently applies a surcharge whenever diesel fuel prices are more than $2 per gallon, but the surcharge is capped at $3 per gallon. Hamm’s would like to increase its surcharge to $4 per gallon with no cap. Commissioners discussed a city staff recommendation to agree to the surcharge increase, but with a $6 cap. The consensus was to pursue an agreement with Hamm’s that includes those terms.

• Discussed the second draft of the city’s “small fund” budgets for 2009. During the session, Sue Blechel spoke on behalf of the Emporia Public Library Board, which is requesting four mills of tax levy and related revenue, plus an additional $37,898 from the general fund for a total amount of $708,844. Blechel said the library needs more funding to avoid having to cut staff costs.

Advertisements

• © Copyright 2006 The Emporia Gazette. All rights reserved.
• Customer Service
• Contact Us
• Privacy
• Advertise with us
• Subscribe