UNC Chancellor Lee Roberts addressed members of the media during the most recent meeting of the university’s Board of Trustees. During his comments, Roberts addressed speculation surrounding the future of the Dean Smith Center, home of the UNC men’s basketball program.
Below are Roberts’ full comments on the arena:
There is a commitment on behalf of the administration to run as inclusive a process as possible here and make sure that we’re getting as many people around the table as we can and hearing from as many voices as we can. And I think that the passion that you’re hearing now is a good thing. It’s a positive. It shows the commitment of Carolina Nation to Tar Heel basketball. I’d be much more worried if people didn’t care.
And how are we going to make this decision? I think we have to think about three considerations. First and by far the most important: How do we win as many basketball games as possible at a time when that’s becoming more expensive for everybody? How do we put the most elite team on the court that we possibly can? We can all think of examples of universities that have tremendous history and tradition. Many of them play in fantastic arenas, but they’re no longer considered elite because they didn’t keep pace, they didn’t continue to innovate.
Secondly, how do we get as many students in the arena and as close to the court as possible? It’s their program, it’s their team. It’s what makes college basketball so great, and it also makes it a tough place to play. What helps a competitive advantage in a basketball arena is the students on their feet and hollering. Not people like me chatting to their friends and looking at their phones.
And then third, the fan experience. Forty years ago, there were a lot fewer options. We didn’t have a hockey team in town. The Lenovo Center didn’t exist. People didn’t have giant 4K screens in their basements. And so what you’re seeing for similar arenas, similar venues around the country, is an effort to try to upgrade and enhance the fan experience, to get people to fight the traffic, deal with the parking, get out of their living rooms and their rec rooms to come cheer on the Heels. And that’s what we want and those are the considerations that we’ll be keeping in mind as we try to make the best decision that we possibly can about the arena. Thank you.
Roberts’ comments came after the university officially announced plans to develop more than 200 acres of land on the “Carolina North” property, a wooded area near the former Horace Williams Airport site. While that announcement did not include formal plans to build a new basketball arena on the site, many have speculated that could be a goal of Roberts’ administration. In 2024, the Carolina North plot was presented to the university as one of six options for the future home of the men’s basketball program.
The potential relocation of the program away from the Dean Smith Center has been met with pushback. Head coach Hubert Davis has been vocal in his support of the Smith Center, and former head coach Roy Williams and All-American Tyler Hansbrough have both joined an online petition to renovate the arena, as opposed to relocating the program entirely. As of Thursday afternoon, the petition has more than 17,000 signatures.
Featured image via UNC-Chapel Hill/Jon Gardiner
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