Committee recommends arena construction on Cook Field

A site selection committee at Miami University has recommended Cook Field as the location for a new arena to replace Millett Hall.

News that the university was considering a new arena and hotel initially broke last fall. At the time, Miami’s Campus Planning Committee warned that several important spaces on campus, including Lewis Place and the green space next to Slant Walk, were being considered as buildable sites.

After news outlets including the Oxford Free Press reported on the sites under consideration, Miami President Greg Crawford created a Site Selection Committee to advise the university on potential locations. The committee narrowed it down to two sites, Cook Field and Southwest Quad, before sending a survey out to the community. The final recommendation is based on more than 1500 survey responses, as well as advantages of the Cook Field site, according to an email sent to faculty on Feb. 19.

President Crawford will share the final recommendation at a Board of Trustees meeting next week.

Part of the university’s rationale for constructing the arena is in an effort to increase attendance at events by moving them closer to the center of campus, according to the Feb. 19 email. However, choosing the Cook Field site will mean moving Miami’s intramural fields elsewhere. According to the email sent Feb. 19, the fields will be relocated to near Millett Hall’s current location, further from the campus center, if construction moves forward.

In an interview prior to the final site selection, Cody Powell, associate vice president of facilities and operations, spoke about the potential of moving the fields to Millett Hall’s current location. The fields see inconsistent use throughout the year and attract many off-campus students who drive, he said, so having them further from campus didn’t seem like a drawback.

“Everybody recognizes that it is an important green space, and it’s important for us to have recreation space available,” Powell said. “But the notion that it’s the highest and best use of land for the university — I think people aren’t thinking about how often the land is actually being used.”

Millett Hall currently has capacity for 9,200 attendees at events and 6,400 for basketball games. Last season, the men's basketball team attracted an average audience of just under 2,300 per game, with just two games reaching more than 4,000 attendees. Women’s basketball games averaged less than 600 attendees, while an average of just over 400 people attended each women’s volleyball game.

The existing facility was built in 1968 and lacks features of other arenas in the Mid-American Conference. These include seating closer to the action for basketball games and additional practice space to accommodate the three sports that play in Millett Hall.

At a Board of Trustees meeting last December, Senior Vice President for Finance David Creamer said it would cost the university $80 million to improve Millett Hall, compared to $200 million to replace it. At that same meeting, Cook Field was heavily favored as the final site for a university-affiliated hotel.

The Feb. 19 email stated that the university will spend $13 million to relocate and upgrade the intramural fields. A master plan for the Cook Field location will be developed if the project moves forward, incorporating possible future spaces “such as a conference center, retail spaces, and/or a parking garage.”

If the Southwest Quad location had been selected, four buildings including the historic Bonham House, home of the Myaamia Center, would have been torn down. According to the survey sent out by the university in January, three of those buildings, but not Bonham House, were set to be torn down in the future anyway based on “previously designed campus plans.”