This is NOT Roberts Stadium vs the New Arena

As the debates have raged on these past few years about what to do with Evansville's arena situation, many people have pitted the new arena and Roberts Stadium against each other. As the new arena is going up, many have considered this to be the final nail in Roberts Stadium's coffin and have shifted their support away from keeping Roberts Stadium intact.

For the record, I have supported the new arena since the moment it was even discussed as a possibility. Although I believe that it will be way too small (needs to be 17,000-18,000 seats), I believe it was the right decision because there are several problems we need to address here. We need to 1. Get people going back downtown 2. Improve the Evansville Ace's basketball program with a better facility to recruit players to & 3. Find a much cheaper alternative for saving Roberts Stadium than paying $90 million to upgrade it as an arena.

For these reasons, I fully and completely support the new arena efforts because I know the new arena has absolutely nothing to do with saving Roberts Stadium. It is true that the price tag to renovate Roberts Stadium as an arena would probably run somewhere close to $90 million. But as I have proven with the 7 proposals on this blog, we can find an even better and cheaper solution for Roberts Stadium than renovating it as an arena.

Just down the road in Louisville, Kentucky, they are managing to keep Freedom Hall running as an events center while the University of Louisville moves into the newly built KFC Yum! Center ( I know the name is as bad as their new arena is good).


http://www.courier-journal.com/article/20101010/SPORTS0203/310100039


Louisville did the right thing by building a brand new, second to none, arena while preserving historic Freedom Hall. I believe we can do the same here with Roberts Stadium and the new arena. That is why I am asking everyone to support both the new arena and saving Roberts Stadium!