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https://www.jsonline.com/story/money/real-estate/commercial/2018/12/14/marquette-looked-building-its-own-downtown-basketball-arena/2280320002/

I did not realize that we were actually close to building an on-campus arena before committing to Fiserv. With our lease there only seven years, we definitely have flexibility to - at some point - pursue an on-campus arena for our basketball programs. Article mentions that our leadership likes the model by Villanova and St. John's (playing many games on campus, but moving big games to NBA arena).

Other nice notes include our basketball programs raking in nearly 23 million last year (men's basketball was $19.3 million), with our athletic program taking-in $34.3 million of revenue (against $26.6 million of costs).

Personally, I think it is a matter of when - not if - Marquette decides to pursue an on-campus arena. We are building a ton of stuff on campus at the moment, so adding a new arena may not have worked out financially in the present. However, in a few years, I would not be shocked to see us pursue the opportunity again. Our President is an engineer after all

On-Campus arenas are the way to go if you can do it. I think this is probably why Xavier tends to have a better student section than most of the other schools in the big east

scoscox wrote:On-Campus arenas are the way to go if you can do it. I think this is probably why Xavier tends to have a better student section than most of the other schools in the big east

Does the Cintas serve alcohol?

Also the fiserv is like a 15min walk from campus, that's shorter than most B1G students walk for games.

Yes, it does. Most of the Big Ten have on-campus arenas, so I don't know about closer, but that's definitely reasonable.

scoscox wrote:Yes, it does. Most of the Big Ten have on-campus arenas, so I don't know about closer, but that's definitely reasonable.

My point was that on a larger campus the distance away it is would still be an on campus arena. The issue with our student attendance has been going on since I was there and that was arguably our second or third best stretch in school history

FWIW, The Cintas Center is surrounded on 2 sides by 5 dorms, each practically in spitting distance. Of those 5 dorms, the furthest away might be 200 yards from entrance to entrance. The bulk of the rest of on/off-campus housing pushes out only an extra few minutes from there. Pretty unique.

It's definitely the closest arena to student housing I've ever been to

I don't see how a 10,000 seat arena would be viable since we have over 11,000 season tickets sold every year.

marquette wrote:I don't see how a 10,000 seat arena would be viable since we have over 11,000 season tickets sold every year.

I don't know the ins and outs of the UW Milwaukee arena, but having 3 venues with 10K+ seats within .75 miles of each other seems like overkill for a city.

I think marquette should stay at fiserv. At least until the new car smell starts to fade. The land that they were going to build the on campus arena is on the other side of 1-94 and wouldn't really be connected to campus that well. They should look into developing that land into office or condos or apartment towers. Downtown milwaukee is booming right now.