Coliseum renovations to enhance basketball offices, practice options
Carolina Coliseum is set to undergo another change.
The South Carolina Board of Trustees approved Phase I of a plan to renovate the lower level of the Coliseum into men’s basketball office space on Friday, on the heels of a $600,000 project to install practice courts inside. The practice courts will be done within a month and will be ready for use this season while a date for the $4 million, 35,000-square foot project will be set once the state approves the project.
Another $940,000 project to renovate the current women’s basketball offices has already been approved. Dawn Staley is expected to have an expanded space by next fall.
“I’m really pleased that Dr. (Harris) Pastides and the Board of Trustees support our men’s and women’s basketball programs to enable us to increase our practice opportunities,” athletics director Ray Tanner said. “Offices are important and the practice facility at Carolina Coliseum, as we move through Phase I today, we need to enhance those opportunities to recruit the best and brightest student-athletes in the country.”
The plan keeps Staley in her current location at the volleyball competition facility, but her space will cover the entire second floor. Frank Martin’s new office will be in the lower level of the Coliseum.
The plan is to completely renovate the Elephant Room which abuts the Park Street entrance to the Coliseum. The men’s staff will be able to have a new area to showcase the program and to promote to recruits, which is also accessible to the practice courts. Each team will also be able to take advantage of the new private dorm currently being constructed across Park Street from the Coliseum. Basketball players can live there and be able to walk to practice.
The project will create a program-defining entryway and renovate the current locker rooms, training rooms, team rooms and weight room in the Coliseum. The basketball and volleyball teams will share the weight room.
Each coach’s office is currently located in the volleyball competition facility adjacent to the Coliseum. The second floor is divided into space for the men’s and women’s full staffs.
Each team could use the volleyball court as a basketball practice court and access the Coliseum through a tunnel. Problems arose trying to schedule practice for volleyball and each basketball team, with USC installing one practice court at the Coliseum.
The new courts, two of them perpendicular to the original layout, will make volleyball self-contained and enable each basketball team to practice at any time. Colonial Life Arena can also be used for practice.
The Coliseum is set to have all academic space removed by 2019. USC has considered turning the rest of the Coliseum into a student union, but will also keep the concourse of the building open for career fairs, trade shows and receptions.
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This story was originally published September 12, 2014 at 6:00 PM.