More information is out on the PNC Arena renovations!

Speaking of money and what it's all about, the Carolina Hurricanes and the Centennial Authority are continuing to hammer away at improvements to PNC Arena, and Brian Murphy, WRAL Sports Investigative Reporter, has the story at WRALSportsFan.com today. And I'm reading the story and I'm going, now they're going to pick through kind of a menu, column A, column B, for those people who used to go to Chinese restaurants that had a column A and a column B. You could pick one from column A and two from column B or vice versa, never understood that. But they're choosing from this menu of items but it says in the story that there's no price tags next to these items. Well why, how do I know, how do I know what I can afford if, I'm sure we can afford a lot of these things, I just thought that was odd.

How are you Brian, what are we, what do you think we're going to start with? Thanks for having me, that's a great question and one that many of the board members asked. They said, well how much does this cost, how can we do a cost benefit analysis on expanding the south end and putting in outdoor terrace? Or putting in a sports book or putting in view bars on the third concourse if we don't know how much it costs. And so that's one of the next steps, they've got to get the full cost of all these things. Their next step is to meet with the Hurricanes and NC State and say, hey if we take out this room over here, what does that mean for game day operations? Or if we, if we add this over here like, oh do you suddenly lose all the storage that you needed for the court and for all the courtside seats?

So they've got to do a functionality kind of walk through next, so this process even though they want to move very quickly, there are still a lot of steps they need to take. Alright, before we get into any of the details of what could happen first, I mean are we talking about, the sports book I'm sure Tom Dundon would like up and running by, let's just say March. Because I have to figure that's got to be the earliest possible, I know what the date would allow. It would allow basically the 10th of January or something like the 8th of January, something like that. But we're probably looking at later on in the late winter, early spring at the earliest if you think about it.

So we're obviously going to see something like that happen sooner, probably a smaller scale. But are we talking about for renovations, maybe in addition, are we talking about years? Yeah, I think we're looking at two to five years before it's all completed, in part because of the buildings occupied all the time. I mean you're not going to kick the hurricanes out for a season, you're not going to kick NC State basketball out for a season. And so you've got to work around there to schedule, it just doesn't leave a ton of time. And so I think some projects maybe they'll shut down part of the building for and try to get that project done.

But just squeezing it in when nobody's in season over here is probably the most likely thing and that's going to take a little while. Brian Murphy, WRAL Sports Investigative Reporter is joining us here on the Adam Gold Show at Murph's Turf on Twitter. Let's start with a sportsbook. And I know in the initial agreement they had like a placeholder that allows for a 4,000 square foot sportsbook. That's tiny because I think they want this to be a bigger lounge space where people can legitimately, I mean not only a sportsbook where they can lose money, but also watch games in there. Maybe there's table service and all that, maybe it's more of a lounge, giant sports bar. So 4,000 square foot probably isn't going to be enough. And I know Tom Dundon in my conversations with him has talked about we don't need box offices anymore. So I don't know, is that the area where it might go?

What do you know about that? The area that it is right now in this proposal is right next to the South Plaza. So they want to make the plaza a real entryway, a real gateway to fans coming in. That probably means a reduced footprint for the box office, maybe a bigger team store. And then this 4,000 square feet that they have is kind of a placeholder for the sportsbook. And they probably need 10,000 square feet for a sportsbook. And so maybe the Lexus area where the entrance to the Lexus Club is and you see the Lexus sitting out there, maybe that's an area they can get into and expand the footprint of the building a little bit to make this really nice. The problem with the sportsbook is you want it to be on the ground level because you want access for people who don't have tickets to the game. And you want it to be open 365 days a year. And so you don't want to have to open the whole building for people to be able to get into the sportsbook, which would happen if you put it on the third floor, for example. So it's got to be on that first floor. And I think that's the most realistic, at least, you know, maybe the 4,000 is kind of temporary space. And while they get all these renovations done because you don't want if you're Tom Dunn, you don't want to miss out on a couple of years of worth of revenue from that thing. No, but I think eventually it's going to be it's going to have a larger footprint and maybe that's part of the development. You know, you know this as well as anybody.

All of this renovation is tied to a long term lease for the hurricanes at PNC Arena, which is also tied to getting hundreds of millions of dollars from the city of Raleigh and the county of Wake. You know, all of it's kind of tied together and somebody's got to have to go first. So someone's going to have to jump. Well, I keep saying this. They're going to all go at the same time.

I mean, there's there's no you go first and we go there. I don't believe anything is going to be, you know, hammered out until all parties are on board. So they'll announce this. And by the way, at the same time, the hurricanes will announce a twenty five year lease, 50 year lease, whatever it is, whatever the length of that lease is with PNC Arena. I mean, who knows if we're going to be playing hockey or anything 50 years from now? Frankly, the Public Investment Fund might own all of us in in in 50 years, probably sooner than that.

Brian Murphy is joining us here. Seventy plus projects. I don't think I could sit down and dream 70 plus projects that you didn't list all 70.

I would like to see all 70 listed out. Yeah, I can I can get you that book. I'll bring that book over to the station. It's stuff like, you know, some of it is stuff you'll never see, like a loading dock. You get concerts for bigger concerts to be able to bring more trucks in for the WWE, which is here today. Some of it is removing a stairwell and putting in another place where you can do grab and go food beverages. Some of it is, you know, these view bars in the upper deck where they'll take out some seats and you'll be able to sit at a bar, watch the game. Some of it is, you know, on the concourse putting in view bars. And so, you know, tearing down some walls so you can see onto the ice, see onto the court, stand at a table, maybe sell standing room only tickets and hang out with your buddies, drinking a couple of beers up there.

There are projects small to two extremely, extremely big. Like I said, expansion on the south area, the south deck to include a rooftop terrace, a kind of a two story one. There's possible office space, you know, four story office space on the other side of the building. So they're, you know, removing some of the aisles to put in more seats.

So I think on the east side and the west side, there are six aisles and one of the projects would reduce that down to four aisles. And that would allow you to get a few more seats in because you're going to be pulling some seats out for some of these other projects. So higher price seats, too. If you're pulling out seats in the upper deck, you're adding seats in the lower deck. Of course, man, if you have a seat in the middle of that row, get out of here. Right, right.

You've got to make sure you go to the bathroom, you know, extensively before before the game or hold it till after. But yeah, I mean, so they're talking about, you know, on one of the renderings or one of the one of the proposals, you know, there's that area under the ice where that where the players would come to the ice. And you could have fans on both sides of the glass, you know, cheering sort of a little welcome area. Some of these things are really big projects. Some are really small projects like they talked about redoing the skinning of the building. Why is it green tile on the outside?

Why is it not red or charcoal or or a more neutral color that would make the building look better? Does that bring any money back to the hurricanes, back to the Centennial Authority? Like that's all the stuff they're having to juggle. Like we're going to put X million dollars in here.

What's our return on investment from that? It is a complicated process. I would not want to be one of the people having to make these decisions, but they've been talking about some of this stuff since 2014. They've been talking about a lot of it since 2019. And here we are in 2023 and soon to be 2024, and we still haven't really decided on what to do. Now, let me give you a little insight into Philip Isley, who's right now the man in charge of the Centennial Authority.

I had a conversation with Philip about, oh, my gosh, this has to be 15 years ago, 2007, 2008. Right. Where he said that they had already back then had already had discussions about replacing the arena back then.

And his point was not that they need to replace it. And I know Isley is quoted in your story as saying this arena will be good for many, many years to come. And it will, especially when that area is developed to where that's the that's an entertainment district. And I am 100 percent on board for that.

I think we need that. We need an area like that in Raleigh where the arena is kind of a center centerpiece and everything happens around it. And it will be good for Carter-Finley Stadium would be great for the economy and all that. But he said, if you don't think about these things, 10, 15, 20 years in advance, then you're just you're way behind.

So even then, less than 10 years after that arena opened, they were already looking for what happens next. But this is good stuff. You go to WRAL Sports fan dot com or file file file. Follow Brian Murphy on Twitter at Murph's turf.

WRAL Sports investigative reporter, sir. Well done. Talk to you later. Appreciate it. Weddings are a celebration of finding the perfect fit. And with Indochino, you can design a custom suit made to your measurements. Go to i n d o c h i n o dot com and use code podcast for 10 percent off any order of three ninety nine or more.