Ok, so I suck at writing. I have trouble putting my thoughts into words, so bear with me.
I'm just going to go through this tour how I went through it. It was given by the #1 guy (as far as I can tell) for Mortensen Construction on-site. His name is mentioned prominently on their website with regard to this project. Every question the seven of us asked was answered immediately and authoritatively. He knows everything about this building. He's been there pretty much every day since the first shovel went in the dirt. I only mention this because I'm getting any and all information from him. So I'm pretty sure it's right. Helluva nice guy too. My first question was whether or not they were under any stress to finish on time. He is not worried about that at all. He expects they'll be done by July 31st.
Walked up on Juneau and the zinc was the first thing discussed. Said everyone loves how it turned out, but he personally doesn't think it went high enough. Unfortunately, I didn't think to ask his reasoning, but he made it sound like they could've done it, but that's not how it was drawn by the architect, so that's not how it was built.
Lower level guts of the building were by far the most interesting to me. I've been down in the Bradley Center for floor seats, but I've obviously never been in the locker rooms or the "star rooms". This tour allowed us into those places. The Marquette locker room was the first stop and I thought it was the nicest locker room I had ever been in. And it was. For about 5 minutes. Woj has an office in there (I slapped the floor. I had to. God I couldn't stand that **** when he played). Very nice setup for them. (BTW, does anyone know what they're paying to play there? I asked him, but he doesn't know or really care I don't think). Went on to the Bucks & Visitors' locker rooms. Ridiculous. Especially the Bucks locker room. Hot tub Cold tub, huge room, pretty much what you'd expect, but it was still jarring how nice it was. At this point I asked him what the locker rooms were like in the other arenas he's worked on and he said these were average for a new place. He did say, however, that the training facility was very important to ownership and that he would put that facility up against any in the world. Nicest he's ever seen and that's saying something. Tour continued with the media room (stupid nice....huge room, huge tvs everywhere) and the weight room (nothing really done there yet).
This place is obviously going to be great for basketball but there is a LOT of emphasis on getting top-notch entertainment acts to want to play there. The section of the 1st floor dedicated to that reflected that desire. The "green" room is super swank. It's not done, but it's getting there. There are 8 "star" rooms. Just what you'd expect. You see people go into dressing rooms on tv shows all the time, well that's what these are. Except they're about 15' x 10' and have private bathrooms and showers. He said that that is not normal. I believe it. We then moved on to the "roadie heaven". This place is apparently the only arena in the US that has dedicated space for roadies. And it's damn nice. It's about a 30' x 15' room with couches (not yet) and tvs. But most importantly has a full kitchen. Like a restaurant kitchen. The thought of course being that is it's cushy enough the stars (and the guys that do the heavy lifting) will want to come back.
There is also the most ridiculous loading dock I've ever seen in this area. It can accommodate six full-sized tractor-trailers and close them inside. That'll be nice in January. Just couldn't be anymore impressed with that section of the place. If they can't attract top-shelf acts it'll be because it sounds bad (he assured me that they made every effort to make sure that wasn't true) or people won't show (who knows, but I doubt it).
So we made our way into the arena. They had the ice down, which I thought was odd. I didn't ask him why, but I assume they will host stars on ice and crap like that. Anyway the most striking thing immediately is the scoreboard. It's almost too big. It completely dominates the room. It's **** awesome. Huge and right in your face. Sitting upstairs, it's going to be tempting just to watch the game on the 40' wide glorious HDtv right in front of your face. The thing I found cool about it was that there are (8)75" (? guessing) tv's in the hollow underneath so that people on the floor (players, coaches, people sitting in floor seats) can look at those instead of craning to look at the big screens. Just super-cool on pretty much every level.
We then went up to the first concourse. He took us up on the south side and we were very impressed with the sightlines from the concourse as well as just how damn wide it is. Where the hallways at the BC are what, 20' wide, these are like 50' wide. And I don't think that's an exaggeration. He also at this time mentioned that the place has the best bathroom/occupancy ratio in North America. So that's cool. The real jaw-dropper is the North Concourse however. The North concourse has no walls. It is completely open from the west end of section 115 to the east end of section 119. That's 120 seats and 4 aisles wide. It is a lot like Miller Park, but feels much, much more open and much, much closer to the action. You could easily watch the game while waiting in line for a beer. The season ticket group I'm a part of has our seats in section 116 row J (at least tentatively). I was able to go down and stand in front of my seat. I like my seats. A lot. He emphasized over and over that if you're going to be a season ticket holder (or have the same seats for multiple games) to make sure you get seats on the north side of the arena. One, the concourse is much nicer as I said, but also, the skywalk to the parking garage is right there on the Northeast corner of the building. January nights without every feeling a temperature under 65 degrees sound pretty good to me.
The rest of the tour was of the next three decks. The suites are unbelievable, but they didn't really interest me much because I'll likely never be in one. There are all kinds of ways to rent them, but again, I wasn't really paying attention. The 200 level seats sure seemed to be a lot nicer than the 400s in the BC. Seemed way closer and just more comfortable. You don't have to have hiking gear to climb the stairs either. Massive improvement. There is a party space above the upper deck on the East side of the building. It's really cool, but it's so damn high I can't see why you 'd want to be up there. My guess is that it'll be a very popular place for weddings though. There is a huge balcony that faces what used to be 4th street. Pretty great view from there.
Overall, I mean, A+. I hate the Bradley Center and always have. I remember going there for the first time and being completely underwhelmed. This is the exact opposite for me. I literally can't think of anything that I was disappointed in. Gonna be fun.
