OT: RAC ---The Chocolate & Wine Expo
- Thread starter RU-Choppin-Ohio
- Start date
Before they put in the A/C it would have been the warm wine and melted chocolate expo.
I don't think Kcg is being fair. Air conditioning was cutting edge technology in the late 1970's. It is not like any other arenas in the country had A/C back then.
After the Practice Facility is finished, the RAC will go unused from mid-March to the first game in late November so I guess they can find ways to rent it out for stuff like this.
Kcg, I have no idea if this is true, but I have been told by numerous people over the years that the original plans not only called for air-conditioning to be put in from the opening,but that The RAC was also supposed to have ice so we could start a hockey program. in typical Rutgers fashion, some whiners stepped in and said get rid of the ice and A/C so we could save money. Who knows, maybe we could have even had non-high school gym size bathrooms.
The RAC will be used for many graduations, clinics and camps from May thru August.
This is correct
The RAC had a lot of slices and dices in it during constructions
The ice hockey rink capablility was
Original seating was supposed to be 10.200, but that got cut down too
There's a good Rutgers Oral History online (link below) with a long sit down with Fred Gruninger where he talks about the stages of the RAC project among other things like how Rutgers tried to recruit Joe Theismann from South River. The RAC was supposed to be in the 10,000-11,000 range originally so it had the capacity to host NCAA tournament games. Then, at one point it got slashed by the politicians down to about 6,000 due to financial constraints before Louis Brown (of LBAC fame) came in and came up with the money to get it back to the respectable 9,000 seating capacity that it eventually had when built. Didn't read anything where ice hockey was ever a consideration.
https://oralhistory.rutgers.edu/64-text-html/1721-gruninger-frederick-e
FG: But, I'll just give you the basics. Now, here we are, we've got the okay for the Athletic Center, to build a new facility in the early seventies. It was supposed to be twelve to fourteen thousand seats. Then, it got reduced to twelve, and then, in the middle '70s, and I don't know why, we ran into a major steel problem in this country and the steel price went ... through the roof. So, now, Ed Bloustein comes, and you'll see it someplace in all the Archives, you'll see him sitting on one of the structure things with me, and he said, "Hey, we don't have the money to do this facility." I said, "Ed, if we don't get at least ten thousand seats in that, I'll never be able to schedule an NCAA men's tournament here." He said, "We can't do it. We don't have the money. The thing is going to skyrocket." So, we're going to ... have to limit it to six thousand seats, which was double of what we had at College Avenue. So, that was good news, double, but what were we going to do with six? So, then, it got to seven, and then, we got ahold of the architect, who came out of Princeton, a good guy, and I don't know if you've been in the Athletic Center to a basketball game. You know that stand, that retractable stand that comes down all the way? Okay, that's fifteen hundred to twelve hundred, either ... twelve or fifteen hundred, so, we went out and got a price on that. That would take us from six thousand or seven thousand up to eighty-two, eighty-five, eighty-six. We got that, and so, we could get it up to 8,650. ... Now, we needed some money. How are we going to do that? So, he went out and worked hard on a guy named Lou Brown, and is this off or on?
SI: Do you want it off?
FG: I'll tell you when I need to turn it off. [laughter] So, Ed Bloustein got this commitment from Lou Brown for a million dollars. Now, that was going to give us the opportunity to put that other twelve hundred or fifteen hundred seats in that place and, at the same time, was going to give us the opportunity to build that part of the RAC which ... we just couldn't complete. There were two parts of the RAC we just had to leave bare, and we were going to be able to do that with a million dollars, [laughter] and we really felt good. You know how, sometimes, it works out? Whenever it was, I get called in ... to see [Joseph] Whiteside or whoever was the Treasurer at that time, maybe it was Ken Erff at that time, who said "Well, we can only do that end bleacher for you. We can't do anything else." I said, "Well, where did ... the rest of the money go?" "Well, the President has decided he needs to put half of it in academics and half of it in athletics." [laughter] I forget what Lou Brown ...
TF: This is the Brown money.
FG: Yes. So, the Brown money, half of it went into the Athletics Center and half went into academics, ... but that's, in essence, how we got the twelve hundred or fifteen hundred seats down there and how we got it up to eighty-six hundred. We could never get an NCAA first round in there, because we weren't at ten thousand. That was the key number back in that era, ... having ten thousand seats or twelve thousand seats, but, for that building to still be existing today, for five-and-a-quarter million dollars, that's unbelievable.
TF: That is a steal.
FG: Now, why is it located on the Livingston Campus? Well, Rutgers College ... wanted the College Avenue Gym. ... Rutgers College people said, "No, it should be on College Avenue. That's where we should build a new facility," and there was a plan to take the present College Avenue facility and turn it into a six-thousand-seat facility, and then, put a new aquatic center there. Then, someone said, "It should be downtown," and there were some people downtown who wanted it. Some people wanted it in the parking lots by the football stadium, which would be a natural for the Athletic Center to be there. Eventually, the other idea, was we put it over on the Livingston Campus, for one reason only. It was to help. What they wanted to do is to bring the Livingston College campus, into focus as part of the University. So, this was a public relations decision. That didn't necessarily please a lot of people, because ... the College Avenue student body was the primary student body that would line up to get into the College Avenue Gym. Now, they're going to have to get on busses to go over there. Now, we're going to face a little student upheaval on this, but the trade-off was, and we did this with, [Marvin W.] Marv Greenberg, who was in the administration office. I'm in there with Greenberg and Whiteside and the President. I said, "If that's what you say we have to do, we have to do it, but give us some room to expand." So, all of that land behind there, which is where Hospital Avenue is, between that and Metlers Lane, they turned over to the Athletic Department. ... I could move the baseball diamond from one of the football fields, I could move the soccer field from the softball place for women, which was now ... part of the lacrosse field, and we could, eventually, build a new track and field program, which was in the stadium. So, we got that land as the trade-off. Not too many people know that; the only time that we really presented that was when we dedicated the Bauer Track and Field thing, I told that story, ... what the big trade-off was. We got all that land around the RAC to construct various athletic fields. But, it was also a University decision that we needed to help bring the campuses together, and the Athletic Center was the main ingredient to do that. That's how it happened.
Last edited:
All those years we had basketball camps for children who had to play at The RAC when there was no air conditioning and temps approached 200 degrees, I am surprised the Star-Ledger didn't do a week long "scandal" series--"Rutgers Basketball Boils Children To Death."
