Story of how the RAC came to be

[ruman]

Former State Senator Ray Bateman describes in this article how the RAC was built - all with state money. Back then, such a cost was funded through bonds.

In this article, he also calls out Senator Lesniak to back up his talk. While I appreciate Lesniak, I like this public calling to do more. All parties need to be held accountable.

While we are in an entirely different time across the country (where public funding is not as popular as years back), I still think the state could be one part of the push to improve facilities at Rutgers. The B1G was an exciting chance to raise Rutgers profile to the level of the other league schools unlike few other things that ever happened here. Not sure why the state couldn't recognize the value that provides, and participate in investigating in cost of being in that elite company.





This post was edited on 3/17 4:46 PM by ruman

The 70s were awesome

 

[bac2therac]

Batemen gets it...but he's also right Lesniak needs to be working his fellow cronies hard

 

[RUfan1979]

Kudos to Ray Batemen. He understands what it takes.
Senator Lesniak needs to put his passion into action.
Rally the politicians and float the bonds.
Rutgers is the State University of New Jersey in the B1G Conference.
There is no reason we should not compete with on the court Wisconsin, Maryland, Michigan State, etc.
It's way past time to build the necessary facilities.

 

[motel00]

Bateman knows that Lesniak can't do it alone and it's really just a Repub criticizing a Democrat but if this is what it takes, so be it. I hope Lesniak takes up the challenge and makes Bateman eat his words.

 

[ScarletNut]

Nice article but Bateman's memory is a little off. Cazzie Russell played for Mich St against Bill Bradley and Princeton. We lost to Mich in that FF against Phil Hubbard and a couple of guards named Greene and Grote (if my memory serves me).

 

[NotInRHouse]

Yeah Governor Christie offering money...maybe if Barchi pretends to work for the Port Authority or if we move the RAC to Iowa

 

[rutger80]

Originally posted by ScarletNut:
Nice article but Bateman's memory is a little off. Cazzie Russell played for Mich St against Bill Bradley and Princeton. We lost to Mich in that FF against Phil Hubbard and a couple of guards named Greene and Grote (if my memory serves me).

Actually, Cazzie Russell did play for Michigan in the mid-60's, not Michigan State.
You are right, it was Phil Hubbard, Rickey Green and Steve Grote who led the '76 Michigan team.

Of course it would have been nice to see Phil Sellers' name spelled correctly.

 

[Hondo77]

32-0? Cazzie Russell? What the hell is he smoking?

 

[ruman]

Senator Bateman is an older gentleman. Cut him some slack. He was the one that helped get the RAC built apparently. We need new leadership at the school and state to step up and show that kind of leadership.

 

[KJ_RU]

Last time I checked, Christie is still the governor. The philosophy isn't to invest in the future, we can't afford that. All we have to do is cut taxes for corporations and the wealthy, then the state will suddenly have enough revenue to do whatever it wants. With all of the corporate tax breaks and money grabs Christie has made since becoming governor we could've built two arenas, unfortunately the only people that have benefitted from CC's actions are his political allies. Unfortunately the state is in worse shape now than before he became governor.

 

[RUnTime]

Last time I checked most my taxes go to the public education teachers union.

 

[Scarlet Shack]

In another ironic fate...the RAC, like the stadium expansion in 1994 and 2009, was way over budget and had to be modified on the y

It was supposed to hold 10700...with seats in the endzone. There was a materials strike during construction that required the design be changed so that the arena was a trapezoidal in design and seats capacity reduced.

This design became great for noise though

 

[e5fdny]

Originally posted by Scarlet Shack:
In another ironic fate...the RAC, like the stadium expansion in 1994 and 2009, was way over budget and had to be modified on the y

It was supposed to hold 10700...with seats in the endzone. There was a materials strike during construction that required the design be changed so that the arena was a trapezoidal in design and seats capacity reduced.

This design became great for noise though

Would love to the the renderings of the original design.

And yes on '94. The Stadium was supposed to look more like a C than the U we ended up with.

 

[e5fdny]

Originally posted by Scarlet Shack:
In another ironic fate...the RAC, like the stadium expansion in 1994 and 2009, was way over budget and had to be modified on the y

It was supposed to hold 10700...with seats in the endzone. There was a materials strike during construction that required the design be changed so that the arena was a trapezoidal in design and seats capacity reduced.

This design became great for noise though

Would love to the the renderings of the original design.

And yes on '94. The Stadium was supposed to look more like a C than the U we ended up with.

 

[e5fdny]

Originally posted by Scarlet Shack:
In another ironic fate...the RAC, like the stadium expansion in 1994 and 2009, was way over budget and had to be modified on the y

It was supposed to hold 10700...with seats in the endzone. There was a materials strike during construction that required the design be changed so that the arena was a trapezoidal in design and seats capacity reduced.

This design became great for noise though

Would love to the the renderings of the original design.

And yes on '94. The Stadium was supposed to look more like a C than the U we ended up with.

 

[knightfan2000]

I think he is a legend in his own mind. The article say we should invest in facilities and then he says we really don't need facilities to improve in basketball.

 

[ecojew]

He might have been saying that back then, you didn't need great facilities to build a good program.

Seeing his use of the word "fieldhouse" brought back a lot of memories of how, after RU's great run in the 1967 NIT, our first ever post-season tournament, everyone was wanting RU to build a fieldhouse. That would have been a great time to build the RAC as it would have given us a big jump on nearly all of the rest of the northeastern schools. But the RU of that era was still pretending to be a quasi-Ivy League school and the athletic administration of that time had an Ivy orientation to it (we were a non-scholarship athletic program back, IIRC).

So the RAC had to wait till the actual move to "bigger time" sports came in 1972-3. Unfortunately, the RAC opened a year too late, not allowing RU to capitalize upon its Final Four season by opening the following year.

 

[RUBigFrank]

My recollection of this was that the RAC was originally slated to seat 12.5 k. Funding cuts meant a pre-construction redesign to the current configuation of 8.5-9 k. This was significant as it prevented first around hosting of NCAA tornament games. At the time if you hosted you could aqlso have beed seeded and slated at home.

 

[derleider]

Originally posted by ruman:
Former State Senator Ray Bateman describes in this article how the RAC was built - all with state money. Back then, such a cost was funded through bonds.

In this article, he also calls out Senator Lesniak to back up his talk. While I appreciate Lesniak, I like this public calling to do more. All parties need to be held accountable.

While we are in an entirely different time across the country (where public funding is not as popular as years back), I still think the state could be one part of the push to improve facilities at Rutgers. The B1G was an exciting chance to raise Rutgers profile to the level of the other league schools unlike few other things that ever happened here. Not sure why the state couldn't recognize the value that provides, and participate in investigating in cost of being in that elite company.





This post was edited on 3/17 4:46 PM by ruman

I the state wanted to spend money on an arena for NJIT, would you want to pay for it? What about Rowan and Montclair and Stockton (they need something to go with their new beachfront property).

 

[PiscatawayMike]

I know there were supposed to be balcony seats where the lobby offices are located. I have a drawing in an old Nets program. I'll see if I can find it.