PNC Arena authority fires architects ahead of $300 million renovation
In another unexpected twist ahead of the $300 million in renovations planned for PNC Arena, the arena authority on Thursday voted to fire the architecture team it had been working with for 10 years.
In a special board meeting conducted almost entirely in closed session, the Centennial Authority voted to terminate its contract with Ratio and HOK, the two firms that had been generating options to update the 25-year-old arena since 2014, and issue a public request for new architects.
“This is not a bad thing,” Centennial Authority chairman Philip Isley said. “It’s just something that we have to do and need to do to make sure we have fresh eyes on everything, and this helps us to. We want to get it right, one time, moving forward. We’re going to have a building that’s going to last a lot longer and it’s going to jump-start everything else around here.”
Last month’s unexpected decision that the long-envisioned plan to construct new office space at the north end of the arena was too expensive minimized Raleigh-based Ratio’s role in the project going forward. HOK, a major multinational stadium and arena architect, had been brought aboard to handle more fan-facing projects, and the authority decided it wanted new ideas for those renovations.
Isley and authority executive director Jeff Merritt both said they had been assured by project manager CAA ICON that switching architects at this point would not delay the renovations, currently scheduled to take place in a three-year window over the summers of 2025, 2026 and 2027.
The authority renewed its contract with Ratio and HOK over the summer and the authority paid them about $550,000 of an allocated $1 million, Merritt said. The authority will retain the products of the decade of work together and could end up re-using some of those plans and ideas. Isley said it was possible Ratio and HOK could bid on the new contract and be selected, but the authority wanted to explore other options.
The decision last month to abandon the north-end offices, long seen as a pillar of any future renovations because it would open up space at the south end of the arena facing Carter-Finley Stadium, surprised many authority members who expected that to be the first stage of construction. But a cost analysis by CAA ICON found that it would cost as much as $70 million to build, more than twice as much as previously expected and too large a fraction of the renovation funding available.
“That’s where we hope to get some fresh ideas,” Merritt said. “Plan A was the office building. We didn’t have a Plan B. So let’s get some fresh minds and have a Plan B that’s better than Plan A.”
Isley said lawyers are still working through finalizing the arena development agreement that the authority reached in August with Carolina Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon, a prerequisite for Raleigh and Wake County to release the $300 million in renovation funding from the tourism-tax fund, but that there wasn’t any immediate time pressure to complete those contracts.
“We’re hopeful that we’re going to be able to benefit from different capital markets, interest rates, things of that nature,” Isley said. “Today is tough. And things are expensive. Our belief from what our folks are telling us is that we should have some relief on interest rates going forward. No one has a crystal ball, but it certainly was helpful to hear that.”
This story was originally published January 25, 2024 at 7:51 PM with the headline "PNC Arena authority fires architects ahead of $300 million renovation."
