Initial Renderings Of Fifth Third Arena Renovations Revealed

A $70 million renovation of the Cincinnati Bearcats’ on-campus basketball venue Fifth Third Arena is in the works. Plans call for construction to begin in April of 2016 for completion in November of 2017, just prior to UC’s 2017-18 season.

Now, via a survey blasted out from the university, it appears initial renderings have been drawn up that give us a snapshot of the project.

Initial Fifth Third Arena renderings.

As anticipated, gone are the bleacher style seats with chair backs for all. These will also be a permanent fixture as opposed to the roll away seats in the current model.

Additionally, the wasted space in the corners will be a thing of the past, with a few rows of seats spanning the floor-level hallways and apparently wider concourses behind. The student section will be shrunken as a result. I see it as a good thing as they will now be able to spread vertically instead of horizontally, thus becoming a more imposing presence on opposing free throw shooters. Finally, it looks like some kind of glass/opaque ceiling with suppressed lights will replace the large dangling aluminum lamps.

My one beef is the very visible and very cumbersome rafters still hanging over the court. It’s too soon to tell if these will be a holdover from the current design but I can’t imagine folks in the corners of the 300-level being too pleased with having to look through those still. But, based on the stability of the structure, the rafters might just have to be a necessary evil for the Bearcats to stay on campus at Fifth Third.

Obviously this is an early peek at what a renovated Shoe will look like but, overall, I love the direction UC is going with their basketball arena.