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The Tuscaloosa News
New Alabama basketball training facility: $57 million upgrade approved Friday
- Story byThe Tuscaloosa News
- New Alabama basketball training facility: $57 million upgrade approved Friday
Facility upgrades and renovations are on the way for Alabama basketball .
The UA System Board of Trustees voted to approve the first two stages of building a new basketball training and player development facility near Coleman Coliseum.
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The 48,000 square-foot expansion will be in the southeast corner by Coleman Coliseum and include a new practice facility, locker room, coaches offices and more.
Approval by the board gives clearance for the project scope and budget while granting authorization to execute an owner/architect agreement. Alabama athletics director Greg Byrne said Thursday that ground will be broken this fall, and the hope is to have the facilities fully operational by the 2026 season.
Men's and women's basketball will each have dedicated practice and training spaces, locker rooms, weight rooms, lounges, film rooms, sports medicine spaces and other amenities. The current practice gym for the men's team will be upgraded for the women's team. The men's team will use a gym built in the new facility, which will be connected to the current practice facility that is already part of the Coleman Coliseum complex.
"The practice gym is the coach's classroom," Byrne told The Tuscaloosa News. "It's where they teach and they develop. We're doing this right now to take a very significant step for our basketball programs and then allowing us to navigate the waters that we're in in college athletics right now. Then realizing the arena still has to be addressed."
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The proposed project is estimated to cost $58.67 million, and about $56.95 million will go toward the facility upgrades. That would be paid by $36.95 million in new bond funding and $20 million from Crimson Standard cash. Also, Alabama will put $1.725 million from University central reserves toward storm sewer work.
Alabama men's coach Nate Oats is fresh off leading the Crimson Tide to the first Final Four in program history. Having a strong practice and development facility is important to Oats as he continues to look to build this program.
"The entire time we were going to have to resolve where the teams were going to be practicing long term," Byrne said. "We had a need there. So as we continue to move forward and talk with Nate, talk with (women's basketball coach Kristy Curry), obviously day-to-day practices was really important and something we needed to address long-term no matter with the arena or not. So, we're able to move forward with this first step."
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What Nate Oats said about new Alabama basketball facility
Oats released a statement Thursday once the new facility was announced.
"As a program, we spend a majority of our time in the practice gym, the weight room and studying film, so the potential for us to have a new and expanded space for our student-athletes to develop is big for our program," Oats said in a statement. "We have tremendous support from our administration, which has played a role in our success, and I want to thank the Board of Trustees, Interim Chancellor (Sid) Trant and President (Stuart) Bell as well as Greg Byrne and Shane Lyons for bringing this forward. I'd also like to thank our donors and fans for all they do for us."
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New basketball arena status update
These basketball facility upgrades are separate from the new arena that was announced in February 2022.
Then, the the proposed cost was about $183 million. A year later, Byrne said, that total increased to $250 million because of inflation.
That already complicated things, and the recent settlement of lawsuits against the NCAA adds a massive wrinkle to it. As repayments begin, Alabama and other collegiate athletics departments will have to add a new significant line item to their budgets.
So, what does the new basketball facility mean for the new arena?
"Right now we're focused on the new practice facility," Byrne said Thursday. "We're focused on trying to navigate the waters of college athletics right now and the uncertainty with the House litigation and such making sure we don't put our institution in a bad financial position. And then Coleman isn't getting any younger, and it will need to be addressed. But this gives us a big step forward for our program in the meantime."
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Nick Kelly is the Alabama beat writer for The Tuscaloosa News, part of the USA TODAY Network, and he covers Alabama football and men's basketball. Reach him at nkelly@gannett.com or follow him @_NickKelly on X, the social media app formerly known as Twitter .
This article originally appeared on The Tuscaloosa News: Alabama basketball training facility: Details for $57 million upgrades
