- Includes videos of men's coach Jeff Lebo and women's coach Nell Fortner
The Auburn campus was alive with the sights and sounds of the opening football weekend Friday afternoon, but for an hour, basketball took center stage.
Auburn’s new basketball arena is already rising out of the ground, but coaches, administrators and trustees gathered at the construction site to wear Auburn hard hats and pose with glittering shovels for the ceremonial groundbreaking.
Men’s coach Jeff Lebo and women’s coach Nell Fortner did a lot of smiling as they talked about the dream that began to take shape in 2006.
Lebo and Fortner went to meet with athletics director Jay Jacobs, then-president Ed Richardson and trustees Bobby Lowder and John Blackwell. They thought they were going to discuss the construction of a new practice facility. Instead, Lowder and Blackwell said they wanted to build a new arena.
“During that meeting, Mr. Lowder and Mr. Blackwell stepped up and said ‘We have to do something different,’” Jacobs said. “They made tough decisions in tough times, but their vision was right.”
The arena, expected to cost in the neighborhood of $90 million, is scheduled to open in 2010.
“It was an amazing meeting,” Lebo said. “I’m very thankful for Mr. Lowder’s vision of thinking a little bit outside the box. He and John Blackwell just wanted to take it to another level. Never did we think going into that meeting that a new arena would come out of it.”
Fortner said the new arena could take Auburn men’s and women’s basketball to another level.
“To see the commitment the Board of Trustees and this athletic department has put to basketball is very exciting,” Fortner said.
University president Jay Gogue surveyed the construction all around him – the arena and new student housing that will also serve many athletes starting next year.
“I remember one time at another university, it was very calm, the streets were nice, the grass was mowed,” Gogue said. “A guy came to campus and said ‘If you don’t have cranes on the skyline, you don’t have a very dynamic university.
“We’ve got cranes on the skyline, construction all over the place. We’re worried about where everybody will park. We’re proud of it. I know our coaches wish we’d had it years and years ago, but let’s get it built.”
