Renovation of a municipal facility in Raleigh, North Carolina. Completed plans call for the renovation of a municipal facility.

https://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/news/2024/09/09/pnc-arena-signage-raleigh-lenovo-canes-ncstate.html PNC's long sponsorship of Raleigh's flagship arena ended Monday. With the National League Hockey season weeks away and college basketball season coming after that, the head of the Centennial Authority confirmed the PNC signage is coming off the arena. While the Carolina Hurricanes haven't confirmed the new name, there's a significant hint at what's coming in the NHL 25 Official Gameplay Trailer. In that video posted on YouTube, it shows the Hurricanes playing -- in the Lenovo Center. Lenovo, of course, has a major presence in the Triangle. The arena opened in 1999 as the Entertainment and Sports Arena. It then carried the name of the RBC Center, beginning in 2002. Video of PNC logo being removed from the home of the Carolina Hurricanes and N.C. State Wolfpack in Raleigh on Monday Story here: https://t.co/wcHUgUmOpF pic.twitter.com/gTpXPtsKqM -- Triangle Business Journal (@TriangleBIZJrnl) September 9, 2024 The name changed after a major acquisition in 2011, when PNC Financial Services Group (NYSE: PNC) acquired RBC Bank, meaning the arena was changed to the PNC Arena. But with the 20-year, $80 million deal expiring, Canes owner Tom Dundon has been looking for a new deal. And that comes as sports deals have exploded and as the Hurricanes look to revamp the area around the arena. Jeff Merritt, the executive director of the Centennial Authority, confirmed that the PNC signs were coming down. But he declined to say what would happen next with naming rights. "Stay tuned," he said. Also on Monday, the Hurricanes announced a new partnership with PNC: The PNC Victory Club and the PNC Club Level will replace the Champions Club and club level areas in the arena. The PNC Club Level is located on the second floor of the arena and includes 2,045 seats, 27 suites and six loge boxes, the Arena Club and the newly renamed PNC Victory Club. Located between sections 210-214 on the north end of the arena, the PNC Victory Club is exclusive to ticket holders and includes premium food stations, a full-service bar and a private lounge area. "We're grateful for PNC's continued major partnership as we embark on this next chapter in our growth story - and for the bank's commitment to strengthen and invest in the region we call home," said Doug Warf, president of Hurricanes Holdings LLC. __________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ https://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/news/2024/09/05/rezoning-land-around-pnc-arena-raleigh.html Development of the 80 acres surrounding PNC Arena is moving forward. As the Centennial Authority takes steps to continue planning the revamp of PNC Arena in Raleigh, Pacific Elm Properties of Dallas is working on the outside - namely the acreage on which the venue sits. Jamie Schwedler of Parker Poe filed a neighborhood meeting notice for 1400 Edwards Mill Road, the address of the arena. Schwedler did not return request for comment. The letter is inviting neighbors within the 1,000-foot radius to a meeting on the rezoning of the property. The plan is to go from commercial mixed-use up to 12 stories to a planned development. No rezoning application has been filed yet as this is the required pre-submittal meeting. Pacific Elm Properties is Gale Force Sports and Entertainment's real estate affiliate and is majority owned by Dundon Capital Partners. The neighborhood meeting will be on Sept. 11 at the Raleigh Marriott Crabtree Valley. The first phase will have more than 200,000 square feet of retail, a 150-room hotel, more than 500 apartments and 150,000 square feet of office space. Ten percent of the apartments will be made available to those making 80 percent of the area median income. Construction is anticipated to start in winter 2025 with completion of Phase 1 in 2030. The signed development agreement for the mixed-use district around the arena outlines a more than $800 million investment, with Phase 1 costing $200 million. The Centennial Authority gave a presentation to the Raleigh City Council during Tuesday afternoon's meeting updating plans for PNC Arena. Construction will start in summer 2025 with a focus on the arena level, main concourse and upper concourse. The expansion of the southern portion of the arena will start in summer 2026. 1400 Edwards Mill Road is owned by the State of North Carolina and has a total assessed value of more than $355 million. _____________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ https://www.sportsbusinessjournal.com/Articles/2024/08/26/facilities Fortunately for the operators of PNC Arena, the venue’s two main tenants, the Carolina Hurricanes and N.C. State men’s basketball, have the same color scheme: red, black and white. But their venue needs differ in most other ways, a key point addressed in a renovation design proposal shared in early August. The 25-year-old arena — with one of the more unique primary tenant pairings in North American sports — is nearing the starting line of a $300 million renovation. The two tenants, a Southern NHL team and a university with one of the largest living alumni bases in the country, needed a flexible space; one that could work for fans, journalists, broadcasters, alumni, touring artists’ entourages and corporate clients alike. The hard budget and subterranean limitations to expanding the arena’s footprint only increased the need for flexibility. “It’s just vital. We are who we are for the next 20, 25 years. A new building is probably the successor to this one,” said Jeff Merritt, executive director of the Centennial Authority, which owns the arena; Hurricanes parent company Gale Force Sports and Entertainment is the operator. The menu of design options that architects Gensler shared with the Centennial Authority included the conversion of a large press room and storage area — which housed the arena’s basketball court and risers and chairs for concerts and shows on the south side of the arena — into a single, 4,770-square-foot multipurpose room. Storage would be moved into newly freed adjacent spaces or shifted to the back-of-house-focused north side of the arena. The renovated room could be configured in at least four ways: a one-room layout for an event; a two-room setup for a press conference and event; and one-room and two-room dining arrangements. A bar in the back corner of the room would be one of the few permanent fixtures. A new adjacent kitchen would be added to serve the multipurpose room and four new bunker suites that would sit across the hall, beneath the seating bowl. “The Hurricanes, N.C. State basketball and the unique event needs for concerts — all those can be at times in conflict,” said Greg Brown, studio director for Gensler’s Kansas City sports practice. “This project is a perfect storm for needing to design in some of that flexibility for each one of those clients.” Multipurpose in all caps The 105-page proposal shows the design team moving the pieces of PNC Arena’s puzzle around. In many cases, the best use for the building in 1999 is not the same in 2024. “We had the volume of space,” said Demetra Thornton, co-managing director of Gensler’s Raleigh-Durham office, which worked with the Kansas City team on the PNC Arena design. “You want to work with the structure you have and turn some of these spaces that weren’t getting the most potential out of that use.” At PNC Arena, that meant focusing renovation investment on the more public-facing south end of the arena, opposite the stage in the building’s concert setup. That immediately put the storage use in the cross hairs, not to be replaced — Merritt: arenas never have enough storage! — but shifted elsewhere. The north end, where the service yard will be more than doubled and a new (fourth) loading dock added, made perfect sense for new storage. Back on the south side, mechanical rooms adjacent to the new multipurpose room were converted into additional storage and a media room, leaving a suddenly blank room for a variety of uses. “I think the board was pretty energized about what that space could look like,” said Merritt. With the multipurpose room, Gensler tried to create the biggest, blankest canvas that could still feel like premium hospitality when necessary. Roughly 125 fans sit courtside for N.C. State basketball games; the school can’t put more seats around the court, but wants to expand courtside seating amenities to more people, around 300. The full multipurpose room could be open pregame to those fans as a sit-down dining option, then split into two spaces postgame, with the press conference on one side of the dividing wall and the bar and lounge on the other for courtside fans. Furniture would be stashed in spaces adjacent to the room for quick and easy access, particularly when the space needs flipping in-game. The Hurricanes may want less furniture in the room, such as high-top tables, so they can max capacity for premium fans. They could alternately use it for media and staff pregame meals, or maybe, a handful of times per year, for a sponsor or corporation that buys 500 tickets to a game for its employees. The space could also be used as it is now, for storage, or as a work room for media and broadcast if the arena hosted the Stanley Cup Final or NCAA basketball tournaments, for example. “Multipurpose is a word that I would use in all caps for that space,” Merritt said. The multipurpose space and four new bunker suites — Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon’s idea — will enhance PNC Arena’s capabilities around its third and fourth types of events, concerts and corporate gatherings. Aside from a second-level club, PNC Arena doesn’t have a space for corporate groups or parties, or a VIP or fan club experience for touring acts. “We have to either close our arena club or just tell them we don’t have the space,” Merritt said. As Brown noted, playoff hockey premium is very different from college basketball premium, both of which are different from Justin Timberlake premium. The flexible bunkers, sitting between the multipurpose room and the event floor, would be separated by an operable wall, enabling them to convert from four 12-person suites to two 24-person suites. They could be used in conjunction with the multipurpose room or remain separate. Reconnaissance trips to Crypto.com Arena and Pittsburgh’s PPG Paints Arena — a venue with similarities to PNC Arena — helped Merritt and other Centennial Authority officers understand different bunker suite possibilities and scenarios. “The jury is out on how they’d sell that,” Merritt said of the Hurricanes and N.C. State. “Hockey and basketball, it’s kind of easy, but how they do that for shows, family shows, I just don’t know how they’ll sell that. It’s a new concept for us. Gensler has given us the ability to take those in a different direction if they don’t sell.” A needed face-lift Three times last season, PNC Arena hosted N.C. State men’s basketball at noon, followed by a Hurricanes game at 7 p.m. Making the multipurpose space simple to flip from one team’s environment to the other’s, without sacrificing aesthetics and making the environment feel cheap, is a key challenge. “I want to put as many high-end finishes in there as I can, but then again, I can’t go overboard,” said Merritt. Lighting and furniture do the heavy lifting instead. Programmable lighting with different modes can alter the vibe with a button touch. The room would have a central feature light fixture expected of premium spaces, but also more utilitarian lighting for press conferences tucked up in the ceiling. A movable partition would divide the space in two; the type hasn’t been picked yet, but there are options that will be nearly invisible when not in use. The multipurpose room will be devoid of permanent graphics, leaning instead on LED lights and video walls to flip between user groups’ needs. “While they’re not cheap,” Merritt said, “they’re relatively inexpensive ways to make it look like you spent more money than you did.” Gensler and LSP3 took over design responsibilities in March from HOK and Ratio, which worked on a potential PNC Arena renovation for nearly a decade. Gensler’s early August presentation was the Authority’s first time seeing the revised design. Merritt felt confident that most of the suggestions will be approved soon, and that the first phase of construction — overseen by T.A. Loving — would start as soon as the Hurricanes’ 2024-25 season ended and be completed by late September 2025. “We have to assume that’s Game 7 of a Stanley Cup Final in June,” he said. “Anything before that is gravy.” Ensuing phases — the bulk of the work — should follow in 2026 and 2027. They’ll include an upper concourse refresh and a major reworking of the venue’s primary south entrance (the proposal included three options for that). And likely more flexible spaces. “The entire building will feel a face-lift,” Thornton said. ________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ https://www.bizjournals.com/triangle/news/2024/08/15/pnc-arena-upgrades-gensler-design-demetra-thornton.html A woman with deep ties to sports and new to the Triangle from the West Coast is playing a key role in the reimagining of the PNC Arena in Raleigh. Demetra Thornton played softball at Hampton University and majored in architecture. She shot up the ranks at Gensler and helped the company start its sports practice in Los Angeles. Thornton's work involves projects across the country -- including, for example, a project with the Green Bay Packers. She moved to the Triangle recently to be co-lead of the Raleigh office when her husband was transferred here. It was a fortuitous move, as the Centennial Authority wanted fresh eyes on the revamp of PNC Arena and Gensler landed a lead role in the project. The PNC Arena debuted in 1999 -- a different era for sports arenas. As Thornton points out, the front of the arena has rows of ticket windows, and yet fans don't really use paper tickets any more. And the explosion of broadcast and entertainment options over the past three decades means arenas have to offer more than just a seat to appeal to fans. "A lot of what we've seen is, 'What will bring someone from their living room and being in front of their 60-inch TV to a facility'" Thornton said. All this comes at a critical time for the arena, and West Raleigh. The Blue Ridge Corridor has lagged in development despite the presence of the arena, but is now seeing a surge of interest. Significantly, the Centennial Authority has reached a long-term deal with Carolina Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon to keep the team in town -- and develop the area around the arena. Earlier this year, the Centennial Authority voted to partner with Gensler and LS3P, a change from working with Ratio and HOK. That put Thornton's experience in the field at the center of the discussions, which were unveiled Aug. 1. A key example is a plan to turn part of the PNC Arena's upper deck into a sports bar, which would have tables and stools but not fixed seats. Thornton notes in European soccer arenas there are sections where fans stand to watch the games. She points out that the Los Angeles FC team in Major League Soccer has had success with this, offering $20 tickets that appeal to younger fans. "What teams are trying to do is get that fan in the building to get them to be a life-time fan," she said. Similarly, Thornton notes that the trend in sports is away from big numbers in suites -- where 20 people gather for a corporate outing -- and more toward loge boxes, which seat a smaller number and are sort of a hybrid between a suite and a premium seat. She says that since Covid, people are spending more times with their families, and the loge boxes are perfect for families and friends. A major emphasis will be more connection with Carter-Finley Stadium. Plans now include an enhanced atrium, swanker VIP entrance and even a beer garden with an extensive outdoor patio. "Having the building speak to Carter-Finley is important because then it's activated for football Saturdays," she said. What's fascinating is this is only the beginning as Thornton and others sketch out a future that reimagines the arena and the space around it. "What's exciting is there is more to come ..." she said. "Come back ever year. You are going to see a huge improvement. ______________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________________ https://www.axios.com/local/raleigh/2024/08/01/pnc-arena-raleigh-renderings-renovation Newly released renderings give the public a first glimpse at what a $300 million renovation of PNC Arena could look like. Why it matters: As part of a deal to keep the Carolina Hurricanes in Raleigh long term, the city of Raleigh and Wake County are contributing public money to refresh the 25-year-old arena with modern venue amenities. In exchange, Canes owner Tom Dundon signed a 20-year lease and pledged to invest at least $800 million in building a mixed-used development around the arena, featuring restaurants, retail, apartments and offices. Driving the news: On Thursday, architecture firms Gensler and LS3P released their first renderings and renovation plans to state-owned Centennial Authority, which manages PNC Arena. The firms' visions call for creating a new lobby at the southern entrance of the arena, a new facade, a rooftop bar, more luxury suites and expanded food and beverage spaces. Yes, but: The final design remains uncertain as Centennial Authority must decide which renovations are possible within the $300 million budget. Gensler presented three different scales of renovations to the authority, which hopes to begin construction in phases starting next summer. "While these pictures are incredible, we still have to find a way to pay for all this," Centennial Authority Board Chair Philip Isley said at the Thursday meeting, per WRAL. --------------------------------------- the design, fabrication and installation of replacement of the Ice Plant Refrigeration System supporting the hockey ice surface within the Arena The Authority is an equal opportunity employer and reserves the right, as by law provided, and as its interests may require, to modify the foregoing specifications, to accept or reject any or all proposals, to waive informalities or irregularities in proposals, and/or to negotiate the terms of the final agreement.