A small proposal for the new UCR C-Center

As many of you may or may not know, UCR is trying to build an arena to host their basketball games and other events.  According to UCR's newspaper, The Highlander:

"The proposed C-Center is another project Wickstrom is currently working on, and he hopes to get the project rolling very soon. The C-Center proposal calls for an arena with a capacity of 8,000 to host basketball games, concerts and other events."

All I can say, is it's about damn time.   The city of Riverside needs a multi-purpose arena as does UCR.  If built on campus, the outside events brought in can definitely bring in the revenue.  There are a couple concerns about this C-Center though: where will it go, and how should it be designed?  This is where yours truly decided to take up his pen and a piece of paper and draw things out.  I'll explain my sketches after each paper.

Click to enlarge

 So here's my poor drawing of a UCR map...mostly because I was to lazy to use Google Maps at this point.  The stars represent possible locations and the lone circle represents where I think it should go.  The location where most people think it should go is on the corner of Linden and Canyon Crest, taking out the apartments and food areas there.  The plan may or may not call for the restaurants to be rebuilt into the arena.  I'm not taking any chances: if you take away Sub-Station and Getaway Café, I will protest (in the only way I know how...blogging).  Plus, taking away living spaces near campus for students is always a bad idea.  The other four locations I marked involve no demolition of housing, just removal of campus space.  The giant playing field next to the Riverside Sports Complex (where the baseball team plays) is a good spot, however it's in a not so good area, and you'll also have non-student residents complaining about the noise.

The last three spots are in the agricultural operation fields.  Of those three, the one just north of Lot 30 (marked with the circle) is my choice of an ideal location.  I don't know what they're growing there, but it's not taking up huge amounts of space.  Also, there's parking already set: to expand, you can fix it so it becomes a multi-level parking structure.  There's easy access to the highway and easy access in and out of the area and the land is already flat so you don't need extra-bulldozing for flat land.  The best part here is that you protect the local businesses who've been there 15+ years on/off campus by not destroying their property.  Another benefit is that it's away from the center of campus, which eases traffic on the busiest part of the university.  The biggest problem here is you would be in conflict with Agricultural Operations, who are a source of huge research funds with the university.  They do have a satellite in Coachella Valley, which they can buy more property/resources with funds from the buy-off of the people funding the C-Center.

Once again, click to enlarge

Here's where things could get hard to see and also debatable.  My influence for modelling the C-Center comes from a few different places: The Viejas Arena (SDSU) and Jenny Craig Pavillion (USD) just to name a couple.  I felt that if this is going to be a multi-event arena with shopping/food, the retail stuff should be outside, like a giant bazaar.   So the retail areas would be outside of the arena itself, but inside the property.  A very basic sketch from top on the bottom right corner shows that the UCR store should have it's own area, a large restaurant opposite it, a fountain in the middle (maybe a citrus style in tribute to the agricultural side of the Inland Empire?), vendors to the left and restrooms/info center to the right.  Entrance to the arena will be all glass (with tinted glass to prevent heat of course).  I like the dome because not only can you do so much with the design, but it also provides great acoustics for inside.

Inside the arena, the performance area would be underground level to make louder acoustics.  For basketball/other UCR sports, the student section should be behind the end of the court opposite the entrance and expanded to 1500 students/grad students (appropriate ratio for a game).  This makes for a more raucus and intense atmosphere.  Soda/snack vendors should be on the corners of the circular walkways.  Notice that I don't have an area for restrooms on the inside of the arena, that's because I wasn't sure where to put them, they really could go anywhere.

I'm not a professional architect, I'm not a building planner...I'm a blogger and a student.  So if you have disagreements, or want to discuss things, leave comments below!

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