I had a front-row seat for the construction of the Carl and Mary Ice Family Basketball Center, living in Jardine Apartments since 2009. My back door was three steps away from the construction fence. Now I'm a half-minute walk from the front doors. I wondered how much noise there would be. Construction work wasn't very loud. The OSHA-required equipment back-up beeps were the worst! They were my alarm clock every day at first light, for 1½ years!
Progress was slow. Work started in February 2011, I believe, and continued for the next 20 months, until the dedication on October 5, 2012. As you can see in the first row of pictures, early on the agenda was creating an underground concrete wall to stabilize the Coliseum wall, as it sets high, relative to the BTF. Often in the winter, it seemed as if only a half dozen workers were on the site, but the pace was really stepped up as the dedication deadline approached! Regardless, I think the outcome is awesome, and I believe the quality of construction is very high.
I always know if the men's team players are shooting around. I live beside their end of the building. (The men's and women's courts set end-to-end.) Players can connect their phones or iPods to the court PA system. I can never tell what song they're listening to, but the bass booms let me know they're in there practicing! I took many of the construction pictures by holding my camera above the fence. My indoor photos are in a separate gallery. Click just below to see the 75 photos I took of almost everything inside this first-class facility. I took the majority of the pictures of the finished facility on Friday, October 9, 2012... three days before the two basketball programs moved in. There are more pictures of the Men's BB end of the building, simply because a worker held the door to their wing open for me, and the Women's BB entrance happened to be locked that day. The two wings are almost identical. Sept. 2017: I'm sorry that a number of my links to K-State Athletics tours, etc. were lost when the new Athletics web site opened around the start of this month. I'm working to relocate as many of them as I can. What John Currie accomplished as our director of athletics is incredibly impressive! It ended up being almost $200 million worth of new construction!
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