Greg Byrne Provides Update on Alabama’s New Arena

Crimson Tide basketball followers have been thrilled with the announcement of a brand new area on the Alabama campus earlier in 2022. The brand new area was a part of Part II of the Crimson Commonplace Initiative, however for the reason that announcement in February, there hasn’t been a lot information from the athletic division on the venture. 

Alabama athletics director Greg Byrne spoke on the Hey Coach! radio present Thursday evening, and offered an replace on the place issues stand within the course of. He stated it has been an ongoing dialog with the architects to attempt to get the venture off the bottom. 

“Clearly some issues have modified since, I feel it was March of final 12 months after we launched it,” Byrne stated. “We weren’t anticipating the best inflation in 40 years however that is actuality. So we have continued to return to the drafting board and say, ‘What does that imply? What are the impacts which might be going to be on there?’”

The world wouldn’t simply be used for males’s basketball, but in addition girls’s basketball and the Crimson Tide’s storied gymnastics program, now below the route of recent head coach Ashley Johnston. Byrne acknowledged that every one three packages are heading in a constructive route and the significance of continuous with the venture due to that and the age of the present services at Coleman Coliseum.

“We all know it is vital for our program, and there is a whole lot of pleasure for it and the progress that Nate’s made with the with the boys’s basketball program,” Byrne stated. “We’re gonna have girls’s basketball program this 12 months, and clearly we’re actually excited to have Ashley come again to educate the gymnastics workforce. 

“Clearly having a facility for that is going to be actually vital. Coleman’s 50 plus years outdated. There’s a whole lot of issues we’ve got to deal with with that. And people these issues aren’t going away anytime quickly.”

There’s nonetheless no official timetable for the venture, however preliminary experiences steered that development bids would start in April 2023.