Reviewing Rutgers Facilities: Renovating the Basketball Arena Pt2

Rutgers athletics has seemingly always been playing a game of catch-up with its facilities, with a decent amount of work that still needs to be done to bring the university’s facilities to the same level as the rest of the Big Ten. Our last article in this series talked about what sort of renovations need to be done to Jersey Mike’s Arena (JMA) to bring it up to modern Big Ten standards. This article will be dedicated to talking about the costs of the projects proposed in the previous article, which can be found here.

All of the financial breakdown was done by Microsoft Co-Pilot. Disclaimer: AI only uses the information available to it, meaning that the figures below were created using the specific information it has access to. On top of that, AI has been known to be inaccurate from time to time, yet we here at OTB still thought this was a worthwhile experiment to get people talking about the supposed incoming renovations to Jersey Mike’s Arena.

The AI was also able to break down the cost of the renovations discussed in the previous article into dollar amounts, based on contemporary building costs in the northeast. Hard Construction Costs · Lobby & exterior: $25–35M · Concourse rebuild: $40–55M · Restrooms & concessions: $15–20M · Premium seating & clubs: $20–30M · Technology upgrades: $10–15M · Athlete spaces: $10–15M Subtotal: $120–170M Soft Costs · Architecture & engineering: $12–18M · Permitting & environmental: $2–4M · Furniture, fixtures, equipment: $5–8M · Contingency (10–15%): $15–25M Subtotal: $34–55M Total Project Range $155M – $225M After breaking down all of these changes and the new sources of revenue they could provide to the Athletic Department, Copilot came up with figures where Rutgers could gross about $16. 2 million annually with all the changes, while having an operating cost of about $7 million dollars every year once everything is built out.

The gross money Rutgers would earn includes an average of $5. 1 million from premium seating, $4. 8 million from general ticket revenue,$1.