Students attending a basketball game at University Hall have grown used to seeing the metal skeleton of the John Paul Jones arena. The metal and concrete are just a preview of the grandiose size of the soon-to-be finished facility.
To raise the remaining funds to complete the arena, the Athletics Department is beginning a second phase in its fundraising drive.
"Basically our focus up until now has been on donors with the inclination and capacity to make donations of $100,000 or more," Dirk Kastra, executive director of the Virginia Athletics Foundation and the University's associate athletics director for external operations said. "Now we're beginning the mass marketing portion of the campaign."
To attract smaller scale donors, the Athletics Department is sending out brochures and DVDs with virtual tours of the arena.
The completed facility will cost an estimated $129.8 million, and the Athletic Department has raised $94 million to date, Kastra said.
University Athletics Director Craig Littlepage said the Athletic Department's fundraising efforts are "going very well."
The Athletics Department is set to be finished with the bulk of the fundraising by the time construction of the arena is finished in 2006, Kastra said.
The completed arena will contain 15,000 seats, dwarfing the 8,300 seats of U-Hall.
"U-Hall is the smallest venue in the ACC and very outdated," Kastra said. "We wanted to improve upon that not only for the program but for the students, fans and ticket-holders."
Although Kastra said there was discussion about building a new stadium in the early 1980s, the project did not begin until an anonymous donation of $20 million in 2001 which soon was followed by a donation of $35 million from Paul Tudor Jones.
While Kastra admitted that some contributors may be cautious about donating to the arena because of the performance of the men's basketball team as of late, he said that he does not see those worries leading to a decline in fundraising.
"If anything, the arena is a commentary on the future of Virginia basketball," Kastra said. "We're building the building, and we're looking towards the future."
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