If I were in charge of Gill Renovations

I'd put signage outside so that people know what is happening now, tomorrow, next week, etc.. pretty poor when there is no advertising.

I like the stained glass idea a lot.

 Hec, Cameron, the Palestra, and Gill are the four great fieldhouse-style arenas in America.  The fieldhouse style has some features that makes them a little harder to work with.  In particular, steep rows which put the fans almost to the ceiling, large end walls, big cross beams, and a compact overall footprint.  They represented the best of pre-WWII building concepts and make for the noisiest game environment you can find.  I *love* Gill and hope that she stands forever.  But the design does make for some engineering challenges when it comes to scoreboards and such.  (And you'll *never* fit a luxury box into one.  Thank God and Slats Gill.)

Here's what Hec has.



That looks pretty nice to me.  Notice the ribbon boards way up high.  I wonder how much advertising revenue they produce. 

Here's Cameron:



All they have is a central scoreboard and video boards at the ends similar to ours.

The Palestra: 



Palestra (home to Penn and Philadelphia's "Big 5" rivalry) seats 8725, and has something much like what we have today.

Hey.....instead of the old flora around Gill (it all looks old and very tired..), we could replace it with (fake) palm trees...eighty footers! Perception... and, GZR..thanks for all your hard work, back in the day...and..you are right. It WAS better (for some....not all).

A point of historical interest from those days--All the athletes on scholarship, including the MBB and FB players, were required to work a certain number of hours a week as part of their scholarship. For instance, the BB players would report to Gill coliseum and do jobs around the building such as sweeping etc. I don't think any of them were overworked, you understand, but it was part of the deal in those days.

"minor" sports guys were hired to man the gates at Gill and Parker, run the chains, care for the footballs, etc. in place of scholarships. 

Different times.

The problem with the fieldhouse design is that the basic envelope is essentially impossible to change. In theory you could extend east or west, but it would be very expensive. Expanding north or south is simply impossible.

It is also extremely expensive to change the seating structure. The more practical idea would be to put some "premium" seating in a few key sections - such as mid-court behind the scorer's table - that wouldn't subtract too much from the overall capacity and could command a premium price. As much as I'd love another couple inches of knee space in my section, it wouldn't make a lick of sense for the school to spend millions remodeling the interior to reduce capacity by 20%.

I really doubt any changes to the seating arrangements would pencil out for the school. I do think a jumbotron would be a financial win.  This is what $1.2 million bought Ball State two years ago:



I would imagine that a better jumbotron and wifi - a necessity these days, I'm told - could be obtained for a few million dollars.  That's within reason for a fundraising campaign.  I'd write a check for 0.1% of that.