Out with the old

CEDAR RAPIDS - All the orange is gone, and it's not coming back.

That's what first hits you when you venture inside the cold, dark U.S. Cellular Center arena, which is quietly in the midst of a major renovation, along with the hotel connected to it. Meanwhile, the more visible work - the construction of a new convention center - is taking off next door.

At one point, the thought had been that the 30-plus-year-old arena's orange seats might go on sale as keepsakes after being torn out in the makeover. But they were stained more badly than anyone imagined, says Roger Cousins, project manager for Frew Nations Group.

“If you really looked at them, nobody would have wanted to buy them,” he says.

On the arena's concrete floor sits the overhead scoreboard, a relic of an earlier era, which also is headed to the dump to make way for a high-tech modern replacement.

All around the arena's first and second floors are piles of concrete blocks - what had been interior walls for restrooms, locker rooms and concession stands that are being enlarged or moved. The former “dark, dingy hallways” are being opened up to become brighter and less “confusing.”

A handful of new seats - some dark blue and some blue-gray in color - are temporarily in place in the arena's second level, there to give the city's design committee a feel for what looks best. Dark-blue seats have won the day.

“Once this is all done, you won't be able to image what it used to look like,” Cousins predicts. “It will have a whole new look. People aren't going to say, ‘This didn't change much.'”

The arena and convention center, which will flow into each other, are now called the Cedar Rapids Convention Complex, and together they represent a $75.6 million renovation and building program helped by a $35 million federal grant and a $15 million state grant. The 267-room hotel attached to the arena - which will be branded a DoubleTree by Hilton - cost $3.2 million for the city to purchase from its creditors in March and will take another $27 million or more to renovate.

One possibility is that the entire project will carry the name “DoubleTree by Hilton at the U.S. Cellular Center,” says John Frew, a principal with Frew Nations Group, who the city has put in charge of the hotel and Convention Complex projects.

An initial thought was that the seating for reserved-ticket concerts and shows in the arena would remain at about 6,300 seats, but Frew said the renovation now calls for pushing the stage deeper to the west side of the arena, creating another 400 or so slots for reserved-seat performances.

Demolition as part of the renovation also is well under way on the second floor of the arena-hotel complex, where a skywalk had been located along with the hotel's lobby. The hotel lobby is moving to the ground level, and the second floor where it used to sit will become a giant food court for the arena with plenty of room for show-goers to gather. What had been a towering, two-story hotel lobby will turn into a one-story area with a floor of meeting rooms above it.

The main entrance to the Convention Complex will be on the ground floor, with escalators available to bring arena-goers to the second-floor food court area.

A first major deadline for the complex and hotel work comes in November, when the city wants the arena in usable shape so it can host the state girls' volleyball championships.

The hotel, though, isn't slated for reopening until the spring of 2013, when the convention center is also expected to be ready, Frew says.