Palestra to get major repairs

Penn is looking to renovate the arena's concourse and halls at a cost of $2 million. After 73 years of graceful aging, the Palestra may finally get a facelift. Penn's Athletic Department is in the process of completing a proposal for renovations to the halls and lobby of the historic arena. If the nearly $2 million renovations -- which will create museum-style exhibits in the halls and repair the deteriorating Palestra concourse -- are approved, construction will likely begin in April or May. The renovations would then be completed by the fall 2000 season. The Athletic Department is still in the process of raising the necessary funds, at which point the proposal will be submitted to the University for final approval, Athletic Director Steve Bilsky said. Since the Palestra's opening on January 1, 1927, the concourse has not undergone any renovations, and the halls are beginning to show their age. "[The concourse] is old. It's rundown. The walls are basically decrepit," Bilsky said. "A facility as important as this should never have been allowed to deteriorate into this condition." Construction may limit accessibility for summer basketball camps and practices but will not affect in-season sports or the festivities surrounding the Women's Final Four in early April. While the renovations are not geared toward modernizing the Palestra, Bilsky said the makeover will make the historic arena look "brighter and fresher." "This will be a true monument to Philadelphia basketball," Penn men's basketball coach Fran Dunphy said. Each of the four hallways will feature exhibits and photographs with a different theme. The west concourse will be dedicated to the Big Five, retaining the Big Five Hall of Fame already in place and adding sections devoted to each of the Philadelphia teams. Meanwhile, the north hallway, entitled "Legends," will feature the greatest players to compete on the Palestra floor. Wilt Chamberlain, Oscar Robertson and Kobe Bryant are among the names and faces that could grace these north walls, Bilsky said. The final two concourses, south and east, will be dedicated to Penn and the Ivy League, respectively. Possible exhibit themes include a timeline of the 1970s in Quakers basketball and an in-depth look at the Penn-Princeton rivalry from the days of Corky Calhoun and Bill Bradley to Michael Jordan and Brian Earl. According to Bilsky, the Athletic Department is "scouring archives" to get photographs of athletes playing in the Palestra for these exhibits. Renovation plans, however, are not limited to the halls of the Palestra. The main entrance in the west lobby will also undergo an overhaul. Bilsky expects the lobby to be the only section of the Palestra with a "modern" look, although two traditional mural-size pictures will also grace its walls. The photograph on the lobby's north wall will be of a sold-out Palestra in the 1920s, the spectators clad in suits. Donning the south wall will be a picture of the student section in the 1970s throwing out red and blue streamers -- a tradition discontinued in the early 1990s because of NCAA rules. Though a small-scale freshening-up project could have fixed the arena's glaring problems, Bilsky said that in accordance with the Athletic Department's ongoing attempts to improve athletic facilities, a more radical change was in order. "Rather than paint it and freshen it up, we thought we would make it into something that's a museum to Philadelphia basketball," Bilsky said.