The $180-million arena in downtown Indianapolis is designed to evoke memories of the state’s great high school and collegiate fieldhouses while delivering all the amenities of a modern NBA arena: 18,500 seats, 69 suites, 2,500 club seats and extra-wide concourses that offer more food and fan amenities than the Pacers’ previous home. Conseco Fieldhouse can be configured for other events as well, such as ice hockey, concerts and traveling shows.
Ellerbe Becket designers created a fieldhouse that recalls basketball’s early days – right down to a vintage scoreboard and a roll-out bleacher section. “Our charge from the Pacers organization was to create a themed environment that will do to basketball what the retro-styled stadiums have done for baseball,” said Ellerbe Becket design principal James Poulson, AIA.
Poulson said Conseco’s design was influenced by a number of high school and college gymnasiums, among them Hinkle Fieldhouse on the Butler University campus in Indianapolis. For much of this century, Hinkle hosted the legendary Indiana boys state high school basketball tournament.
Conseco Fieldhouse is the twelfth NBA/NHL arena Ellerbe Becket has designed or renovated in the 1990s, but this is the first fully themed arena in the world. “You won’t find this level of detail anywhere,” said Ellerbe Becket’s senior project manager Stephen Hotujac. “From the brick concourses lined with billboards right down to the throwback usher’s uniforms, this place has heart.”
“There’s not a back-lit advertising sign in the place,” said Ellerbe Becket design architect Tom Proebstle, AIA. “Some of the advertising is painted on the brick walls of the concourses, resurrecting the long lost art of ghost-painting on the blank sides of brick buildings.”
Exposed long-span roof trusses not only add to the nostalgic look and feel of the arena, they saved money. “Conseco’s trusses travel lengthwise with the basketball floor, requiring less structural steel than a gymnasium with trusses that run perpendicular to the court,” said Hotujac. The arched roof allows for what may be the most memorable design feature of Conseco Fieldhouse: multi-story glass walls in the seating bowl. Common in old fieldhouses, these walls make Conseco the first modern NBA arena to have a city skyline view from inside the seating bowl.
An innovator since its founding, Ellerbe Becket provides integrated architecture, planning, interiors, engineering and construction services from 12 office locations worldwide. The firm is celebrating its 90th anniversary in 1999.
