Miami students disappointed with approved arena location

Miami University’s campus will be forever changed after the Board of Trustees’ unanimous decision on Feb. 28 to place the new sports arena on Cook Field.

At the meeting, the board referenced a survey filled out by 1,500 people about preferred arena sites; however, less than 300 responses directly supported the Cook site.

Some students said they didn’t know about the new arena or had little opinion, while others strongly disapproved of the decision.

One student, junior Tristan Flueck, said he was confused when the discussion first started months ago because he doesn't understand why Cook would be an option.

“We could put it anywhere else or tear down the old one and build a new one there because I feel like where it is right now is perfectly fine,” Flueck, a marketing major, said. “I feel like [Southwest Quad] would be a better spot or anywhere but Cook, you know, because I use Cook Field. I do intramural soccer. Me and my buddies, we go out there. We went out, actually, yesterday, to play on the soccer fields.”

When Flueck was playing soccer on Tuesday, he said the nice weather brought out at least 100 other students to the field to play sports or hang out.

“[If Cook moved to where Millett is] I feel like you could see a decline in intramural sports if you were to do that,” he said. “Because I know transportation to the field would be a factor, and I feel like if it's out of the way, people won't use it as much, you know, and the field is right in the middle of campus.”

Another oppositionist is junior strategic communication and political science double major Jobe Vogelsong. He said his attention was first drawn to the situation when word of a hotel going in that area was spreading, and even then, he said, “that was something I was very against.”

When he found out the board voted to put the new sports arena on Cook Field, he said he thought it was a “horrible idea.”

“I walked across that field every day my first year because I lived on East Quad and so it's very nostalgic for me; it's very nostalgic for a lot of people,” Vogelsong said. “... And then they sent that email that was like, ‘This is the site that we chose.’ And I just remember everybody that I talked to [said] this is a horrible idea. Why are they doing this? They're not taking anybody's input into consideration.”

Vogelsong added that he doesn’t think people aren’t going to the games because it’s far away; he said people don’t go to the games “because they don’t want to.”

Unlike Flueck and Vogelsong, Emily Schonauer, a sophomore speech pathologist major, wasn’t aware of the developing plans for Cook. She said she spends a lot of time riding her bike around Cook, and it’s disappointing to see a green space like that destroyed.

Enjoy what you're reading?
Signup for our newsletter

“I think the landscape of Cook Field is already really nice,” Schonauer said, “so putting a large building there would look kind of stupid to me.”

Overall, she said she doesn’t believe building a new arena on Cook will convince more people to attend games. Instead, she said Miami should put more money into the Rec center.

Matthew Bell, also a sophomore who didn’t know a lot about the new arena plans, said it would impact him negatively because he plays soccer with his friends there.

Bell, an analytics major, did add that even though he doesn’t attend a lot of games in Millett now, a new centralized location would convince him to use it more.

“I’d rather have the field than the arena, though,” Bell said.

First-year Kaylee Miklautsch agreed with Bell. She said she would attend more games if there was a centralized arena but added that it would make it a little more time-consuming for students who live in that area to get to their dorms and classes.

“Nobody wants this,” Vogelsong said. “... I think it would have a negative impact very much on the community, because Miami's whole thing is greenery, green space, a beautiful campus, and so having a giant arena in the middle of campus is going to ruin the way that the campus looks, in my opinion.”

stumbata@miamioh.edu