0:07 This is The GPL Podcast from go4pucklive.com. 0:24 Kind of sounds weird, sounds like 1999. 0:30 Oh boy, Duke making mistakes, I love it. 0:34 And so I had to train for this marathon. 0:38 Make sure you stay away from the game. 0:44 But the BigTen's a bad conference. 0:46 That's a joke. 0:47 If this gets clipped, that's a joke. 0:50 Definitely cooking that one now. 0:55 Now, here's Jupiter and Vegoe. 1:04 Hello, welcome to the GPL Podcast, episode number 241. 1:08 We're here at the Mariucci Arena, Veegs. 1:12 We'll get to that in a second. 1:13 But a lot's happened since we did our final show of the season. 1:17 That's right. 1:18 A lot of people had decisions to make. 1:20 And I think Gopher fans are going to be happy with pretty much all of them. 1:24 As we saw, a lot of players decided to come back for the next year. 1:26 A lot of players who said, I'm not going to be in the early departure. 1:29 I want to be a part of this. 1:31 And they're coming back. 1:32 Started with Snuggerud real early. 1:34 And then we had to wait for Mr. 1:36 Close, Mr. 1:37 Brodzinski and of course, Mr. 1:39 Cooley. 1:41 Those are some big names coming back. 1:43 You look at like the depth chart that's starting to come together for Bob next year. 1:47 And I think especially getting Cooley and Nelson back down the middle. 1:51 This is going to give the Gophers one of the best center depth charts in college hockey. 1:56 And that's so important when you build a team down the middle. 1:59 Then you have a returning goalie coming back with Justin Close. 2:02 He's been through it. 2:03 And I think he learned something through the playoff run this year about what it takes to win the championship. 2:09 And I think everybody's pretty happy with the decision. 2:11 It's been an exciting off season already. 2:13 We don't usually have that. 2:14 It's always quiet for a couple of months. 2:18 And it's just kind of how it is. 2:21 But this year, it just seems so different with initially Snuggerud and then a month later, the rest of the gang, there's an excitement building already. 2:29 Well, I think that just speaks to the change in the locker room that we've seen. 2:33 This team is so much tighter, and guys really don't want to give that up. 2:38 They look at people who transition to pro hockey if they have to go play in the AHL for a while, ride those buses. 2:44 The Gophers always talk about how they fly charter and they stay in really nice hotels. 2:49 And they get to be with their buddies for a little bit longer. 2:51 And when you have a group that's this tight, it helps in the win column. 2:57 Well, so a lot of exciting stuff coming, because you can see here at Mariucci, and as you can hear, there's a lot of work going on down there as they reconfigure the entire rink here, making it skinnier. 3:09 And of course, we figured, since they're doing that, let's bring in the main architect for the whole thing, Tom Betti from JLG Architects. 3:21 My goodness, thanks for joining the show, but this is a huge project. 3:24 You bet. 3:25 These are always big projects. 3:27 They're front and center, right? 3:28 People care about their stuff. 3:29 Yeah. 3:30 What's going on? 3:31 And we just have fun with these projects because they affect a lot of people. 3:35 It's just not the players, but the spectators, and they're always just a big public interest component. 3:41 And that's why I carved out my career working on ice arenas. 3:45 I have over 50 of them I designed across the country. 3:48 So I brought that, mirrored that with JLG Architects right here in Minneapolis, 70 person firm, really growing our sports division. 3:57 We work across the country, so it's exciting. 3:59 And not just ice, but we do everything from aquatic centers and anything with sport net. 4:05 We're involved open field venues, turf, you name it, and working all around the metro area. 4:10 So it's a lot of fun, you know, hitting Plymouth, Maple Grove, Egan, all those communities, really getting their work moving forward. 4:17 So great to be here. 4:18 So part of this was Mariucci had an outdated refrigeration system. 4:23 That's kind of where it all started. 4:25 And then, you know, it's like, okay, we have to change the refrigerating system eventually here. 4:30 You know, we've talked about it for years, Veegs, they need to do this. 4:33 But part of that is, hey, maybe we could shrink the rank. 4:38 And that's the big thing here. 4:39 You're going from 100 feet wide down to 89 feet wide, going down 16 inches. 4:45 Actually, you're digging down further as you can see what they're doing down here. 4:47 Yeah, correct. 4:48 But there's a lot of things you need to get figured out just to even start this project. 4:55 Yeah, you know, and being through a ton of arena projects, you still lose sleep on some things, right? 5:00 Yeah, on this particular project, seems simple, right? 5:03 We'll just move the rink down 16 inches, it'll all be good. 5:07 But then you start looking at sight lines, right? 5:09 So we're trying to narrow this rink up as close as we can get to NHL standard. 5:12 NHL's 85 by 200. 5:14 This was Olympic at 100 by 200. 5:16 We're at 89 by 200. 5:18 So right in there, right? 5:19 Yeah. 5:19 Your high end players will notice a little bit with passing. 5:22 For the most part, we're dialing in and then working with the corners. 5:25 But you have to study the sight lines. 5:27 People are paying a lot of money to sit in these seats. 5:30 And you know, what other opportunities can we create with some lounge seating in the Southwest corner, really helping upgrade the ADA experience on the corner, which I think is critical. 5:40 And so you pull that all together, you need to be sure it's all working and you're on paper, right? 5:45 And we got great tools with 3D modeling and so on. 5:47 You still need to kind of old school it and study it carefully. 5:51 And that's what we did. 5:52 And that's where we find that sweet spot, you know? 5:54 And, you know, the floor level from Ritter and from the back of house to the rink, they're all different levels, right? 6:00 So you have to make that ramping work and be safe for the workers and people coming and going. 6:04 So we're able to do that. 6:05 We're excited about it. 6:06 And I think the fans are going to appreciate it. 6:08 I hope they do. 6:10 We had been talking about this project for years and sight lines is a huge thing because Mariucci, very steep. 6:17 But that's what a lot of us love about Mariucci is how steep it is. 6:21 When you're up eight goals, you're already up over the glass looking at. 6:25 You look at an NHL arena, you go to the back row and you're still looking through a lot of glass. 6:32 So here it's a lot different. 6:34 Yeah, I've always said there's not really a bad seat in an entire bowl for watching. 6:38 I think it's because of those sight lines. 6:40 It's such a premium part of the building. 6:43 When you were building the plans for this, how long did it take? 6:47 How long have you been thinking about this? 6:49 Jack Ramsey used to joke that when he was getting recruited 10 years ago, they were talking about doing this. 6:53 So when did you get involved? 6:55 Well, you know, this project, all these projects take a while. 6:59 And I like to tell people, I have one client out in California. 7:03 From the first phone call I got to when we opened their building was 20 years. 7:07 So this one, not as bad. 7:09 So in 2019, we did some study work for the university and helped them dial in on, you know, what can we do with the rink, right? 7:15 What can we do sightline wise? 7:18 And then what are rough magnitude of costs and so on. 7:20 And then obviously with COVID, there was a little bit of a pause. 7:23 Then when we formally got engaged was last summer and took us about six months to do the engineering and documentation for all this work. 7:31 And, you know, we'll probably talk a little later, supply chain issues, all those things that you have to go through and get things ordered early and so on. 7:38 But really for this, it's engineering focus, our texture obviously on sightlines and seating and those types of things. 7:45 But we turned it out quick because you only have a summer to build. 7:51 Yeah, Craig Flores behind the scenes here kind of laughing as he knows that, let's go, let's go, let's go. 7:57 Well, we are limited on time because short off season, no graduations here this year and that's just kind of how it is. 8:05 You know, some people are nervous about this. 8:09 Right. 8:10 My seats are changing. 8:12 This is what happens. 8:15 But it was time to get a lot of this stuff done. 8:19 I agree. 8:21 So what have been the biggest challenges for you? 8:24 I mean, because obviously when there's concrete down there, you don't really know what's all underneath everything. 8:30 You might not have information going back 30 years. 8:33 Right. 8:33 What are the biggest challenges you're finding in this project? 8:36 You know, the biggest challenge is what I talked about a little bit, right? 8:40 So we're going to have to have some guidelines and so on, but then we have existing refrigeration rooms. 8:45 One refrigeration room powers 3M Arena. 8:48 The other refrigeration room powers Ritter, does the ice there. 8:51 So what we're doing is we're combining it all into one plant. 8:55 So A, it's more efficient, you know, switching out the type of refrigerant from R22, which is banned, part of the Montreal Protocol, all that type of stuff, bring in ammonia, which is some people go, ooh, ammonia, but with it's used all the time in grocery stores, it's a well known, it's a natural refrigerant, so, you know, it doesn't deplete the ozone, has all those benefits environmentally. 9:17 And it's a really good refrigerant, so it makes great ice, right, it keeps things cold. 9:21 So we had to fit that new room into existing space because you need to keep a ridder going, you know, and then we can keep this going as long as possible, turn over that room, get that plant up and going, that's what they're doing right now. 9:34 And hopefully a little later we can see, you know, they're going to move in the chiller barrel and stuff like that. 9:39 So that's, you know, it's this kit of parts where you got to move the Rubik's Cube around and make sure you're doing things. 9:45 And, you know, the byproduct, which I think Craig will be happy with, is they're getting a little additional storage out of this because we're combining down to one room instead of two separate rooms, which, not really sexy, but when you're operating a building and trying to turn things over, it's a really good thing. 10:00 As long as I can find my bucket, Craig, I'll be good. 10:04 My photo bucket, that'll be great. 10:07 So this year's Mariucci, doing the ice, next year will be Ritter. 10:12 So, you know, obviously you want to try to keep at least a rink open throughout the summer so the players can come practice, so very coordinated this year, next year. 10:20 There are some other things down the road that they want to make changes with as well. 10:24 Nothing set in stone yet, but slowly just besides the ice, maybe some nice custom seating down here, but there are other things in the hopper down the line. 10:35 Yeah, you know, we brushed on it in our study, starting to look at it. 10:39 You know, I'm a big believer in all sport projects I work on, and some projects I've been involved with them for 25 years, just keep working on the same building. 10:48 You need to change that fan experience, and I think, you know, really how we go to sporting events, attend them, it's changed a lot in the 20, 25 years, right? 10:59 You see all the different seeding opportunities, and part of that's revenue, right? 11:03 I mean, you got to keep the building up and upgrading, and so, you know, what are some opportunities or great seeding ideas to increase revenue? 11:11 You know, so we did some really loose schematics on how could we add some club seeding, maybe upgrades in concession offerings, branding in the building, you know, just bringing out that pride on ice and go for history, just keep upping that game, maybe increasing some finishes and so on. 11:28 So, you know, has a long ways to go, but this is the benchmark right here. 11:32 You gotta get this going. 11:34 You need to start and the quality of ice and start to see some of these little changes I think people will respond to. 11:42 We'll hopefully help push those projects up and get some money flowing in to help fund it. 11:47 Definitely get the funding going. 11:49 I mean, that's always a good thing. 11:50 So people will notice obviously a couple new rows this year, down lower, ice is smaller, but the lighting also is going to change. 12:00 Banks of lighting, LED lighting, it's going to be a little easier for us to find Craig Floh over there, won't it? 12:07 Oh, big time. 12:07 One, he'll probably be not as tan as he is now, because the LEDs just don't put out that heat, like the old fixtures. 12:17 I'll tell you, in my profession, the biggest change has been lighting, and what we can do with it, and how it impacts utility usage, better lighting, you know, for less cost to operate, and you can have more fun with it, you know, how quick it turns on and off. 12:34 And they light the entire bowl. 12:36 Right, the entire bowl. 12:37 Yeah, and that's just needed, really, when you're watching the game. 12:40 Oh, no, you need a little ambient lighting in the seating, actually, quite frankly, probably want that even a little darker, right? 12:45 Yeah. 12:46 You hit the ice, you make that glow, it makes that product on the ice. 12:51 And then, you know, from the other side, I mentioned energy, but these lights, the existing lights, put out a ton of heat. 12:57 So it impacts how hard your refrigeration system has to work. 13:00 It's all those things, you know, the heat load of the people, but lighting is a big part of it. 13:04 Now that starts to go away, that load, and it's really, it's been great. 13:08 I mean, it's made my life easier. 13:11 And I think, you know, the building operators love it. 13:14 You have just more control of your lighting systems. 13:17 That's a great piece of it. 13:18 Tell us your story, what got you into this? 13:20 What got you in just architecture? 13:23 And did your love of sports kind of help that? 13:27 Well, I'm not the biggest guy in the world, you know? 13:30 Maybe not. 13:31 Not like Vegoe. 13:33 Played sports through high school, but I wasn't gonna go on anywhere. 13:36 And I love sports. 13:38 So I got into architecture and I was just doing my thing, right? 13:41 I didn't really know what was all involved with getting a degree in architecture. 13:44 And actually I'm a proud graduate at the University of Minnesota, you know, College of Architecture, so I'm proud of that. 13:51 And really I got out into my first job and I was working on some community center gardens. 13:57 I had gymnasiums in on pools, you know, a little bit of fitness at the time. 14:02 I date myself, it was way back. 14:03 Yep. 14:05 And then there started to be this boom in ice ritz. 14:09 Like this place. 14:10 Yeah, exactly. 14:11 Right around 1993 when this opened, there was this big boom, right? 14:17 And I worked on an ice arena for Evergrowth Heights. 14:22 And then I had another one in Champlain. 14:25 And then I think we've played hockey at Evergrowth quite a few times because there were a lot of pickup games there. 14:30 You know, as an architect you're looking at all the old arenas where these tin barns kind of walk through the front door, you're right on the ice. 14:38 And that's where I started playing with the idea of what's the experience for not only the player but the spectator? 14:44 How do you come into a building? 14:46 Having a lobby that's comfortable, concession. 14:49 Really setting up that ice sheet, you know, so when you come in, you see it, it's front and center. 14:53 So I just started gravitating towards that project type. 14:56 And lo and behold, the Phoenix Coyotes came calling. 14:59 I did their training center in 95. 15:01 Can you do a big arena for them now, too? 15:05 We got to work on that. 15:07 You know, so doing that, working for Anaheim Ducks, this work for Florida Panthers, St. 15:12 Louis Blues, and then college teams, you know, we just opened Sacred Heart University's brand new D1 Arena. 15:20 Beautiful facility, you know, a little over 3000 seats, but gorgeous. 15:24 And you're starting to see that explosion of replacing a lot of facilities or getting older. 15:29 And I just loved it. 15:30 I mean, it was just one of those passion type projects. 15:33 And I know more about ice than I ever thought I would. 15:36 The good thing about that Sacred Heart rink is the glass, that tints, and it looks so different, you know, for practice, than game night. 15:45 And it just kind of is one of those showstopper features. 15:49 It's really neat. 15:50 It's an electric sage glass, right? 15:51 So you can, it's clear during the day. 15:54 But if the coach wants it dark, it takes, you know, just not a flip of switch and just goes dark. 15:58 It takes, you know, half hour or so, 45 minutes to come down to full darkness. 16:03 But it's great. 16:04 So when they have their games, you know, you got TV cameras, so on, you want to control that glare, what people can see and so on. 16:12 They flip the switch, the glass goes dark. 16:14 But when it's open, there's a view of the valley and all the trees are like, oh, gorgeous. 16:20 It's phenomenal. 16:21 So it takes advantage. 16:21 It starts to blend the outside environment and indoor environment and make, like I say about hockey, they're more than just the game on the ice. 16:29 They're about building community. 16:30 And I truly believe that these types of projects here, it's all about the students, the fans, everyone coming together. 16:36 And maybe that's what drives me to this type of work more than any other. 16:40 I always joke with people, winning is not really a successful ticket sales strategy, but if you can create an environment where people want to be, you create that atmosphere for people. 16:50 And I think a rink is such a key part of that. 16:52 And you look at Mariucci, it's getting old dated. 16:55 And so things like changing the rink size and then some of the plans that I've seen really can do that down the line, I think. 17:02 Yeah, and you see it, and it's not only, we're so proud in Minnesota, right? 17:06 I'm on the rinks and I missed the exact number, but like 328 indoor ice rinks in the state, right, which is just insane. 17:15 But that reach is going up. 17:17 We're working in Savannah, Georgia right now, just outside of it, Port Wentworth, putting up a new TUSHI facility for an ECHL team that needs it for practice, but they're going to develop a whole youth hockey program and grow that high, right? 17:32 And we're doing that all over. 17:34 We're doing one in Virginia. 17:35 Same thing, it's just, you're just starting to see hockey grow, which I think as hockey fans, it's just great for the sport, right? 17:42 Well, definitely. 17:43 You know, the one thing I've always loved about Mariucci, yes, it's starting to get dated, but you've got these huge concourses that has always been a great boon for this arena, because you can go to some new arenas, you get some corners. 17:55 I mean, even at the X, you can get stuck in a corner, and it's a logjam. 17:59 So you do have a lot to work with here. 18:01 Right. 18:02 And that's pretty nice. 18:04 The walkabout is one of the great things about going to a hockey game is, you know, who are you going to run into at the rink? 18:09 You know, and you can play the game. 18:10 Who's going to run into someone they know first? 18:13 Right. 18:14 It's pretty fun. 18:15 And that's what I always loved about coming here, both as a student and even still today, you know, coming to games. 18:21 It's that walking around the concourse. 18:23 I mean, I should admit it, but I'm not in my seat all the time. 18:28 You're running in the, you know. 18:30 And now with the shorter period breaks, you've got to move fast. 18:33 You've got to keep it clipping. 18:35 But no, I think that's a big part of it. 18:38 It doesn't matter what level. 18:39 It's so fun, you know, from community level to NHL level. 18:42 They're all talking the same thing, the hockey world, and it's about building that community and that connection. 18:46 And so, just exciting. 18:48 Well, we're going to go around and take a look at a couple things here, so we'll be back with you guys in a second. 18:53 Hopefully, we'll have some construction gear on. 18:56 And we'll take a look at some of the stuff that's going on here. 19:14 What is this big thing behind us? 19:32 And that will be installed here somewhere, I think actually over there, closer to the big pipes. 19:38 And you're getting another room back further. 19:57 This is one of the one-year challenges, figuring out where things are going to go. 21:51 We're happy to change over and go to something. 21:55 So, new boards, new glass. 21:57 Are we going more to NHL style? 22:00 Yep, there will be the acrylic glass. 22:09 Curved glass by the benches. 22:10 Curved glass by the benches is in there as well. 22:20 Well, actually, the old one flexes quite a bit. 22:22 Yeah, we had the glass flexed in there. 22:25 It was spring-loaded because I remember that. 22:27 When you're shooting on the glass here, you've got to be careful. 22:38 There's a lot of cool stuff here. 22:47 All right, we're back here. 22:48 A lot of cool stuff we just saw there. 22:50 But I know, Veegs, you've got a couple more questions before we shut down the podcast. 22:55 Yeah, I think the other thing people will notice during the play is the corners are going to be different. 22:58 One thing about Mariucci is they had those super neat corners where you could be there on the power play and the penalty kill would be 30, 40 feet away from you because they had no business chasing you. 23:07 That's going to change next year. 23:09 Yeah, it is. 23:10 We increased that radius a little bit to 22 feet, so getting closer to that NHL standard of 28. 23:17 But good playability can come out of the corner a little quicker, not be trapped. 23:23 So I think that's good. 23:24 And also another part of that is what I mentioned really early in our conversation is sight lines. 23:29 If we start to bring it out too far, it starts to make access to those areas different. 23:34 It starts to impact these low seats in the corners, so we want to stay away from that. 23:38 So it's that balance again, right, of playability, making a Class A ice rink, but then also balancing that against sight lines and views. 23:49 And overall, how many seats did you end up adding to Mariucci? 23:52 250. 23:53 That'll be nice. 23:57 We're all excited for the changes at Mariucci, and I know we've been talking about this for so long, Vigz. 24:03 I mean, been five years in the podcast. 24:05 Yeah, I do happen to know where to look for certain documents at the university. 24:09 So I've seen some of those. 24:11 And then there's going to be some new premium seating coming out next year that people will see, too. 24:15 Yeah, we have some lounge seating going into the southwest corner here. 24:18 You know, nice kind of oversized chairs. 24:22 They'll have the M on them. 24:25 A place where you can watch practice real nicely and comfortable. 24:33 Help holder for you. 24:35 Well, thanks for joining us on the podcast, Tom. 24:37 We really appreciate you coming on and coming down to Mariucci to get all this done. 24:41 It's awesome. 24:42 That'll do it for this GPL Podcast. 24:46 We might have another show coming up with maybe a player sometime this summer, so stay tuned for that. 24:51 You guys have a great day.