"I'm not going to apologize for he background noise," UK Athletics Director Mitch Barnhart jokes. "They're working hard. We need them to keep going."
With hammers and drills threatening to drown him out, Barnhart stands overlooking the still evolving interior of Memorial Coliseum from the scale of the operation. It's clearly more than a facelift — with the bones of the new center scoreboard in the middle of the court and a host of changes happening on all sides.
Including yes... for the first time, modern air conditioning.
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"Everything, if you start from the top and go to the bottom, from the new ceiling and things like that, to HVAC and all those things that are in this structure, to the new floor, new seating over here to my right, all that is done and they're beginning to work on the the chair back seating on the other side," Barnhart explains as he rolls off the long list of changes to the venue.
Workers even stumbled on a few surprises.
"Yeah, they pulled back a wall and they found a bunch of pay phones," he notes.
The renovations will actually reduce the number of seats from 8,500 to closer to 6,500, but the hope is that the experience is improved for players and fans coming to see Kentucky women's basketball, gymnastics stunt teams, and volleyball.
Each sport will get its own soft opening, with volleyball competition set to begin first in mid August.
At the moment, UK has over 1,500 season ticket deposits for the sports, with women's basketball accounting for around 1,100. A grand opening of the new Memorial Coliseum is slated for Spring 2025.
