Sports
Gampel Roof Repairs Moving Along at UConn, but 'First Night' Called Off
The work has pushed volleyball to the field house and prompted officials to cancel basketball's "First Night."
STORRS, CT — Roof repairs to Gampel Pavilion mean there will be no "First Night" festivities to open the 2017-18 University of Connecticut basketball season.
The women’s volleyball team will also be going old school for the 2017 season and the Huskies will be playing home matches in the Hugh Greer Field House.
The announcements were made on Thursday.
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The roof has been leaky and ceiling liners peeling for some time. Materials to fix the problems began arriving this spring and prep work for the project started right after commencement in May. The project is slated to be finished at the end of October – in time for the start of basketball games, UConn officials said.
That prep work has included protection covering for the scoreboards, removal of the national championship banners and covering the various heating and cooling system vents, officials said.
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Gampel Pavilion opened in 1990 and the construction of the roof was innovative for its time, including a network of metal clad panels with a fabric-wrapped insulated cover on the interior.
The building did not age well, however and the fabric wrap has been ripping and flaking and the sealant sealant on the exterior of the dome has started to wear-off.
A budget of $10 million for the repair work was approved by the UConn Board of Trustees on Jan. 25.
“We are working with 2,100 individual panels to bring down to the floor via a pulley system,” said Lou Gaedt, a construction engineer for UConn’s Office of University Planning, Design and Construction, who is overseeing the project.
The panels are brought down six at a time in hexagons and each panel is rewrapped with new fabric and insulation. “The new fabric on the panels will make Gampel Pavilion much brighter for games,” Gaedt said. “The panels we are replacing not only started to flake, but they had also turned yellow. With the new LED lighting system we have in here and the new panels, the building is going to look terrific.”
Photo and Video Credit: UConn
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