A peek at what's to come soon

Arena displaces 450,000-sq.ft. of land ;dean of Ag not worried
By Tim Sturtridge

The Save Mart Center has resulted in a loss of agricultural land, leaving the Ag department questioning the value of the land.

The sports arena has been erected on land donated to the university by local farmers. The land was purchased on behalf of the university when the campus moved in 1955.

“ At the time the land was donated it was very cheap,” said Earl Bowerman, chair of plant science. “Shaw Avenue was just a gravel road.”

The group of men that organized buying the land for the university did so because they wanted Fresno State to have an agricultural emphasis.

“ Whatever land is lost to development is gone for agriculture purposes,” Bowerman said. “It will never be replaced because it is all we have.”

Receiving compensation of any kind is a new concept for the department of agriculture. The first compensation paid to the department came with the expansion of Highway 168, when the farm lost 11 acres. Bartell said CalTrans paid because they needed more land for the right of way.

Fair compensation for the land lost has not been decided.

“ In terms of compensation,” said Daniel P. Bartell, dean of agricultural science and technology, “technically, the land lost will remain that way.”

Bartell said the loss of any land from the department is regrettable for the school of agriculture.

“ When you lose any acre of the farm what should the compensation be?” Bartell said, “[when you] have land that could be developed into something like the Save Mart Center the two values could be totally different.”

The next struggle for the school of agriculture centers on a 45-acre site between Barstow and Shaw Avenues, just east of the arena. A proposal is afoot for the construction of a hotel and leisure on land used for agriculture.

Farmland has been a topic of debate for years. Before the Grizzlies moved to its new stadium downtown there was talk of it moving to the farm.

“ East of Willow, where we have almonds, is where they talked about putting the baseball stadium before they put it downtown,” Bowerman said. “ The residents in that immediate area organized themselves and opposed it.”

Bartell explained that since those days proposals for using agriculture land for non farming projects has cleared up.

“ The understanding that is more recent, made around 1996 or 1997 by the university,” Bartell said. “Is that if somebody is wanting to use land for anything other than farming it has to go through a continual process. There’s a university committee that determines whether it would be a good use of land.”

Students at 'Sneak peek' give first impressions

By Maurice Ndole

Amazing, awesome, incredible, impressive, overwhelming, surprising, fulfilling—some of the words Fresno State students and alumni used to describe their experience of the sneak peek at the $100 million Save Mart Center arena on Friday.

Ray Lopes, Fresno State’s men’s basketball team coach, described the arena as a “special place.”

“ This is a special place. It’s a place for the entire city, the entire campus community, our entire athletic department. We are very, very proud of it,” Lopes said. “I know as a basketball coach, our team cannot wait to get in here and play.”

Lopes said the Red Wave would electrify the arena and give “The ‘Dogs” home-court advantage against opponents.

“ We are going to include 2,000 students in there, which will just increase the atmosphere. It will make the atmosphere that much more electric, that much more tougher for our opponents,” Lopes said. “That’s what you want: you want a home court advantage that’s going to be a hard place to play when [other] teams go on the road to play Fresno.”

Renaldo Major, Fresno State basketball player, said he hoped the arena would inspire the students to come to Fresno State. Major said he is looking forward to the coming basketball season at home because they had the whole crowd at the arena supporting them.

Stephen Tadlock, Save Mart Center general manager, said the day everybody’s been waiting for has arrived.

“ This day is important to us from the standpoint of getting staff here for the first time, get them trained, get them familiar with the building,” Tadlock said.

He also said the day was important for the students and the public because they got the opportunity to see the facilities and get to know their way around the arena.

Some students taking a tour at the arena agreed it was worth every penny spent. They said the luxury suites were among the most impressive parts of the arena.

The arena has a total of 40 luxury suites. The suites have two television sets, a wet bar, an under-the-counter refrigerator, icemaker and 14 red leather seats with black Fresno State Bulldogs logo imprints. They also have a set of couches, coffee tables, four club chairs and a private bathroom.

More than 20 students interviewed said they were impressed by the style and quality of the arena. Nicholas Barnett, a junior at Fresno State, could not hide his fascination about the arena and the luxury suites.

“ I love it. This an awesome place,” Barnett said. “I especially like the suites, but I wish I could afford it. I just can’t.” Barnett said.

He described the arena as the best place in the Central Valley to attract great events to Fresno and improve the quality of athletes coming to Fresno State.

Freshman Shatoya Payton described the arena as amazing.

“ It’s great. I like everything about this place,” Payton said. “They did a terrific job.”

Brian Lonteen, a Fresno State alumnus with a degree in construction management, gave the arena thumbs up and said the tour was fulfilling.

“ I’m pretty impressed by the structure of it, especially the VIP rooms. The restrooms are a pretty good size,” Lonteen said. “They pretty much lived up to what they say about the place.”

Fresno State Alumni’s Roy and Ann Kloose took the tour with their children, Lauren, 11, and Andrew, 8.

“ Everything is good in the locker rooms. It is very, very good,” Andrew said.

Fresno State teams’ locker rooms are equipped with three television sets, a set of leather couches, Internet access and 20 wooden cubicles with brass coat hangers. The shower walls are decorated with red-and-white tiles, which sport about 8-foot-high shower-heads.

“ It’s really cool,” Lauren said. “It’s way better than Selland Arena.”

“ I’m very impressed. Fresno deserves something like this,” Ann Kloose said.

“ They talked about an on-campus arena for a long time. I’m glad its here,” Roy Kloose said. “It was well worth the wait.”

Some students expressed opposition to the project. Graduate student Curtis Vincent said the construction of the Save Mart Center was not a good idea because the university already has traffic and parking problems, even without concerts. He also opposed the use of state land to advertise for corporations.

“ I don’t like the notion that state land is used for that sort of thing and they get to put their big name across it and it’s advertising for them, but the origin of their being able to do this is about my tax dollars,” Vincent said. “I think it should be the Fresno State Center, not The Save Mart Center. I think it’s unfortunate that we have to sell ourselves to a corporation in order for our athletes have a nice stadium.”

The Save Mart Center was funded through sponsors, bonds and fans’ contributions. Save Mart Supermarkets and Pepsi-Cola Bottling Co. contributed $40 million.

Vincent said athletics was wrongly valued higher than intelligence and integrity. He said the purpose of college is not sports and that academics should be first priority.

“ If you are not one of the very, very, very few people who make it to the world of professional athletics, you are going to have to fall back on your college degree,” he said. “And did you get the best college education you could get or were your tax dollars spent on getting you an arena?”

Vincent said civic buildings like the arena should be a reflection of the community effort and not the reflection of the highest bidder.

Liberal Studies major Tara Vargas said she had mixed feeling about the project. Vargas said she is forced to come to school half-an-hour early to get parking.

“ I’ve got mixed feelings about it,” Vargas said. “I think it’s a good idea, but I think that a lot of that space could have been used for more parking.”

The arena has created 5,200 parking spaces for more than 15,000 bulldog fans. The planners estimate that 10 percent of the fans will not arrive in cars. Arena-event parking will have 4,400 stalls in the North and East parking lots, with 800 more available in campus Lot V after 5 p.m. during game days. The planners are also considering opening up Bulldog Stadium parking lots when required.

Fresno State senior Sarah Ratliff said it was a shame the arena was built in honor of a basketball team that was in disgrace.

“ I think it’s a shame that we’ve built a facility for our basketball team to have their home games at when they are on academic probation and probation by the system for the next four years,” Ratliff said. “It’s a privilege for them to be honored to play in a new facility when they are in disgrace. I think they should have tried harder to deserve the privilege.”

Fresno States men’s basketball team has been involved in controversies stemming from the coach Jerry Tarkanian era. The university put the team under a self-imposed two-year probation for academic fraud. The NCAA later put the team on four-year probation.

The men and women’s basketball teams and the Fresno Falcons hockey team among others will use the Save Mart Center. The arena sits on 450,000 square feet of land. It has the capacity of hosting more than 15,000 people. It is the most expensive privately funded project in the history of the California State University system.

— Nathan Hathaway contributed to this report.