Building an “Inviting Beacon” on Campus at Fairfield University

Building a new experience on campus for your student-athletes and fans will obviously include the strategic and intentional inclusion of LED video displays. Call us partial to the idea that LED technology enhances the overall experience, but then listen to our customers repeat the same information. It turns out it’s not just us that believe this statement!

In a recent podcast episode, we heard from Zach Dayton, deputy athletic director at Fairfield University. He shared details of how they took on the challenge of creating the best venue for their campus and community, an undertaking that included Daktronics displays.

Here’s what Zach said about their new arena project:

The planning process is a huge team effort between athletics, senior administration, coaches and facilities team - it’s really an impressive team we have here. We had Alumni Hall on campus, an older gym that was super loud and fun, and it held about 2,500 people. Then we moved to a modern building off campus that was much larger – the full capacity was about 9,000. Both venues worked really well, but our fans preferred to come on campus.

On campus, we had a lot of success in our old venue and it was fun that alumni and fans enjoyed the venue and the memories. We had some great crowds years and years ago, and everybody wanted that back. The calling was to bring the Red Sea back, which is our student section name.

In talking to people that are passionate about our athletics programs, regardless of venue, they want to watch our athletic teams on campus because they're passionate about Fairfield University. They got their degree here. They met lifelong friends on this campus and had great times on this campus. They want to come back and watch their sports on this campus.

So, the direction was to build a modern venue that would be a centerpiece. The new Leo D. Mahoney Arena is centralized, the first thing you see when you drive in the front entrance. And it’s become everyone’s centerpiece for school spirit. It is a community gathering place. It’s for basketball and volleyball games, but also for academic gatherings, concerts and university-wide events – it’s bigger than sports, but sports are a mainstay in the building.

Our institution needed a space of this size and this scope to move forward and it’s been an incredible experience to be a part of.

Zach added some insight to their research phase:

Research was critical and many of us on campus visited several venues for many different reasons. We went to a lot of our peers, a lot of our aspiring peers, some from the Big East and Big Ten. We visited all of these venues and picked a lot of different components that we thought our fans would enjoy – things that would really resonate with our fans and alumni.

We have three or four different versions of premium seating in the venue and a 3,500-seat arena, which I think is really cool and certainly helps us market tickets. And other items we pulled from touring other venues were the ribbon boards and, of course, the configuration of our centerhung.

We went to every really good basketball environment in the Northeast and pulled a lot of elements from those where we noticed what was within our scope and what can be done with the fan experience side that can complement a really modern building.

Zach then spoke about the video technology at the arena:

We were fully operational for our first game at the arena. We have video boards that are dynamic products at other outdoor venues on our campus, so we were fluent in digitized Daktronics technology and understood the power of the visual displays for quite a while. When it comes to implementing the display into our new arena, I credit our architects and our design firm.

Mahoney Arena is built on the same footprint of Alumni Hall, but it is now an East-West configuration which allowed us to expand the concourse a bit. It’s a concise footprint but the venue is tall and the Daktronics elements are nicely wrapped into the venue so that every fan has a really, really good view.

Also, what is really cool, is there’s a ton of glass in this building, the club level has a large glass façade that overlooks campus with glass on the East and West sides. So, with our Daktronics assets wrapped into the building really well, at night, this place glows! And it’s just a beacon in the center of campus that is inviting for students.

It really was a great opportunity to hear from Zach and the great things they are doing at Fairfield University. I mean, a beacon in the center of campus! It’s amazing what can be accomplished when planning and working together to create something new on campus.

To hear more details from Zach, check out the full podcast episode.

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