 Ground was broken last week for the year-long $33 million renovation of the Cumberland County Civic Center. Brian Naubloch spoke with Neil Pratt, chair of the Civic Center Board, about the philosophy behind the upcoming improvements. Neil, in the past there's been some criticism that the Civic Center may have been a part from the community, but you've made a lot of improvements to make it a part of the community. Could you talk about the philosophy behind that? Sure. Well, I will say from an architectural standpoint, this building was built in the mid-70s and it reflects the architecture of that time. As time has progressed, certainly the Civic Center, we felt, needed some aesthetic improvement as well as functional improvement. And so we had a number of neighborhood meetings, we had a number of meetings with business organizations, citizens, a number of community organizations to try to make sure that the Civic Center, with this renovation plan in mind, fit into the neighborhood in a way that made sense and that people were proud of. And not just from an aesthetic standpoint, from a business standpoint, we want it to be appealing, we want it to be inviting. And so we tried to accomplish all of those goals in this one design. And frankly, I think that the design folks did a terrific job in doing that with the use of the glass, expanding the space, not just the square footage, but how airy it will feel inside when you're here. And it's just going to be a much softer, a much more modern, a much more inviting facility after the renovation is done. And I frankly can't wait to see it. Robert Frank, the project principal for WBRC Architects talked about the planned improvements. The goal of our design approach has always been to update the facility to provide a better fan and user experience while in the facility. To that end, we have concentrated on adding amenities such as improved and expanded restroom facilities, particularly for women. Concessions in food service equipment and choices will be improved and the overall look and feel of the arena will be updated. And many new provisions for people with disabilities will be created. The plans include updated entries, as you can see on the walls around you and the screens that will ease access into the building and create a vibrant building, more friendly, and in the context of the Portland downtown. We're also increasing revenue enhancement areas with the addition of suites and club suites. Don Detlefs, the design architect from St. Com's regrets that he could not be here today, but to quote Don, in his words, our goal for Cumberland County is to enhance the facility so that it will continue its key role serving the areas, sports, and entertainment needs for many years to come. John Descentes, project manager for Chimbrough Construction, give a rundown of the construction timeline. The project schedule, just to give a quick outline of the overall timeline is we're looking to get started within the next few days and we're going to start in phase one. In phase one, we will coexist with the existing facility and the operations of the existing facility until early part of the winter and when we'll be completing that phase of the project. Phase two starts immediately after the hockey season is over and we'll conclude at the end of September for the balance of the project. And that's primarily the overall schedule. It's about 14 months from now, starting now and ending in September of 13. Neil Pratt is the chair of the Civic Center Board and a lot of the improvements will help attract larger acts, bigger acts, and acts that the larger community may be interested in seeing. Could you talk about that for a little bit? Sure, that's the whole premise and one of the reasons why it has taken quite a bit of time to get to this point. We wanted to make sure that we understood fully what the market was, not only the market from people in this region who would come to the Civic Center, but the event managers and the promoters and agents and people who actually booked the events. We went to them through our consultants and we wanted to know what is it about the Cumberland County Civic Center that we can improve that would make you want to bring more events here or events with more frequency here. And we did a tremendous amount of legwork on that and we got some great feedback, all of which has been incorporated into this design. And so based on that market research as well as a number of other components to that research, we concluded that it's viable, that we need to maintain and upgrade the facility in a way that makes it competitive. Otherwise, we truly believe that the cost of doing nothing was far greater than the cost of the renovation. As revenues died off, when events stopped coming, events and things were able to book fall off the cliff, costs of the older and aging facility increased, we're going to have to figure out how to deal with that problem. So on balance, the $33 million is a terrific solution. It's not perfect and a lot of people are going to say, why didn't they do this? Why didn't they do that? And jeez, if we had a $100 million budget, there'd be a lot of things we'd do that we may not have done now. But in terms of maximizing what the voters have allowed us, which is the $33 million bond, I think it's that we have done the best that we possibly could do in terms of getting bang for the buck. And I really do think that people are going to see a huge difference, not only, again, cosmetically, but functionally when they come after the renovation.