Besides athletic events, the new building will host concerts, plays, commencements, convocations, lectures, NCAA playoffs, and various other cultural activities, perhaps as many as 125 events annually. Thus, the events center will become a focal point for the entire student body. With a place to go on weekends for concerts and other events, USC will become less of a commuter campus. While a final decision on the site has not been made, current plans call for locating the facility on the southeast corner of Jefferson Boulevard and Figueroa Street, right next to the USC campus, on the site of a current university parking lot. It will seat 12,000 fans and also contain offices and locker rooms for basketball and volleyball.
Plans also call for the events center to include retail space.
We will continue planning and designing the facility as we are raising funds. We have a lot of work ahead of us, but we plan to have the project completed in just over two years. It is important to note that the athletic department will raise 100 percent of the funds needed to build the events center. This, of course, will be an enormous undertaking. Copyright 2001, Student Advantage, Inc. and the University of Southern California.