A week after project managers revealed to Cumberland County commissioners that the Crown Event Center would take longer to complete and cost far more than expected, the project team has come up with a redesign that will reduce costs but potentially take four months longer to complete — and have fewer building components.
The event center, a large theater and entertainment facility planned for downtown Fayetteville, is now expected to cost $145 million and be completed by April 2027, project managers told the Cumberland County Board of Commissioners’ Crown Event Center Committee at the committee’s meeting Tuesday.
Citing unexpectedly high supply and labor costs and design complexity issues, the project team told the committee last week the event center would cost almost $32 million more than expected and be completed in December 2026, as opposed to late 2025.
The Crown Event Center is set to replace the Crown Theatre and Crown Arena at the Crown Complex on Coliseum Drive. Those buildings, constructed in the late 1960s, don’t comply with the Americans with Disabilities Act; the county faces a deadline of Oct. 31, 2025, to replace them with an ADA-compliant facility.
County commissioners on the committee, frustrated over not being told sooner about the design changes, voted last week to request the project team to come up with a redesign within a week that would limit costs to $145 million — which they accomplished — though some adjustments now have to be made.
The design has been reconfigured to optimize space and efficiency, project representatives said, while still preserving key features like luxury boxes, VIP lounges and approximately 3,000 seats. The changes have cut almost 15,000 square feet from the building, originally 131,000 square feet, project architect Bill Koonz said.
“You see a lot of the same functionality and a lot of the same aesthetic treatment to the building that we had in the previous iteration,” Koonz said. “One of the major aids in reducing square footage was moving the entrance and really consolidating the lobby.
Some components have also been removed or adjusted in the redesign, including:
Matt DeSilver, an area manager for MBP Carolinas, which is overseeing the project’s development for the county, said the April 2027 date is a cautious estimate. DeSilver said the construction documents allow for the construction process to start in early 2025.
“The project completion date is a conservative number,” DeSilver said. “We are continuing to work to see ways that we can reduce that number and push that left. There's opportunities there, but we did not want to bring you a number or a date that we’re not going to be able to meet.”
Overall, commissioners seemed satisfied with the project team’s efforts to come up with a quick redesign.
“We appreciate all the hard work,” Commissioner Jimmy Keefe said. “It was a tough meeting, but I believe this was good.”
“I think we're moving in the right direction,” Commissioner Glenn Adams said.
Koonz said the redesign cost will not go up from $145 million, and the project designers have allowed some “wiggle room” for minor changes and adjustments in the future.
“There's a lot of refinement to be had and we'll be working over the next couple of weeks, once we move forward, to refine that aesthetic and get us back to something that we’re all really happy with,” Koonz said.
Contact Evey Weisblat at cityviewnc.com or 216-527-3608.
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