Jackson-Madison County Schools acquired Oman Arena from the City of Jackson earlier this year for the price of $1.
While some members of the Madison County Commission – the funding body for JMCSS – had reservations about the purchase because of the age of the arena and potential drains maintaining it could be on county funds, JMCSS leadership plans to not let that happen.
During the JMCSS Board retreat on Dec. 10 that was held at Oman Arena, Superintendent Marlon King and his leadership team took the board members and others assembled through the arena and outlined a number of plans they have for the building.
Ricky Catlett, the deputy superintendent of operations for JMCSS, laid out a few of the hopes and dreams for the former municipal stadium that has a history of being used for different events.
Those events include concerts, NAIA basketball tournaments, rodeos and Lane College basketball games.
He also stated while these are initial plans, there will be more meetings early in 2023 to discuss plans, options and ideas that could alter some of the plans.
A new roof and HVAC system are both needed for the facility, and those are both near the top of the priority list no matter what happens with the arena.
After that, the main part of the arena will have renovations that will take out the lower bowl of seating courtside to make way for more technologically advanced seating.
“We’re going to take these seats out here on the floor and install a few rows of seats that can be pulled out for seating if they’re needed or they can be pushed back and folded if they’re needed for something else,” Catlett said. “Because we envision a multiuse facility for this room.
“If you want to have concerts or something else here, we plan to make infrastructural changes to the building to allow that to happen. But if someone else wants to have some kind of production or presentation that requires more space that this seating isn’t as necessary – or maybe a meet-and-greet type of gathering, then these seats can be moved out of the way to allow for more space for those to happen.”
The facility is planned to be used by JMCSS for big productions by students at different schools or be available for rent as a possible source of revenue for the school system.
But Catlett also discussed a few possible changes to the concourse that would provide for different kinds of concession stands throughout the area, which essentially makes a circle around the arena.
“Think something like they have at the FedExForum,” Catlett said. “You go to a concert or a Grizzlies game there, and there are different concession stands with food from different restaurants … we’re thinking possibly something like that on a smaller scale for this facility.”
The main entrance to the arena will be changed to the side facing east toward the eventual site planned for the Jackson Central-Merry football stadium, where the remnants of a track is now around a football practice field adjacent to both the Oman parking lot and the building formerly known as Madison Academic and Jackson High School.
“Once the stadium is built, we’d like to tie the facilities in together so we have a nice entrance coming into the arena facing the stadium,” Catlett said.
Any plans that are made don’t have a lot of time to be completed. Since ESSER funds are used to fund much of the project, those funds have to be spent by September of 2024.
“We don’t have a lot of time, so we want to get started on this pretty quickly early next year,” Catlett said.
Brandon Shields, brandon@jacksonpost.news
I assume that “Lane College” PAYS for using this taxpayer-owned building since they are the only private college that uses it!