The new Bucks arena now has seats. Some, at least, with many more going in fast.
The first eight seats of the Wisconsin Entertainment and Sports Center were installed on Tuesday, marking what the team called a major milestone for the project, as it nears completion next fall. Six Bucks fans who have been season ticketholders since Milwaukee’s inaugural season in 1968 joined team president Peter Feigin and mascot Bango to become the first to sit in the new arena’s seats.
The eight seats that were put in on Tuesday were in Rows 20 and 21 of Section 116, numbers 17-20. They were the first of 9,625 seats that will be installed in the lower bowl, plus 5,830 in the upper bowl and another 636 on the suite level.
The vast majority of the seats in the new arena will be 20 or 21 inches wide, according to the team, and 854 mezzanine club seats in the lower bowl will have an embroidered Bucks logo stitched into the back of the chairs.
Over the course of construction, there will be 50-60 semis full of seats delivered to the new arena site, the Bucks say, with 700-750 seats installed each week. There will be retractable and telescopic seats in the new arena, which adjust to create six unique configurations depending on the event.
Born in Milwaukee but a product of Shorewood High School (go ‘Hounds!) and Northwestern University (go ‘Cats!), Jimmy never knew the schoolboy bliss of cheering for a winning football, basketball or baseball team. So he ditched being a fan in order to cover sports professionally - occasionally objectively, always passionately. He's lived in Chicago, New York and Dallas, but now resides again in his beloved Brew City and is an ardent attacker of the notorious Milwaukee Inferiority Complex.
After interning at print publications like Birds and Blooms (official motto: "America's #1 backyard birding and gardening magazine!"), Sports Illustrated (unofficial motto: "Subscribe and save up to 90% off the cover price!") and The Dallas Morning News (a newspaper!), Jimmy worked for web outlets like CBSSports.com, where he was a Packers beat reporter, and FOX Sports Wisconsin, where he managed digital content. He's a proponent and frequent user of em dashes, parenthetical asides, descriptive appositives and, really, anything that makes his sentences longer and more needlessly complex.
Jimmy appreciates references to late '90s Brewers and Bucks players and is the curator of the unofficial John Jaha Hall of Fame. He also enjoys running, biking and soccer, but isn't too annoying about them. He writes about sports - both mainstream and unconventional - and non-sports, including history, music, food, art and even golf (just kidding!), and welcomes reader suggestions for off-the-beaten-path story ideas.
