End of era: The Nest, Sacramento State’s 69-year-old gym, will give way to new facility

For all of the layers of new dark green paint that has been applied to the walls and ceilings of late, none of it can cover up the real issue for Sacramento State’s gymnasium. Not an arena, a gym.

It’s a polished eye-sore for a campus big on image, perception and reputation.

All that paint and gloss is, “like putting lipstick on a pig,” school President Luke Wood told The Sacramento Bee during halftime of Tuesday night’s men’s basketball home opener at the cozy, if not sorely outdated, venue known as The Nest.

Wood said Tuesday that there was a plan in motion to play basketball and other indoor sports elsewhere on campus starting next fall, meaning this winter will be the slow curtain drop on a cramped setting that rated as the most meager and cramped in all of NCAA Division I.

On Wednesday, Sacramento State made it official, announcing that funding has been approved to create an events center just beyond Hornet Stadium in The Well fitness and health facility. The Board of Directors for the nonprofit that runs The Well and Sac State’s University Union hall unanimously approved a resolution to provide up to $5.2 million from reserves for the project, which includes seating that would far exceed The Nest’s 1,012-person capacity. On Nov. 9, Sacramento State’s governing body Associated Students Inc. passed a resolution in favor of the project, which followed Wood sending a letter with his proposal.

When Wood assumed his role in July at the helm of Sacramento State, his alma mater, he took a peek inside The Nest. He was not impressed. Imagine, then, what scores of basketball recruits experienced over the decades.

The Nest opened in 1955 and has generally looked the part, even with all the new paint and a new scoreboard with the backdrop of a spirited band. The Nest has hosted everything from Hornet boxing All-Americans to Sacramento State’s 1962 NCAA Division II national championship runner-up squad to a Jimi Hendrix show in 1968 to scores of volleyball and gymnastics conference championships.

Wood peered into The Nest some 20 years after he last saw it and flinched.

“I walked in and I was expecting to see something different,” Wood said. “They’ve done a nice job of making it look a little better, but I was, ‘Oh my gosh!’ It hasn’t changed. That’s not good for our students.”

Wood said roll-out seats will be used in The Well to accommodate NCAA games. New lighting, scoreboards, video boards and a public address system will be installed. It’ll be a new era to match the ambition of the volleyball, gymnastics and men and women’s basketball programs that aspire to win conference championships. Those sports will be housed in The Well.

“It’s time,” Hornets athletic director Mark Orr said Tuesday night. “We need something better and I like President Wood’s vision.”

‘It’s time for something different’

Sacramento State has tried for decades to get an on-campus arena built, or even talked about seriously. What the university has not had, unlike other colleges dotted across the West Coast, was deep-pocketed donors to jump-start such a project that could have cost upwards of $100 million.

So Wood thought outside the box while looking within his own campus.

“The whole point is to think differently,” he said. “I say this to people all the time. We’re the only public university in the state capital, the fifth largest economy in the world, and we have to act like it, and we’re playing in a gym that’s not even better than my high school gym (at McCloud in Siskiyou County), and I went to a school with 100 kids. I’m serious. Our gym was better than this gym.

“So we know we’ve got to do better. We can’t have students that we’re recruiting come in here and be underwhelmed with what they see. It’s got a lot of character. There’s a lot of memories in here, and it’s not going any place, but it’s time for something different.”

Women’s basketball won a Big Sky Conference championship last season, its first, and gymnastics and volleyball have combined to win 20 conference titles in the last 25 years. Men’s basketball appears to be on an upward cycle under second-year coach David Patrick, and a fresh venue will help all of those programs continue their climb, Wood and Orr said.

“They need to be in a better facility and we can do that without spending $95 million to build an arena,” Wood said. “We can spend 5-and-a-half million and be there next year.”

Although the intent is to have student-athletes come to Sacramento State to earn a degree, they also want to play sports on scholarship. Competing in a facility that’s more on par with rival programs is long overdue, Wood said. Beyond that, Wood said image can be a powerful thing.

“Athletics are the front door to the university, right?” Wood said. “It impacts how students want to apply here, whether or not they want to be here. It impacts how the community thinks about us. It impacts people who want to donate and support. So think about all the great things we do academically and, most people, their first entry point to that is through football, basketball and other revenue-generating sports.

“We have got to make sure that we’re in facilities that give dignity to the level of commitment that athletes are putting on the court or on the field.”