One morning in May 2014, Morgan O’Brien, president and CEO of Peoples Natural Gas, had breakfast at the diner Pamela’s with Robert Morris men’s basketball coach Andy Toole and Matthew Millet, the university’s vice president for development and institutional advancement.
They spoke of a two-fold vision for the future of Colonial athletics. The first, according to O’Brien, was to construct a multipurpose, multisport arena to replace Sewall Center, and the second was to figure out how to keep Toole at Robert Morris for a long, long time.
On Thursday, Robert Morris president Chris Howard revealed the next step on both fronts. The university will break ground in July on the UPMC Events Center, part of a $50 million, 20-year collaboration between the university and UPMC. The basketball and volleyball teams will play on People’s Court, designed to seat 4,000-plus. Plans also include a student recreation and fitness center.
And, on the staffing side of things, Toole signed a one-year contract extension — his third extension in four years — that will keep him at Robert Morris through the 2020-21 season.
“Robert Morris has a history of being pragmatically optimistic or optimistically pragmatic,” Howard said in a news conference Thursday. “You can let that roll around in your head for a second. That means we know how to take smart chances and make deals in a calculated, savvy way.”
Toole, 36, has a 126-100 record in seven seasons at Robert Morris. He led the Colonials to Northeast Conference regular-season titles in 2013 and 2014 and to the NCAA tournament in 2015.
Sewall Center will close at the end of June, and the 140,000-square foot UPMC Events Center is scheduled to open January 2019. In the meantime, the men’s basketball team will play home games at PPG Paints Arena. The volleyball and women’s basketball will play at the North Athletic Complex on campus, a student recreation center expected to open next fall.
“The UPMC Events Center will contribute to every facet of all of our programs, from recruiting to practice to preparation and a dynamic game-day experience,” Toole said. “There’s really no words to explain how valuable a facility like this will be.”
Howard called the UPMC Events Center “a transformational facility that will fuel our rising reputation in the Pittsburgh region and nationwide” and thanked the project’s donors and sponsors for their support. He told the story of a recent chance meeting with Louisville men’s basketball coach Rick Pitino while at a conference for the Young Presidents Association. Howard said Pitino and Louisville should come by for a game after the new arena is built.
“Well that didn’t work out too well for my friend John [Calipari],” Pitino replied, according to Howard, referencing Kentucky’s first-round loss against Robert Morris in the 2013 NIT.
Jeffrey Romoff, president and CEO of UPMC, said the “comprehensive, strategic collaboration” between Robert Morris and UPMC “is a visionary move to drive the airport corridor.”
“Several years ago, the President of the United States, President [Barack] Obama, came to Pittsburgh and commented that he was really pleased to see that where the smokestack industries had their difficulties, the ‘meds and eds’ had, in fact, emerged,” Romoff said.
“What the President didn’t say and what we know today more than ever,” he added, “is the spirit of Western Pennsylvania is its sports. That was there with the smokestack industries. That will be there after the meds and eds. … This collaboration, the UPMC Events Center, captures all three prongs.”
Stephen J. Nesbitt: snesbitt@post-gazette.com and Twitter @stephenjnesbitt.
First Published: January 20, 2017, 3:40 a.m.
