Centennial Authority committee picks new design firm for PNC Arena renovation

Chip Alexander
·2 min read

The Centennial Authority has chosen a new design team it would like to have pick up the reins on the major renovation and enhancement of PNC Arena.

The authority’s building and construction committee, after sitting through three presentations Thursday, unanimously voted to choose Gensler Sports and Raleigh-based LS3P as its team. The authority, which owns the 25-year-old arena, will hold a full board meeting next week to vote and approve Gensler and LS3P as the top choice.

“It sounds like we’ve made the right choice and everybody is ready to hit the ground running,” authority chairman Philip Isley said Thursday. “From there, I think all good things are going to continue to happen in the building.”

The authority committee listened to one-hour bids from: Gensler/LS3P, Perkins & Will/HH Architects and Generator Studios/City Collective.

Perkins & Will, which is handling the Charlotte Hornets’ renovation of the Spectrum Center, was voted second by the committee.

In January, the authority fired HOK/Ratio, the architecture firm it had been working with for the past 10 years on proposed arena renovations, then made a public request for new architects.

Isley said then that the authority had been assured by project manager CAA ICON that switching architects would not delay the renovations, currently scheduled to take place in a three-year window over the summers of 2025, 2026 and 2027.

The arena, which opened in 1999, hosts the Carolina Hurricanes and N.C. State men’s basketball, major concerts and events.

“This arena could be so much more than it has been, and it will be,” committee chairman Doyle Parrish said Thursday. “We’re challenged by the fact we’ve got a lot of work to do. We are changing horses in midstream. But we can get moving pretty quickly.”

Gensler Sports has been involved in several major projects including New York’s Citi Field and the Crypto.com Arena in Los Angeles, and LS3P with the Clemson Memorial Stadium and the school’s Littlejohn Coliseum renovations.

Gensler/LS3P teamed up on the N.C. Department of Health and Human Services project.

The authority continues to work through finalizing an arena development agreement that the authority reached in August 2023 with Hurricanes owner Tom Dundon, a prerequisite for Raleigh and Wake County to release the $300 million in renovation funding from the tourism-tax fund.