'From Home Games to Home-Court Advantage:' Oklahoma Breaks Ground on New Arena District

NORMAN — Bennie Owen is one of Oklahoma’s legendary football coaches, the progenitor of the OU monster, the man responsible for the vision of a football stadium that still bears his name and more than 100 years later is known as “The Palace on the Prairie.”

On Tuesday, OU President Joseph Harroz Jr. invoked Owen when speaking ahead of the groundbreaking for the Rock Creek Entertainment District, the centerpiece of which will be an arena that will serve as home to Sooners’ men’s and women’s basketball as well as women’s gymnastics.

“Bennie’s line was, ‘You either go forward or go backward. There is no standing still,’ ” Harroz said. "And plenty of folks go backward, but there is no standing still. I think the big question for all of us, if we think about the history of Norman, the history of the university, and those two being fully intertwined, is, have we created a moment and are we deserving of that moment? Did we stand idly by, did we fall back or did we go forward?"

On a sunny day under a tent near 24th Avenue Northwest and Radius Way, OU athletic director Roger Denny sat with men’s basketball coach Porter Moser and women’s basketball coach Jennie Baranczyk.

Moser looked past the speakers to the field beyond, where the arena will eventually sit.

“You have to transition from having home games to having home-court advantage,” Moser said. “I just found myself staring at that picture and envisioning the passion of what that’s gonna mean. It’s going to be a venue like no other in this country.”

The arena is expected to open “sometime during the 2028-29 season,” according to Rainier Companies CEO Danny Lovell.

The Rainier Companies is a real estate investment firm heavily involved in the project.

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Moser and Baranczyk said they were unaware of the expected timeline before being told of Lovell’s comments.

“Now that we get to this point is when I greedy,” Denny said. “Now’s when we really want to start hitting the gas and getting in here.

“So it’s as soon as possible. If Danny says 2028-29, then that’s where it is, but we’re gonna ask him every time — ’Can we go any sooner?’”

After a series of speakers, Harroz joined a group of elected officials and business leeaders involved in the project for the groundbreaking ceremony.

Like the project, which has withstood legal challenges and funding questions along the way, the groundbreaking didn’t go off without a hitch.

Streamer cannons that were set to go off when the first shovels of sand were moved fired off a few moments late.

Soon after, Baranczyk, Denny and Moser grabbed golden shovels and moved some sand of their own.

Formal construction of the district and arena is set to begin May 19.

When Baranczyk and Moser came aboard, within days of each other in April 2021, the arena project was one of the main selling points of the job.

The timeline has shifted significantly, but with construction beginning, the new arena and entertainment district is becoming real.

“Anytime when you’re having a journey like this, there’s times of frustration,” Moser said. “But knowing that all the people that were behind it, and the passion of the people behind it, there was never like, ‘It’s not gonna happen.’ There was obviously some frustrating roadblocks along the way. But the people that were behind this, the community, the city of Norman, that energy and passion moving there was always, like, ‘This is going to happen.’ ”

Baranczyk has worked to build up the energy behind women’s basketball and has spoken extensively about what a new arena will do for the program.

She’s also spent plenty of time in the area of the new arena, as her kids often have sporting events at the Young Family Athletic Center across the street.

“I’ve seen this area grow already in just the short time we’ve lived here,” Baranczyk said. “Obviously this is huge for Norman first, and then for our team and our program second. For the university, I think it’s awesome to be able to really be right off the interstate, be able to have fans come from the city, and obviously we want students. We know students will come out here, they come to Target all the time. … Really excited for the development of what we’re doing here.”

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