The Roca Team will baptize its sublime new arena this Sunday in Monaco
Gone are the plastic armchairs, plastered walls and white barriers. The Gaston-Médécin room, built in 1985 and still intact eighties gets a makeover. It took at least that to raise her to the level of the national basketball team, of which she is the lair.
For a few weeks, many have been wondering what was going on in the heart of the Louis II stadium where the major maneuvers were transferred to transform the room between two championship seasons.
Presented to the press for the first time, the completely redesigned enclosure will be unveiled to the public this Sunday, for the match at 5 p.m. between the Roca Team and Roanne. The opportunity to discover a very successful arena all in light beech, punctuated with glass railings that count “a little less than 4,600 places”, specifies Patrice Cellario, adviser to the government-Minister of the Interior, happy to see this work completed in the allotted time.
Thirteen weeks of work
Indeed, the tour de force was to keep the schedule fixed in thirteen weeks of construction between the last match played on June 23 and that scheduled for October 2 on the Monegasque floor.
In addition to aesthetics and comfort, the need for this work was above all legal. By joining the EuroLeague championship in 2020, the Monegasque club had to respect the regulations and have structures compatible with the specifications of competing European clubs. In particular by increasing the capacity of spectators in their room.
The thing was not easy for an aging enclosure and included in the mastodon that is the Louis II stadium solicited all year round.
So we had to think about this factory-built room project (read elsewhere) which only remained has been adapted to the current setting to reduce work times during the summer months.
Efficient renovation
Previously, the floor had been repainted, rows of armchairs provisionally added. This time, the room’s capacity was almost doubled.
Without the possibility of pushing the walls, space was gained by modifying the slopes of the stands and adding seats in the bends between the stands. An aesthetic point that standardizes the arena and its 3,600 armchairs in light wood, with a small white cushion and engraving on the backrest.
The comfort of the seat has been well thought out, the visibility on the ground too. The rows are still a little narrow. A constraint which should on the other hand give more electricity to the atmosphere on the evenings of games at stake. The main lodge has remained in its place, like the two rows of padded red armchairs – reserved for VIPs – at the edge of the field.
The topography of the Monegasque territory means that the Principality should never have an NBA-style arena to house its national basketball team. But this transfiguration of the existing does the job to gain in comfort and modernity. “It’s a double feat”, believes Patrice Cellario, “to design a transformation of this magnitude in an occupied place through design and prefabrication work. All in an excessively reduced operating time for the Roca Team to carry out its sporting season ».
An envelope of 14 million euros has been invested in this project, punctured in the 355 million euros intended to completely renovate the Louis II. In the summer of 2023, the auditorium’s parquet floor will in turn undergo a complete facelift.
Patrice Cellario clarified, with a smile, while leading the visit to the new Gaston-Médécin room, “we did not remove the roof of the room to do the work”. Clearly, the configuration of the space, on the ground floor of the Louis II stadium, imposes a constraint on the site to evacuate the old equipment and accommodate the new structures there. From the end of June, bulldozers took the place of basketball players in the arena. Demolition machinery chosen “light” so as not to hit the floor and gradually nibble at the old structure.
Exposed, the foundations were then able to accommodate a metal frame previously designated in the factory to stick to the sides of the four sides of the room. And everything was assembled on site like a giant Meccano, “with the difficulties of transport and integration into the building”, specifies the adviser of the government-Minister of the Interior. The case was played to the millimeter in particular to install the two side stands with mezzanine which border the parquet.
Once this stage was completed, the laying of the bleachers and seats could start at the end of the summer. There too, the beech spans and armchairs were all machined upstream, dismantled and then reassembled in Monaco. A race against time to welcome the public, this Sunday, in a transformed enclosure.