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Yuengling Center - Live Music Venue in Tampa

Yuengling Center (formerly the USF Sun Dome) is an indoor arena on the main campus of the University of South Florida (USF) in Tampa, Florida, United States. Construction began in November 1977, and it opened in November 1980.

Venue
Yuengling Center
Town
Tampa, US
Capacity
10,411

Yuengling Center (formerly the USF Sun Dome) is an indoor arena on the main campus of the University of South Florida (USF) in Tampa, Florida, United States. Construction began in November 1977, and it opened in November 1980. The arena serves as the home venue for several University of South Florida athletic programs, including the men's and women's basketball teams. With 10,500 seats (including over 3,500 in the student section), it is the third-largest basketball arena by capacity in the American Conference. Before the Yuengling Center, USF's basketball teams played at various locations on and off campus. The basketball teams first played at Curtis Hixon Hall in downtown Tampa, and later split their home schedule between Curtis Hixon Hall, the Bayfront Center in St. Petersburg, Expo Hall at the Florida State Fairgrounds, and the USF Gymnasium on campus, among others. By 1975, both the University of South Florida and the University of Florida in Gainesville had decided to build new on-campus indoor sports facilities. The two schools pooled their resources and shared the cost of a basic arena design to stretch limited state funding. The "core unit" of the Sun Dome and UF's O'Connell Center were nearly identical, and they each featured a flexible, inflatable roof made of Teflon and supported by a system of blowers. However, the O'Connell Center included facilities for other sports (namely gymnastics, volleyball, swimming and diving) around the main arena, while the Sun Dome as originally built did not, though it later added The Corral for the women's volleyball team after a renovation in 1995. The $12 million Sun Dome broke ground in November 1977 on formerly open land on the southeast side of campus near Fowler Avenue. Construction was slowed on both the Sun Dome and the O'Connell Center when cracks appeared in precast concrete support beams. The problems were eventually fixed, and the sister facilities were completed within a few weeks of each other in late 1980 -