Utah sports fans finally have a clearer picture as to what the Delta Center will look like during the 2025-26 season.
Smith Entertainment Group released details on its renovation plans Wednesday morning. The goal is to improve sight lines for hockey while maintaining them for basketball. The first phase of construction will focus on the lower bowl.
Larry Lippold, the architect heading the project, said basketball spectators won’t notice a change, but hockey fans will.
“It’s definitely unique in the sense that most of these two-sport buildings are hockey first and then basketball,” Lippold said. “In this case, we’re really maintaining both sports first, equally.”
SEG and its associates in this project have designed a retractable seating system that will have a range of 12 feet to adjust between the two sports. It will also allow for additional seating behind the two end zones and around the event tunnels on the north and south sides of the lower bowl.
The retractable system will consist of 29 rows of seats for basketball, ranging 28 feet from the main concourse to the court behind each baseline. It will replace the current seating behind the end zones, much of which was unusable for hockey.
SEG will also install a new ice floor slab, raising the floor 2 feet and adding approximately 12 feet at each end of the playing surface. This is meant to improve sight lines along the boards, in the corners and throughout the upper and lower bowls.
When all phases of construction are complete, the seating capacity for hockey will increase from 11,131 (plus 4,889 obstructed-view seats) to approximately 17,000. Basketball capacity will jump from 18,206 to nearly 19,000.
Other updates will include:
- A 450-stall parking structure, which will not be completed during this phase of construction
- A 12% increase to bathroom capacities
- New premium spaces on Level 1
- Four new dehumidifiers
Future renovation plans include:
- Remodeling the upper bowl to improve sight lines
- Implementing an east-facing main entrance and plaza
- Redesigning the existing plaza and concourses
The Delta Center renovation is the first step in a revitalization plan for downtown Salt Lake City, which SEG says will reconnect the east and west sides of the city, increase visitation, bolster existing cultural assets and improve the downtown experience overall.
“By taking such significant steps to transform Delta Center into a world-class facility for both professional basketball and hockey, the Jazz and Utah’s NHL team will become anchors of downtown Salt Lake City for decades to come,” said SEG co-founders and owners of the Delta Center, Ryan and Ashley Smith, in a press release.
When will Delta Center renovations be completed?
These renovations can only be done during the NHL and NBA offseasons. Thankfully for SEG, the two leagues’ seasons overlap almost entirely, meaning they can take the summers to work on this project.
“Our goal is that we will have the work that we anticipate to do this year ... done and we’ll be ready to open up the new seasons.”
— Utah Jazz president Jim Olson
“Our goal is that we will have the work that we anticipate to do this year ... done and we’ll be ready to open up the new seasons,” said Jazz president Jim Olson.
The project as a whole is intended to take three summers to complete, though Olson said the plans for the second and third summers are not fully complete at this point in time, so things may change.
In the event that renovations run longer than intended during any of the summers, the two leagues would likely schedule Utah’s teams to begin their seasons on extended road trips — just like the New York Islanders did in 2021-22.