USF Sun Dome
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| Location | Bull Run Dr Tampa, Florida 33620 |
|---|---|
| Owner | University of South Florida |
| Operator | Global Spectrum |
| Capacity | 10,411 |
| Surface | QuickLock Portable Floor (northern hard maple) |
| Construction | |
| Broke ground | 1977 |
| Opened | November 29, 1980 |
| Renovated | 1993, 2000, 2011 |
| Construction cost | $12 million ($34.9 million in 2017 dollars) |
| Architect | Barger + Dean Architects, Inc. Populous (renovation) |
| Tenants | |
| South Florida Bulls (Basketball & volleyball) |
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USF Sun Dome is a 55,000-square-foot (5,100 m2) multi-purpose facility on the campus of the University of South Florida in Tampa, Florida. It was built, starting in 1977 and was completed on November 29, 1980.
It is located on the southeastern side of campus, and is home to the men's and women's basketball and volleyball teams.
The Sun Dome is a multi-purpose facility, hosting approximately 300 different events each year, including sporting events, concerts, home and garden shows, trade shows, religious services and conventions, ethnic festivals, rodeos, bull riding competitions, youth sports camps, wrestling, boxing, taekwondo tournaments, gymnastics and cheerleading competitions, commencement ceremonies, lectures and political rallies among other corporate, community and university events.
Before the Sun Dome, USF's indoor sports 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, and the Expo Hall at the Florida State Fairgrounds.
By 1975, both the University of South Florida and the University of Florida (UF) 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 USF's 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 around the main arena while the Sun Dome as originally built did not. These were added in later expansions.
The $12 million Sun Dome broke ground in November 1977 on formerly open land on the southeast side of campus not far from 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 - the Sun Dome in November and the O'Connell Center in December.
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