Norfolk Scope
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| Location | 201 East Brambleton Avenue Norfolk, VA 23510 |
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| Owner | City of Norfolk |
| Operator | City of Norfolk |
| Capacity |
Ice hockey: 8,701 Basketball: 10,253 Concerts: 13,800 |
| Construction | |
| Broke ground | June 6, 1968 |
| Opened | November 12, 1971 |
| Construction cost |
$35 million ($207 million in 2017 dollars) $14.5 million (upgrades since 2003) |
| Architect |
Pier Luigi Nervi Williams and Tazewell |
| Structural engineer | Fraioli-Blum-Yesselman |
| General contractor | Daniel Construction Co. |
| Tenants | |
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Virginia Squires (ABA) (1971–1976) Old Dominion Monarchs (NCAA) (full time 1977–1990, part time 1971–2002) Hampton Roads Admirals (ECHL) (1989–2000) Norfolk Nighthawks (AF2) (2000–2003) Norfolk Admirals (AHL) (2000–2015) Norfolk SharX (MISL) (2011–2012) Norfolk Admirals (ECHL) (2015–present) |
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Norfolk Scope is a cultural, entertainment, convention and sports complex in Norfolk, Virginia, comprising an 11,000-person arena, a 2,500-person theater known as Chrysler Hall, a 10,000 square foot-exhibition hall and a 600-car parking garage.
The arena was designed by Italian architect/engineer Pier Luigi Nervi in conjunction with the (now defunct) local firm Williams and Tazewell, which designed the entire complex. Nervi's design for the arena's reinforced concrete dome derived from the PalaLottomatica and the much smaller Palazzetto dello Sport, which were built in the 1950s for the 1960 Summer Olympics in Rome.
Construction on Scope began in June 1968 at the northern perimeter of Norfolk's downtown and was completed in 1971 at a cost of $35 million. Federal funds covered $23 million of the cost, and when it opened formally on November 12, 1971, the structure was the second-largest public complex in Virginia, behind only the Pentagon.
Featuring the world's largest reinforced thinshell concrete dome (though eclipsed by the Seattle Seattle Kingdome from 1972 to 2000), Scope won the Virginia Society of the American Institute of Architects Test of Time award in 2003. Wes Lewis, director of Old Dominion University's civil engineering technology program, called it "a beautiful marrying of art and engineering." Noted architectural critic James Howard Kunstler described the design as looking like "yesterday's tomorrow."
The name "Scope", a contraction of kaleidoscope, emphasizes the venue's re-configurability. The facility logo (right), which features a multi-colored, abstracted kaleidoscope image, was designed by Raymond Loewy's firm Loewy/Snaith of New York.
After watching the 1960 Rome Summer Olympics on television, and seeing the Palazzo and Palazzetto dello Sport, Brad Tazewell and Jim Williams, two Norfolk architects, solicited U.S. Sen. A. Willis Robertson, father of Pat Robertson, to build a sports complex in Norfolk. Subsequently, President Lyndon B. Johnson asked Robertson to support federal funding for a multimillion-dollar cultural center in Colorado and Robertson said he would if Johnson would support one in Norfolk. Williams and Tazewell was subsequently commissioned; they in turn commissioned Nervi.
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