Syracuse shows off JMA Wireless Dome upgrade, will debut Miron Victory Court on Saturday

Syracuse, N.Y. — Syracuse University will open its new event space in the JMA Wireless Dome for the first time on Saturday, providing fans an indoor space to drink and gather before games and concerts.
The space, Miron Victory Court, sits in between the JMA Wireless Dome and the Barnes Center. Syracuse plans for it to be open for Dome games when it expects big attendance numbers, starting with Saturday’s football game against UConn.
“I think it’s an opportunity for you to get out of the mix of the stadium, step away a little bit,” Syracuse Vice President & Chief Facilities Officer Pete Sala said. “You can hang out, have a beer, have some nachos. You’ll be a part of it, hear the cheer and what’s going on but you’re out of the craziness.”
The 22,000 square-foot space will open two hours before the UConn game on Saturday. It can fit between 2,800 and 2,900 people. It is air-conditioned and heated.
The space offers customers a full bar, simple concession options like pretzels and nachos and a grab-and-go areas that will be stocked with food, beer and hard seltzers.
Indoor bathrooms that are part of the building but sit outside the event space will be available to patron before the space opens.
Sala said the school expects to utilize it for big-number basketball games, starting with the Orange’s game against Georgetown on Dec. 14.
“It’ll play off the attendance,” Sala said. “Maybe we open this for a big lacrosse game but we don’t really get into the third level. We won’t open this for the early basketball games. We’ll probably open it for the Georgetown game and then when we get into the ACC. We don’t open the backcourt until those bigger games because our crowds don’t need it.”
Fans can gather around 20 bar tables, a number that Sala said could shrink or expanded depending on the response from fans on Saturday. There were 20 registers set up in the space where fans will be able to buy drinks, food and merchandise.
Sala said that space can be divided to provide VIP areas when necessary and he expects to utilize it to provides VIP experiences when the Dome hosts major concerts like Metallica’s visit in April.
“We had Metallica in the space when it was being built,” Sala said. “This will be a big part of the Metallica concert. They do a VIP experience, I think it’s called The Black Box. They are going to use this space.”
The main space includes five television screens set above the bar and 14 smaller screens on the walls throughout the space which are either 85-inch or 65-inch.
“We can put anything on these monitors,” Sala said. “We can show the game on the big screen. We can show other things on the video boards.”
The space opens up to the third floor of the JMA Dome, directly toward stairs that lead up to Sections 327 and 328 and down to Sections 247 and 248. Concessions that have traditionally lined the walls of the building near those sections have been moved inside, creating extra room for walking.
Sala said the new space alleviates a couple of challenges the building faces when at its busiest.
He said that more than 33 percent of ticket holders traditionally use Gates N and P. Because of that, there is often a build-up of fans as they rush to their seats shortly before kickoff.
The new space sits near those gates on the Northeast corner of the building, allowing traffic an extra space to flow it the concourses get overwhelmed.
“For a football game, concert, any big event, that we do, that is the gate people come to,” Sala said. “They come across the quad from the pre-game experiences. They come from all the shuttle buses. That’s where we see our people. … It’s tight in those concourses, so now we’ve got this grand space.”
The building also created an additional entry point to the building next to Gate G. Sala said they are calling the Miron South Entry.
On rare occasions, like when the Orange hosted Clemson in football in 2019 and Elton John in 2022, the concourses have been so packed that customers have gone frightened when they were unable to move. The new space provides some additional space.
The event space was part of a phased renovation that included new blue seats with chairbacks and improved wireless connectivity in the building and seating improvements for people with disabilities.
The state chipped in $23 million of taxpayer money for the project, initially supplying $20 million in funding and adding another $3 million to account for increased costs. The initial estimate for the improvements was $44.8 million.
Sala said there are no major improvements on the horizon for the building but there are still some concession and restrooms that need to be upgraded. That includes the eventual elimination of troughs in the men’s room, one of the most obvious ways that the building shows its age despite the recent renovations.
“We didn’t get to everything,” Sala said. “We’d like to bring the restrooms up to today’s code. We get a lot of people saying they like the troughs, some that don’t. You don’t see troughs today. We’ll be putting in the right pictures. It’s not a lot (of work remaining). It’s not a big project. I think the big projects where we displace people for 17 months around this facility, you won’t be seeing any of that for a while.
Sala said that a Hall of Champions that was considered as part of the original plan is not imminent but could be re-considered.
The project took 17 months to complete. The building is named after Bob and Diane Miron, who provided $7 million to the project.
Miron is the former chairman and CEO of Advance/Newhouse Communications. Diane Miron is a retired teacher who worked in the Fayetteville-Manlius School District.
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