Reed Arena - Facilities

Facilities

Reed Arena first opened its doors in 1998 as a member of Texas A&M Special Event Facilities. The arena was named after its primary donor Chester Reed, Texas A&M Class of 1947. The building hosts many official functions for Texas A&M University. With enough indoor seating capacity for 12,500 guests, the arena makes an ideal location for the university's graduation ceremonies, freshmen convocation, and Aggie Muster ceremonies. The main purpose behind building the arena was to house the Texas A&M's men's and women's basketball teams, the two groups that generally receive priority in building use. However, unlike all the other athletic facilities on campus, Reed Arena operates under the Department of Finance, not the Athletic Department.

While in the planning stages, Chester Reed donated an operations endowment to help run the building during its first five years. However, due to initial over-estimating of revenue and budget shortfalls during construction, this endowment was unable to make the arena become self-sufficient. For all of these reasons mentioned above, Reed Arena cannot just focus on basketball and other university events. As a necessary function, the Arena has developed pipelines of support from a multitude of different stakeholders and events that operate both within the local community and internationally. In its many years of operation, Reed Arena has hosted a wide variety of famous performers including Bill Cosby, Garth Brooks, The Dixie Chicks, as well as the performers of World Wrestling Entertainment, Cirque du Soleil, and Ringling Brothers and Barnum & Bailey Circus.

The $36 million Reed Arena was designed by the Houston firm Lockwood, Andrews, and Newman, Inc. and built in 1998 by Dallas-based Huber, Hunt and Nichols, Inc. The arena has seats for 12,989 fans, while an additional 2,000 people can be accommodated on the main floor for concerts.

Reed Arena is able to provide group accommodations on many different levels. Events can greatly vary in size; the Arena can accommodate an event involving thousands of patrons or a small meeting that contains only 15 participants on any given day. The arena floor contains 25,000 square feet of column-free space, large enough to accommodate 150 exhibit booths or a 1,800 seat banquet. This figure almost doubles the space any other building in the Bryan/College Station area. The second floor contains four 1,200 square feet rooms, which can be used to accommodate smaller events. The lower level of the arena also contains a 7,500 square feet multi-purpose room, a full-service commercial kitchen, and numerous types of dressing rooms.

The arena is surrounded by four parking lots, which hold a combined 1500 cars, and is also within walking distance of a 3,750 capacity parking garage and numerous other parking lots. Generally event parking costs between $5.