The renovation is about more than VIP experiences. The Jim Beam Barrel Bar is a unique club space open to every ticket holder in the remodeled Phoenix. The 4,000 square foot clubs each feature all-inclusive food, hand-crafted cocktails and made-to-order pizza, along with private access to personal retail shops within the club. The Ultra Club flanks the west length of the court under the stands, while Club Gila River matches it on the east side. A private entrance into the arena harkens to a speakeasy feel. The two-story Annexus Social Club remakes the former practice space into a 7,500-square-foot all-inclusive luxury setting with gourmet dining and beverages. New 525-person clubs now sit at center court on both the east and west sides and what was the dug-down practice court is now the ultra-exclusive 281-person Annexus Social Club. The move to the new training facility opened up the space under the lower bowl seats. “The real challenge,” Johnson says, “was when they made the decision to save it and reimagine it, can we really open this thing up and create much more of a social and open building?” To make it extraordinary for fans, the club spaces take over the floor-level design, something that wasn’t in the equation during the original design. The new Annexus Social Club is a luxury space inside the renovated Phoenix Suns Arena in what was. “It is very humbling and very extraordinary for me.” “You could not wish for something like this,” he says. The project was a full-circle moment for HOK architect Bill Johnson, who designed the original building shortly after college while working for Ellerbe Becket and handled the remake for HOK. “We wanted to create the best VIP experience for the folks that sit in our first six rows and we did that with three clubs on the event level, now accessed from the court,” Sarver says. That move allowed the entire event level to get remade with a relocated main hallway and three new club spaces. To get started, the Suns moved 40,000 square feet of practice and team space from the arena into a brand-new practice facility. The first step was to update the infrastructure-electrical, mechanical and plumbing-to last for the next 30 years and once the design team was confident in that, the focus turned to “create more space in the building for the fan experience,” Sarver says. The downtown location of the nearly 30-year-old Phoenix Suns Arena was something the NBA team didn't.
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