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Article: These Walls: Mabee Center in Tulsa
- Article from:
- THE JOURNAL RECORD
- Article date:
- August 21, 2009
- Author:
CopyrightCopyright 2009 THE JOURNAL RECORD. Provided by ProQuest LLC. (Hide copyright information)
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Only one place in history could have sheltered 10,500 people from
a tornado while they rocked to Elvis, crooned with Sinatra or cried
with Pavarotti.
While the Mabee Center has never faced that need, it wasn't for
lack of trying. When evangelist Oral Roberts added the $34 million
basketball arena ($175.1 million in today's dollars) to his Tulsa
university campus, he laced the golden stone structure with thick,
entwined steel cables anchored through 16 monstrous cement ribs
diving 35 feet into the earth. Between them, architect Frank Wallace
walled room after room with concrete blocks atop carpeted cement
floors.
"Really, I couldn't imagine a safer place," said Tony Winters,
the 1994 ORU ...