UNC basketball arena plan neared launch before backlash halted Carolina North push

Plans for a new home for UNC men’s basketball — mapped out months ago with detailed timelines, messaging strategies and a mid-December announcement — were far more advanced than previously known, according to thousands of pages of documents obtained by The News & Observer through a public records request.

What those records reveal is a months-long, highly coordinated messaging campaign by university leadership to announce the program’s move from the Dean E. Smith Center’s current location on South Campus to a new, potentially $800 million arena at Carolina North — and how, in a matter of weeks, that effort unraveled under mounting public pressure.

The documents show UNC officials had identified Carolina North — a university-owned plot of land roughly two miles north of main campus — as the location for its new basketball arena by last November. The arena was set to be the centerpiece of a sweeping expansion plan at Carolina North.

Carolina North, regardless of the Smith Center’s future, is the largest increase to UNC’s campus since it was chartered in 1789. Documentation from early December indicates university leadership was targeting Dec. 18 as the date for the “public announcement of Carolina North first-phase development.”

By January, chancellor Lee Roberts launched the Carolina North plan and asked UNC’s Board of Trustees for $8 million to begin the process. No basketball arena was included in that proposal, as was originally planned.

That was a result of public pushback that coalesced quickly in December.

A Dec. 12 letter opposing an off-campus move drew signatures from across UNC’s power structure: former coach Roy Williams and his wife, Wanda; multiple members of the Maye family (Luke, Drake, Mark); former athletics director Dick Baddour; and former UNC System president Erskine Bowles, among others. Former Tar Heel players who signed the letter include Billy Cunningham, Danny Green, George Lynch, Luke Maye, Ty Lawson, James Worthy and Tyler Hansbrough.

The group called themselves Tar Heels Concerned for the Future of the Dean E. Smith Center and Carolina Basketball. They wrote that, as stakeholders, they felt they had “not been included to date in any known process.” The N&O reported about some of that initial pushback in December.

Athletic director Bubba Cunningham has since said on multiple occasions that UNC leadership “dropped the ball” in engaging stakeholders during last year’s arena discussions. These newly obtained documents help shed light on where North Carolina went wrong.

UNC’s plan to unveil Carolina North arena

The planning by UNC leadership, according to internal documents, extended well beyond broad concepts.

By early November, leadership had begun drafting announcement strategies, identifying key stakeholders and “alumni influencers,” and preparing for potential questions from the public.

A Nov. 7, 2025 email from senior associate AD Rick Steinbacher, labeled “A DRAFT CONCEPT TO STIMULATE DISCUSSIONS ONLY,” laid out a three-phase rollout for announcing a new arena at Carolina North.

The first step was a pre-announcement “quiet phase” focused on aligning power brokers — from UNC system leadership to top donors and local town officials — while “minimizing surprises” ahead of a public reveal. It also called for strategically seeding the narrative through embargoed interviews with local outlets, and leaning on prominent alumni like Williams and Phil Ford to help with “behind-the-scenes” talking points. A drafted list at the bottom of that email included basketball alumni including Green, Michael Jordan, Hansbrough, Theo Pinson and Marcus Ginyard.

Green, Hansbrough and Williams all later signed the Dec. 12 opposition letter, with Williams and Hansbrough later filming viral videos in support of keeping the arena on campus.

After the planned “quiet phase,” plans included a full-scale launch: a keynote event with Roberts and Bubba Cunningham as speakers, a video reveal with the tagline “From Dean to Dream,” Carolina Club watch parties in multiple cities, and personalized outreach to the top 500 seat-license holders.

By late November, UNC athletics and Rams Club leadership had circulated a document titled “Carolina North Announcement: For a mid-December 2025 announcement of the Carolina North development and new home of Carolina Basketball.” As UNC moved toward that announcement, this new documentation shows a parallel effort: preparing for the announcement itself, as well as backlash some expected would come with the news.

The “Carolina North Announcement” plan included a recommendation for university-wide scenario-planning before Dec. 10 to game out everything from media leaks and donor resistance to faculty petitions, legislative questions and student protests. At the center of UNC’s preparation was a detailed messaging guide dubbed the “song sheet” by Dean Stoyer, the university’s vice chancellor for communications. It was designed, Stoyer wrote in an email to UNC leadership, to “ensure that there is consistency in all of the varied conversations that will be taking place.”

Managing public talking points

Documentation shows that UNC officials such as incoming athletics director Steve Newmark worked over Thanksgiving weekend to refine the document and update talking points of the song sheet. Stoyer later asked myriad university leaders, over email, what key points they felt needed to be supported. He asked two other communications officials directly, “knowing this will get out, what gives you anxiety?”

The messaging, overall, was firm: Carolina North provides a stronger path than renovating the Smith Center.

But, in a matter of days, the carefully constructed messaging operation would be overtaken by the exact backlash it was designed to manage.

There were many warning signs raised, according to the documentation reviewed by the N&O, including the following:

• In a November 6 email from Stoyer to Bubba Cunningham and Steinbacher, among other UNC leaders, the vice chancellor warned of “the sensitivity of suggesting an arena placement in Carolina North beyond what has already been said publicly.” He wrote that “everything is on the table.”
• In a Nov. 28 email from Rams Club Executive Director Seth Reeves to Stoyer (with other Rams Club leadership and Newmark copied) he asked if the timing of the announcement was “set in stone.” He wrote that UNC leadership “may already be too far down the road, but I know we all agree that this is going to be a very emotional announcement for many Tar Heels.” He warned, too, that “a December announcement of this magnitude will undoubtedly elicit an especially emotional reaction from most Tar Heel fans during a time when they are focused on family.”
• The same email from Reeves also brought up the fact that 2026 is the 40th anniversary of the Smith Center. Reeves urged that an essential piece of UNC’s messaging focus on “enhancing the legacy of Carolina Basketball” with “a facility that is worthy of such a legendary program for the next 40 years.” The issue of legacy has since become a central argument of several prominent oppositionists to an off-campus move.
• A Dec. 5 email from Stoyer to ten different UNC leaders — including Reeves, Newmark, Cunningham, Steinbacher and other university and Ram’s Club officials — asked for progress of stakeholder conversations. Stoyer asked the group if there was “anything coming out of conversations that needs to be addressed or adjusted from what you’re sharing and what’s been developed?” Documentation indicates further discussions on this topic took place, although that was not included in the records released to the N&O.

An email sent from Stoyer to Roberts, Cunningham, Newmark and other UNC leaders on Dec. 9 provided an updated announcement timeline:

• Dec. 11: Rams Club board meeting
• Dec. 12, 13, or 14: Conversations between Hubert Davis and Courtney Banghart with Roberts, Cunningham and Newmark
• Dec. 16: Coaches meeting presentation from Cunningham and Newmark
• Dec. 16, 22 and 30: Three separate meetings with invited Rams Club members
• Jan. 7: Media prep and first session of embargoed interviews
• Jan. 8: Second session of embargoed interviews and announcement roll out.

The planned arena announcements for January, of course, did not come to fruition. That’s thanks, in large part, to the advocacy of North Carolina basketball royalty like Williams and Hansbrough, as well as The Committee for a South Campus Arena, led by UNC alum Rusty Carter.

For now, the future of the Dean E. Smith Center — whether it’s renovated, replaced on campus or moved to Carolina North — remains unresolved and paused amid the transition from Hubert Davis to Michael Malone.

These new documents make clear how close UNC came to a decision. And now, after millions spent and years of planning, the university is, in some ways, back where it started: weighing cost against culture, and vision against voice.

This story was originally published April 21, 2026 at 2:36 PM.