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 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 push by university leadership to move the program 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 — the largest increase to UNC’s campus since it was chartered in 1789.

In 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 and wrote that, as stakeholders, they felt they had “not been included to date in any known process.”

Athletic director Bubba Cunningham has said publicly, on multiple occasions, that he feels UNC leadership “dropped the ball” on basketball arena suggestions and engaging stakeholders. This new documentation helps shed a 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 for 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 a announcing 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 Roy 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 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 leadership 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. The messaging was firm: Carolina North provides a stronger path than renovating the Smith Center.

But, very soon, the carefully constructed messaging operation would be overtaken by the very backlash it was designed to manage.

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, is back where it started: weighing cost against culture, and vision against voice.

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