BU’s Brown Arena Basketball Floor Gets a New Life in Jamaica

January 2005 was a bleak month for Boston University’s Brown Arena basketball floor. After 30 years hosting men’s and women’s hoops, after feeling the step of coaches like BU’s own Rick Pitino, Mike Krzyzewski, and Jim Calhoun, after playing under Reggie Lewis, Christian Laettner, and Grant Hill, after underpinning a tennis court for Billie Jean King, Virginia Wade and Chris Evert – it was shoved into a warehouse, pushed aside by a new floor at the new Agganis Arena.

There it sat for almost five years. In the dark, lost, forgotten.

There it would probably have sat until doomsday, except that last year BU landed a role in a movie (WHAT movie remains confidential). Hollywood needed the warehouse, Hollywood got the warehouse, and the old Brown Arena floor got in the way.

A couple of years ago, that would have been the end of the story. Basketball floor in the way; basketball floor in the dumpster; goodbye. But since 2007 BU has had a different way to handle surplus property. BU has linked up with IRN, the Institution Recycling Network. IRN matches BU’s surplus with a network of charities in the U.S. and around the world, where BU’s excess stuff is used for disaster and poverty relief. In 2009 alone, more than 142 tons of BU surplus were sent for reuse through IRN.

So when the Brown floor got in the way, BU called IRN. IRN called a nonprofit partner, Food for the Poor, who put dibs on the floor in a heartbeat. The match was made to a rural school in southern Jamaica, where Food for the Poor has been active in poverty relief for many years.

So it was that in early October the Brown Arena floor got a new lease on life. A crew of IRN movers took the floor back out into the light of day. It was packed into two shipping containers, trucked to the port of Elizabeth, New Jersey, and loaded onto a ship for the week-long sea voyage to Jamaica. There in Kingston it was unloaded back onto wheels for the short trip to Food for the Poor’s local warehouse. It sat for just a few days before it was taken out again and installed in its permanent new home in Sandy Bay, about 40 miles from Kingston.

Where it will probably flourish for another 30 years, almost certainly under the feet of more than a few Jamaican kids who’ll end up in the NCAA, the Jamaican National Team, or the Olympics.Terrier and all. BU’s logo can carry the school name proud and high. One of the essential missions of higher education is to demonstrate the possibilities of human creativity and imagination. Repurposing the Brown Arena hoops floor to benefit generations of Jamaican children lives up to that goal.