KU’s year-round social club at Allen Fieldhouse draws closer to opening

photo by: Henry Greenstein/Journal-World

The Naismith Club at Allen Fieldhouse is pictured on Tuesday, Aug. 4, 2026.

Several years ago, the University of Kansas athletic department considered implementing a social club, through its partnership with venue management company Oak View Group, as part of its Gateway project.

A group of KU athletics representatives and donors took advantage of a KU basketball trip to Salt Lake City to see the Ken Garff University Club, OVG’s outpost at the University of Utah, in action.

“They did like an NCAA basketball activation for their members, pop-a-shots for kids, and food, and I’m like, ‘OK, now I see how this is not just a dining club, but it’s also really activating in some special-event kind of opportunities as well,'” KU deputy athletic director Jason Booker recalled on Tuesday.

The social club idea didn’t end up making the cut for the Gateway project specifically; Booker said that was a result of several factors, including its location relative to campus, parking concerns and the fact that most of David Booth Kansas Memorial Stadium’s premium areas already have additional day-to-day uses, like how the Paul and Linda DeBruce Jayhawk Club serves as the football team’s training table.

But KU found an opportunity to make use of OVG’s social club capabilities in another one of its athletic facilities: The Naismith Club at Allen Fieldhouse, a bar and restaurant with an adjacent coffee shop, The Jayhawk Lounge, is located on the second floor of the arena above the Booth Family Hall of Athletics, and will open by the end of the summer.

“It gives us a chance really to activate what we think’s one of the most historic sports venues in the country on a year-round basis,” Booker said.

As the Journal-World has reported, the essential premise of The Naismith Club is that a local resident can pay $650 with monthly dues of $110 and a quarterly food-and-beverage minimum of $300 in order to gain access to the newly refurbished space for upscale dining, drinks and regular events like whiskey tastings, cocktail classes and networking opportunities. There are discounts for faculty members and opportunities for reciprocity with other clubs.

“We want to make sure that it’s not just our top donors,” Booker said. “Certainly those were people we wanted to make it available to, but we think that we’ve seen a real diverse group of people buying.”

The Naismith Club is not open at all for men’s basketball game days. That means that KU and OVG are tasked with getting people accustomed to visiting the venue at times they would not otherwise do so: “I think a lot of it’s been working with our OVG team,” Booker said, “kind of having an initial night where we invited donors out to kind of understand what the opportunity is, and then certainly from a marketing perspective, making sure we’re telling that story on social.”

“It’s not intuitive to people to go to Allen Fieldhouse on a Wednesday,” said Jodi Battaglia, a senior vice president at OVG. “So it really is trying to understand like hey, there’s a benefit here and it actually can be something that becomes part of your daily life and a place to celebrate a birthday, to entertain.”

For OVG, the social club was a reasonable extension of what was already a significant presence at KU, in which it provides food and beverages for all KU venues and operates the football stadium and conference center.

“Having this unique opportunity as part of something that we do was a great add-on here,” Battaglia said. “I think that knowing that this is like the home of basketball, and knowing that this building itself is a really special spot, I think we wanted to just be a little bit more elevated and give people access 365 (days).”

It is a model OVG has already implemented not only at Utah but other Big 12 schools like Arizona, Baylor and Texas Tech, although Battaglia stressed that the designs are tailored to the individual buildings and programs.

“I do think the partnership with the athletics program is key,” she added. “There is a direct correlation with having that integrated messaging, and I think they understand the demographic and the people that we’re trying to reach, our potential membership base, really well.”

Some elements of The Naismith Club are still a work in progress. Battaglia didn’t have a specific opening date to share other than that it would be before the end of the summer. OVG is still working with the university on parking arrangements, although the garage adjacent to Allen Fieldhouse is clearly a significant part of the plan: “We’re working through all that. We do right now have, yeah, some spots allocated. I think from our perspective it’s nice to have the weather protection for memberships and easier access.”

And while the club’s website suggests that The Jayhawk Lounge coffee shop will provide “to-go service and mobile ordering … for non-members,” Battaglia said that “out of the gates, that’s not going to be the case, but we will expand.”

The ultimate value proposition for KU Athletics has a lot to do with leveraging the venue’s gravitas and existing assets to create a new year-round revenue stream for the department.

“The overall experience, I think, with Booth Hall of Athletics and Allen Fieldhouse in general, there’s still something about the nostalgia of ‘Hey, I’m going to go eat dinner at Allen Fieldhouse,'” Booker said.