Mac Rating: 5.00 | Votes: 1 | Date: 03/07/2026 00:34:00

The Jewel of Midtown gave Saint Louis University basketball a fortress and the city a mid-size concert room it had always lacked. Chaifetz Arena at 1 South Compton Avenue, at the corner of Compton and Market on the SLU campus, opened on 10 April 2008 after a groundbreaking on 28 August 2006, an 80.5-million-dollar, 269,300-square-foot project by arena specialists Sink Combs Dethlefs with St. Louis firm Mackey Mitchell, built by Clayco. The naming gift came from Dr. Richard A. Chaifetz, the 1975 SLU graduate and neuropsychologist who founded ComPsych, the world's largest employee-assistance provider - his initial 12 million dollars grew to 27 million across later gifts that also named the university's business school. The 10,600-seat bowl is the home of Saint Louis Billikens men's and women's basketball, and its compact geometry earned a reputation quickly - VCU coach Shaka Smart called it the toughest venue to play in the Atlantic 10. The attached Chaifetz Pavilion adds a two-court practice facility that doubles as an 800-seat volleyball venue, alongside a three-story athletics office block, sports-performance and sports-medicine suites and an academic centre for student-athletes. The concourse wraps the bowl with the U.S. Bank Billiken Hall of Fame Walkway and photo collages tracing the university's two-century history. As a concert and events building - privately managed, currently by Oak View Group - the arena filled a genuine gap between St. Louis's clubs and the 18,000-seat downtown arena: Bruce Springsteen, Elton John, The Killers, Kelly Clarkson, Patti LaBelle, Brad Paisley and Martin Lawrence have all played the room, Cirque du Soleil and Disney On Ice cycle through, and the building's record crowd of 11,727 came for Sabrina Carpenter in October 2024. SLU commencements, trade shows and national sporting events fill out a calendar that runs year-round. The Midtown address ties the arena into the Grand Center arts district and the resurgent Compton-Market corridor, with the Olive-Compton garage next door and MetroBus at the kerb - a campus arena that behaves like a civic one, which was precisely the donor's brief.