The Spokane Public Facilities District is exploring a plan to expand seating at Spokane Veterans Memorial Arena by about 700 seats, a step that would be necessary to meet requirements for holding NCAA men's basketball tournament games there, says PFD Executive Director Kevin Twohig.

The PFD also is considering an upgrade to the lighting system.

Earlier this month, ALSC Architects PS, the Spokane architecture firm that originally designed the Spokane Arena, won the bid to study seating options. The budget for that study is capped at $25,000.

The likely location for the additional seating is in a vacant space on the upper level's west end, Twohig says. The arena's current capacity is about 12,000 seats.

The NCAA seating requirement is relatively new, he says, and the organization changed it to a minimum of 12,000 sellable seats, which is the number of seats available to sell, less those used for media, bands, and others. The arena last hosted games for the 2010 tournament.

The PFD hadn't selected a firm to study the lighting system as of mid-May.

Twohig says he expects that the PFD will make a decision on whether to proceed with the seating and lighting projects by this fall.