The Cam Henderson Center is the primary indoor athletics complex at Marshall University. The basketball arena currently seats 9,600.
The Center was opened in 1981. Its construction was a part of a deal in the West Virginia Legislature to support construction of what is now known as Milan Puskar Stadium at West Virginia University. Legislators affiliated with Marshall had opposed building such a facility unless Marshall, which then played basketball in a 30 year old county-owned facility, located 6 blocks from campus and seating only 6,500, also received an athletic facility.
The facility, as designed, was to be a "state of the art" arena seating 14,000. However during construction, massive budget cuts were made and the finished product seated only 10,250.
The arena was designed with a retractable lower seating section, which permitted used of the floor area for indoor track and general use by the physical education department. However this seating never worked as designed, and eventually the school stopped retracting the seating for fear it would become stuck in that position. Also the poured concrete floor developed major cracks.
In 1996 the school, using settlement procedes from a law suit against the seat manufacturer and a new state appropriation, replaced the lower section with a permanent seating section and repaired the floor, thus ending the arena's use for anything except basketball. This reduced the seating capacity to its current level. However with the decline in the men's basketball program nothing approaching a capacity crowd has been attracted in many years.
The building was merged into the existing Gullickson Hall, and contains athletic department offices, and a competetive pool for swimming in addition to the arena.