The price for naming rights of Coastal Carolina University’s new on-campus arena and student recreation center has been revealed.

Horry Telephone Cooperative’s sponsorship of the building – newly named as The HTC Center – is valued at $3.61 million over the life of the 20-year agreement that was first announced earlier this month, according to financial details released Tuesday by the school.

Set to be publicly unveiled next week as students return to campus, the building will net the university $125,000 a year in cash from HTC and $55,500 a year in services, according to Mark Roach, executive director of the Chanticleer Athletic Foundation.

“What it does for us, just simply, we have so many projects as far as new buildings and the baseball and softball stadiums, they are able to help with some of the wiring and infrastructure of certain things,” Roach said. “We were just trying to take advantage of who they are, and with any contract it has to be a win-win on both sides so that’s what we were trying to do.”

The naming rights agreement was formally announced Aug. 2, but no financial details were revealed at that time.

Roach said the process of finding a naming sponsor for the $35 million facility – which will be the new home for Chanticleer basketball and volleyball while also housing the university bookstore and considerable student recreation space – started about two and a half years ago.

Initially, he said, the thought was that Coastal needed to attract a national company to provide the financial commitment the school was seeking, but discussions with and mutual interest from HTC got the conversation started on a pairing of the two local fixtures.

“We didn’t really have anyone that was saying, ‘Hey, let me come on campus and look at this’ until we got to HTC,” Roach said. “[CCU athletic director Hunter Yurachek] and I talked a little bit [with HTC] about what this was going to mean to the university and the community and tried to sell them on that. There’s going to be concerts, there’s going to be graduations, there’s the student side, there’s the athletic side. We just tried to show why and how this building was going to be the hub of campus.”

As for the benefit to HTC, Roach said it was sold as a win-win agreement because as Coastal continues to grow, more students will be needing phone lines and internet connections, expanding the opportunity for the two sides to further grow their relationship.

The HTC Center will hold its grand opening Monday with a formal dedication at 5:30 p.m., in an event open to the public.

“HTC and Coastal have just grown up together,” Roach said. “They actually started in ‘52 and us in ‘54 so it’s kind of like our growth has happened together.”

Contact RYAN YOUNG at 626-0318.