The Gene Polisseni Center is a planned ice arena on the Rochester Institute of Technology campus in suburban Rochester, New York.
The RIT Tigers men's ice hockey team has played since 1968 at the Frank Ritter Memorial Ice Arena, which was constructed as part of RIT's new campus during the move to Henrietta from downtown Rochester. The women's team has played there since the team's inception. The Ritter holds only 2,100 fans, and has a small ice surface and few modern amenities.
In the wake of the RIT men's team's run to the 2010 Frozen Four, the team's popularity expanded enormously, and a capital campaign was started in November 2010 to fund the building of the arena. RIT hopes to raise $15 million, half of the arena's projected cost, while funding the rest out of the general operating budget.
In November 2011, the name of the new arena was announced as the Gene Polisseni Center, after a $4.5 million gift from the Polisseni Foundation and Tom Golisano. Golisano, founder of local company Paychex and an RIT trustee, was a longtime friend of Gene Polisseni, who died in 2001. Polisseni had been a big fan of hockey, dragging his friend Golisano to Buffalo Sabres games and founding several youth hockey teams in the Rochester area. (Ironically, it was Golisano who would end up buying the Sabres in 2003, just two years after his friend's death.)