Football facilities

[reeder]

What is the difference between having aone of the best football facilities in the NEC and a pretty good one by A10 standards and throwing up bleachers for 5000 fans on the new lacrosse fields and painting the football lines on the field in the fall? With the exception of Stony Brook, that would probably be one of the nicer conference facilities.

 

I don't want to beat a dead horse, but UA can construct a very attractive football facility for reasonable $$. I would think that the grand plans run a risk of not getting funded or being delayed so that adequate funding is available. I hope the plan is to do the football field in phases so there isn't a long wait to get it going.

[alum73]

They could build the new track next, then put up and move all the bleachers on top of the old track. That alone would get us into some sun and make viewing much better. While nothing is cheap, building the new track has to be much less costly interim step towards the finished plan.

[UAalum72]

The running track looks like it needs to be renovated or replaced soon anyway, so some of that expense should have been somewhere in the maintenance budget (if they have one).

 

It was my understanding that phase 1 of the football stadium would be about 10K, with phase 2 being the 2nd deck on the west (home) side (there goes the sun again ) and endzone seating, and phase 3 the 2nd deck on the visitors' (east) side.

 

I wouldn't want to put too much into temporary seating, unless they plan to dismantle it later and reuse it for the track and baseball fields.

[alum73]

10k? That's building a nice 2 car garage. 10 million would be inexpensive.

[UAalum72]

10K is the seating capacity, not the cost.

[alum73]

lol, duh!

[DaneFan2k3]

You'd be really surprised.

 

A track can cost between $500,000 and $750,000. That includes the surface, labor, clearing the land, leveling, etc. If you want to add automatic timing system beneath the track, that is an added cost. I wouldn't say that's really all that "cheap". (Do a few Google searches and you'll find that's just about right-on for building a track in the year 2005).

 

The danger you run is that if you decide to piecemeal these things together, the funding may or may not come through, and now you have facilities for one sport and not another.

 

My hope is that, aside from the current groundbreaking, they don't move forward with anything else until some sort of funding plan and fundraising/building timeline is announced. Once that happens, the onus will be on the administration to make sure it all goes through as planned or they will look foolish. If they do things in stages, the possibility of skipping some stages is a real possibility.

Edited May 26, 2005 by DaneFan2k3

[alum73]

They are doing it in stages anyway. The area where the track is going is already clear and basically level already. The new track is already part of the plan. 500-750k is as inexpensive a compnent in the plan as there is. All the other components are that much and more. This would just allow more time to develop stadium funds while still doing a low cost upgrade for football. We're already making changes to the plan as seen in the revised design for LAX and FH facilities.