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Stadium Renovation Mega-Thread

I don’t understand why anyone would complain about any upgrades to the stadium at this point. 20 years of empty promises should be enough to get excited about the new press box. The stands won’t be filled anyway until we have a new coaching staff.
I agree, but I don't think anyone is complaining. Just asking questions, which is ok.
 
I don’t understand why anyone would complain about any upgrades to the stadium at this point. 20 years of empty promises should be enough to get excited about the new press box. The stands won’t be filled anyway until we have a new coaching staff.
I'm glad it's happening, and you're right about the coaching staff. But consider that ten years ago we averaged over 10,000 per game in a stadium that effectively holds only about 9k. The issues I have is that most of the new improvements don't address capacity. They're all basically aesthetic improvements and things like amenities and luxurious club seating which don't do anything to improve the overall capacity of Roos Field.

If these improvements do anything to get us back to being a top program in the conference like we all hope they will, we're sort of right back to where we were 10 years ago having to erect temporary bleachers in the south end zone to accommodate larger games. The reasons given for stone-walling on new seats has always been "well we don't fill the stadium now," but we already know that's not true when we're a winning program. Eastern could have fixed this problem so many different times when we were still a top program nationally but their lack of realistic approaches is part of the reason we failed to capitalize on that success.

We could have done modest improvements like putting up a grand stand on the east side of the stadium which would have improved the look of the stadium immensely and helped recruiting instead of spending several years chasing the pie-in-the-sky Gateway Project which relied on state-funds to get done which was never going to happen even as a multi-purpose facility.
 
I'm glad it's happening, and you're right about the coaching staff. But consider that ten years ago we averaged over 10,000 per game in a stadium that effectively holds only about 9k. The issues I have is that most of the new improvements don't address capacity. They're all basically aesthetic improvements and things like amenities and luxurious club seating which don't do anything to improve the overall capacity of Roos Field.

If these improvements do anything to get us back to being a top program in the conference like we all hope they will, we're sort of right back to where we were 10 years ago having to erect temporary bleachers in the south end zone to accommodate larger games. The reasons given for stone-walling on new seats has always been "well we don't fill the stadium now," but we already know that's not true when we're a winning program. Eastern could have fixed this problem so many different times when we were still a top program nationally but their lack of realistic approaches is part of the reason we failed to capitalize on that success.

We could have done modest improvements like putting up a grand stand on the east side of the stadium which would have improved the look of the stadium immensely and helped recruiting instead of spending several years chasing the pie-in-the-sky Gateway Project which relied on state-funds to get done which was never going to happen even as a multi-purpose facility.
Truer words have never been spoken. We could have easily done something like Utah Tech. Looks at theirs, which has a capacity of around 12,500 which would have put us right where we need to be with room for future growth.

FB2.jpeg


 
I'm glad it's happening, and you're right about the coaching staff. But consider that ten years ago we averaged over 10,000 per game in a stadium that effectively holds only about 9k. The issues I have is that most of the new improvements don't address capacity. They're all basically aesthetic improvements and things like amenities and luxurious club seating which don't do anything to improve the overall capacity of Roos Field.

If these improvements do anything to get us back to being a top program in the conference like we all hope they will, we're sort of right back to where we were 10 years ago having to erect temporary bleachers in the south end zone to accommodate larger games. The reasons given for stone-walling on new seats has always been "well we don't fill the stadium now," but we already know that's not true when we're a winning program. Eastern could have fixed this problem so many different times when we were still a top program nationally but their lack of realistic approaches is part of the reason we failed to capitalize on that success.

We could have done modest improvements like putting up a grand stand on the east side of the stadium which would have improved the look of the stadium immensely and helped recruiting instead of spending several years chasing the pie-in-the-sky Gateway Project which relied on state-funds to get done which was never going to happen even as a multi-purpose facility.
I get wanting to open up the current press boxes for boosters and other rich alums, that is probably the biggest bang for our buck as far as income. Like those south endzone club seats created a lot of revenue last year. But we shouldn't cut ourselves off from being able to upgrade the east bleachers. I think if Larry Weir is asking about it on the radio. Others are expressing their concerns too. It is like everything in me to not go off in the comments of Collin's instagram when they posted the update last week.
 
I think there were a subset of fans that had realistic expectations of stadium upgrades back when Bill Chaves was pushing the Gateway Project. I think some fans and alums even raised half a million? Some of you might know better than me.

Some dude made this video 15 years ago.

 
I think there were a subset of fans that had realistic expectations of stadium upgrades back when Bill Chaves was pushing the Gateway Project. I think some fans and alums even raised half a million? Some of you might know better than me.

Some dude made this video 15 years ago.

I may know who did that.

I've been playing around with some AI renders and will post some stuff later on.
 
Somebody was asking about Gateway project expectations back in the day. This 97 page thread was once titled The Gateway Project and was pinned to the top of the page for years.
I do remember when Chaves tried to distance himself from TGP saying that it was never officially discussed. That was probably about the time the title of this thread was changed.
 
I've been playing around some with AI to try to emulate what phases 1-3 will look like at each level of completion. Then, I thought about what Phase 4 might look like. You can click on each to blow them up. I'll eventually conceptualize a phase 5 with some wild stuff, or scrap phase 4 and try something else.

Phase 1 Completion: (Where we are now). Official Capacity=8600, excluding south end zone club seats.

44677e0e-dace-4108-9f46-52cda0679a93.png


Phase 2 Completion: (Completion of the new press box, Summer 2028). Capacity= ~8900.

c5ceac7c-8c5e-4bd3-822d-6bba92ff8520.png


Phase 3 Completion (West Side Improvements, TBD). Capacity= ~9000.

d116c10e-08fa-4a38-9e97-334577e3c4ba.png


Phase 4 Completion: (East Side Expansion, Conceptual). Capacity=13,000.

9cc9096c-ae69-48f5-b466-42ee81137336.png


Phase 4B Completion: (East Side Expansion, New North End Zone Scoreboard, Conceptual).

790b1aa8-2c3a-4fd0-96f9-3e0d8a44b143.jpg
 
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