(03-28-2020 08:38 AM)TexanMark Wrote: I'd say baseball stadium building is the least of your worries. You'll never get ROI unless you can convince Leon County to build a joint use stadium for a minor league club.
I've been to Doak Campbell several times. It looks great on the outside and many areas inside the bowl too. Are you saying they still need $250-400M more?
I did notice the skeleton of the stadium: ramps, bathrooms look old. Tell me they didn't put lipstick on a pig with the latest facade remodel?
Makes me think the Dome is the best bargain in the ACC. One building that covers Football, Basketball, Lacrosse and other events like concerts, HS football games, graduations, sports camps, marching band competitions, and monster truck shows!
The metal inside is structurally not sound. It needs to be replaced.
I paste quotes from FSU over the last 5 years or so that give better detail:
"The stadium renovations are just the first phase. In an interview with The Associated Press, Wilcox said that plans to renovate the rest of the stadium are in the preliminary stages, but that those could run $200 to $400 million.
"You are always going to be in the facilities business along with recruiting," Wilcox said. "Student-athletes are savvy consumers. When they go around and do their visits, they are seeing what everyone is doing. They want to see where they are going to play, practice, eat and live. That is why we have upgraded all of the locker rooms."
"Some speculation of further additions both inside and outside the stadium. Outside would be the potential of a hotel or conference center attached (helping to further make it a year-round facility). Inside would be extending club seating down the sides further."
The future vision for Doak would blow up the existing concession infrastructure and totally replace the sewer, plumbing and electric. This would give our concession partner the resources to offer a wide array of food and beverage options, including alcohol. As you said, to make it work right you also want wider aisles and more and better bathrooms.
Could it happen sooner? Sure. But I think it would have to be in "beer gardens" or special spaces where we could provide the right infrastructure.
While our infrastructure is nothing to brag about, we are not alone. There are a number of stadiums -- including UF -- with antiquated concessions. At least at Doak you have options. You can join the UCC for about $50 a month and have access to the 3rd floor patio and ball room where you can buy beer, wine or mixed drinks, upgraded concessions and tiled bathrooms. Doak also has skyboxes, the Varsity Club, skyboxes and club seats.
The next question is when will FSU address those changes to Doak? We have a design and a budget estimate (about $400 million in 2016 dollars) to replace all the infrastructure and grandstands. Right now we are focused on raising money for a football operations building, baseball, golf and basketball but I know it is Andy Miller's ambition to add the stadium project before his career is over. I think he'd like to say in the next five to seven years.
Jerry Kutz is Sr. Vice President of Seminole Boosters in charge of special projects including the $250 million Champions Campaign for FSU Athletics, renovations to Doak Campbell Stadium including the Champions Club. email: jkutz@fsu.edu Cell: (850) 508-8690
Agree with your post.
We had HKS come in about 5 years ago and do a master plan for the highest and best use for Doak. They envisioned the south endzone with the champions club as phase one with the east and west sidelines as phase 2 (and probably) phase 3.
The Champions Club is built and will reach critical mass this fall in terms of sales. It was profitable in year 1 with sales at 50 percent so Seminole Boosters is encouraged to move forward with raising money and completing design for phase 2 and 3 if athletics and the university and board of trustees is on board. It could happen within the next 7-10 years.
We had the architects give us a conceptual design of what the east and west could look like before we built phase 1. We needed to contemplate what the east and west structures would be someday before we built the Champions Club now and found we had blocked sightlines later. So while the east and west are not detailed drawings, they give us an idea of what the capacity could be with that design which is just north of 70,000.
Once we start the east and west, we have to upgrade to the new building code and meet all ADA requirements which is a good thing but eats away at capacity. If we kept the same bowl perimeter (which we probably will be confined to), and widened the majority of seats to 20 inches and went to a 30 inch tread rather than current 26 inch tread, it would reduce capacity to 50-55k. Just widening the aisles to put in a hand rail and required handicapped seating cuts capacity 5,000 seats. But you gain back 10k-15k seats by cantilevering the upper 6-10 rows of seats over the lower rows of seats like we've done in the Champions Club.
So, we can get it back to 70k or slightly more.
And I agree there are sections that could be standing decks or tighter seating for students (who don't want to sit) and visiting fans and a cheap seat section for fans who need to sample college game day.
The east and west sideline renovation would tear down only the metal seating structure, ramps, concourses, bathrooms and concession stands and not touch the brick buildings which house 500,000 sq ft of classrooms and offices and are topped with the skyboxes and press box. So, while it is a daunting project, it does not require a total demo, only the metal structure inside the University Center Complex buildings.
You are also correct about the spans. We are told the support spans can be spaced 2 or 3 times farther apart which requires fewer columns and gives us a lot of flexibility for concessions, bathrooms, etc.
Current cost to build is about $250 to $300 million and would need to be raised. We envision about 10 mid level skyboxes that we would lease to 10 individuals who made very large leadership gifts ($10 million or more) to the project. The remaining money would require a major capital campaign.
While all this is exciting to FSU season ticket holders, be forewarned: a project of this magnitude scrambles all the eggs in terms of seating. Stadium folks we've talked to, who have gone through a major project like this, tell us the only way to get it done is to do a total reseating of your existing season ticket holders.
Even if you just widen the seats in Doak from 16 inches to 20 inches, you reduce the number of people who can sit in a row from 38 to about 30. You do that in each of your center 6 sections and people who now sit on the 20 would be moved to the goal line.
As you get into actually trying to reseat -- which we have contemplated -- it gets very disruptive for groups of people who are used to sitting together or around the same people, or on an aisle, etc.
We've had lively discussion on how best to accomplish it.
Jerry Kutz is Sr. Vice President of Seminole Boosters in charge of special projects including the $250 million Champions Campaign for FSU Athletics, renovations to Doak Campbell Stadium including the Champions Club. email: jkutz@fsu.edu Cell: (850) 508-8690
57 Jerry Kutz, Today at 11:22 AM
RE: ACC Football Spending By School