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| U.SportsFriday, September 5, 2008 8:57 PM CDT |
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Illinois set to unveil renovated Memorial Stadium
CHAMPAIGN -- The University of Illinois will raise the curtain Saturday on a renovated Memorial Stadium after adding $121 million worth of flash and polish to the 85-year-old home of Illini football. | Photo Gallery Red Grange wouldn’t recognize the place. Illinois’ athletic department and a small army of construction workers have been working for two years transforming the west side of the column-ringed stadium into a high rise decked with luxury suites. The work is intended to spruce up the home of a resurgent football program and hand its coaches a recruiting edge, all the while giving Illini fans more reasons to buy tickets. “The biggest thing that everyone says is the sight lines are incredible,” Warren Hood, the associate athletic director who is leading the project, said this week during a tour of the 42 new suites and other amenities. “We’re in the end zone and — you can tell — it’s still a great seat. That’s what we’re trying to sell.” Illinois is the latest Big Ten school to add suites, club seats and other high-end features to tradition-rich stadiums the past few years, following the lead of Michigan, Ohio State, Wisconsin and Penn State. The schools’ athletic departments, Illinois included, usually emphasize that they’re financing the projects through bonds, repaying them without using tuition or other campus funds. In Illinois’ case, the school says the bonds will be paid off with money generated by the suites and other luxury seats, and the sale of naming rights for features within the stadium. Sports Information Director Kent Brown said no naming rights have been sold so far, though some are in the works. The names of the stadium and playing field — Zuppke Field, named for longtime football coach Robert Zuppke — are not for sale, the school says. Most fans won’t be able to see a lot of what’s been added since much of it is in the suites of the new glass-and steel edifice sitting atop the west side of the stadium. Starting at $45,000 a year, the leases for the suites includes 18 seats, a flat-screen TV a bar area and — as fans who sweat through early season games can appreciate — air conditioning. The west side also has two new private club areas. The 200-seat 77 Club is named for the jersey number of Grange, a star running back who played in the 1920s. Tickets there range from $3,300 to $3,900 a year. Just below it is the 1,164-seat Colonnades Club. Seats run $1,600 to $2,500 a season. What the average fan will see is a brighter, cleaner west side with new concessions and a wide range of food — including Mexican — cooked on site, Hood said. In past seasons vendors cooked their food elsewhere and hauled it to the stadium hours before game time. Murals of Illini legends such as Dick Butkus and Grange and banners honoring great teams will also hang in the concourses and elsewhere. The history of the place is still there, too, Hood said. The old, Soldier Field-style columns — the work of the same architects who designed the original Chicago stadium — haven’t been touched. The old, brown-painted brick of the towers at the stadium’s corners is still visible as at the ends of the concourses, too. “Our number one goal was to preserve the historical integrity of the stadium,” Hood said. During this week’s tour, dozens of workers were still at work, on every level — from the new weight room below the student seating to the upper reaches of suites and press box. Tile and carpet were being laid, concessions equipment hooked up and murals hung. Outside, the area to the stadium’s west remained very much a construction zone. Brown said the outside may look that way for a while as work is finished, but the inside should be all but done by game time — 11 a.m. Saturday, against Eastern Illinois. “In essence, it’ll be completed, but there’ll be some small things,” Brown said. The project has been Hood’s professional life since 2004, when planning began. “The first six months or so,” Hood said, “was just stealing the best ideas from everybody around the country.” From Ohio State and Purdue, for instance, Hood learned that alums and other fans like to rent out the club spaces for special events. At Illinois, some spaces in the new stadium are booked for events up to a year from now. “Wedding receptions seem to be hot,” Hood said. Memorial Stadium’s renovation is expected to sharpen the Illini’s recruiting pitch, too. The 30,000 square-foot weight-training room should be open by November, said Lou Hernandez, Illinois’ strength and conditioning coach. It is, for the moment, the largest at any U.S. college and roughly three times the size of Illinois’ current weight room. “Bigger is better,” Hernandez said. Illinois football coach Ron Zook said the new stadium is a big piece of rebuilding Illini football. “There’s been more than one night,” the coach said, “about 11:30 at night, I’ll stand out there by myself and just go, wow, what a great facility.” E-mail this story | Print this story | Search archives | RSS Show comments |  Hide comments | Hide comments on all stories |
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Not so Political wrote on Sep 5, 2008 4:05 PM:
Melanie11 wrote on Sep 5, 2008 2:38 PM:
Spanky wrote on Sep 5, 2008 1:12 PM:
IlliniAlumni wrote on Sep 5, 2008 12:52 PM:
truthiness wrote on Sep 5, 2008 11:55 AM:
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