VIP Tour of Stadium

[airrage]

I got a VIP tour of the stadium site yesterday. The scope and depth of the project is far better than anything I orginally imagined.This is a great capstone to the Landscape for Learning. As a UA alum and prof, I am incredibly proud.Let's keep encouraging the sports marketing folks to get gameday right. Closing Exchange Street and Spicer Avenue would go a long way to making that happen...Great job Everyone!!!

[ZachTheZip]

Closing Exchange would be a mistake because it's the only main road you can use to get to campus, but I'm all for turning Spicer into a gigantic community tailgate area for all the students with the fraternities ans sororities all lined up there.I absolutely love the design of the stadium and what they're trying to do, but I also fear that it's just a bit too small. I hope they have plans for when the need arises for a major expansion. 30k won't get us into a major conference.

[g-mann17]

Closing Exchange would be a mistake because it's the only main road you can use to get to campus, but I'm all for turning Spicer into a gigantic community tailgate area for all the students with the fraternities ans sororities all lined up there.I absolutely love the design of the stadium and what they're trying to do, but I also fear that it's just a bit too small. I hope they have plans for when the need arises for a major expansion. 30k won't get us into a major conference.

They basically shut down Main St for Aeros games (8000 fans). I think it would rather easy to divert traffic around an Exchange St closure.Second the stadium is designed for expansion to 45k. The only way that becomes necessary is if we A: sell out B: win C: get out of the MAC. But for the record Nippert Stadium was just expanded to 35k in the last 5 years. Papa Johns was constructed at 42k. Rentschler was constructed at 40k.

[skip-zip]

I have no idea how you'd work around an Exchange St. closure. During the Aeros games when they shut down Main St., there's still plenty of north/south routes to travel through downtown without any problem. I like the idea of Spicer St. parties, but that might even be impossible with that much traffic coming into campus. Why couldn't they do what they've done for spring games?....use the dead-end old Brown street that runs between the stadium and the track for festivities? I'm hoping there won't be too many logistical problems those first few games, where you might tick some people off who will never come back. I foresee a lot more issues than we had empying all of the cars straight into a huge grass field. I'm just glad that I will be there several hours early.

[tbozeglav]

I have no idea how you'd work around an Exchange St. closure. During the Aeros games when they shut down Main St., there's still plenty of north/south routes to travel through downtown without any problem. I like the idea of Spicer St. parties, but that might even be impossible with that much traffic coming into campus. Why couldn't they do what they've done for spring games?....use the dead-end old Brown street that runs between the stadium and the track for festivities? I'm hoping there won't be too many logistical problems those first few games, where you might tick some people off who will never come back. I foresee a lot more issues than we had empying all of the cars straight into a huge grass field. I'm just glad that I will be there several hours early.

closing spicer from exchange to vine would be entirely possible. They've got it half closed right now with all the work they're doing around the new dorms, so closing the entire street isn't entirely out of the question. Traffic can just as easily divert over to Goodkirk/Fountain. Personally, I'd love to see union street closed off north of the stadium and spicer closed from at least vine to exchange (including orchard, vine, and nash streets). I think that'd be the smartest way to go about it. I also hope the University and the City work out some kind of plan to employ both the Roo Express and the Metro buses to move people from the stadium to the various outlaying parking lots/garages. They'd be fools to not do it...

[scottditzen]

I hate to jump the gun on the stadium, but has anyone ever seen what the design for expansion would be like?

Closing Exchange would be a mistake because it's the only main road you can use to get to campus, but I'm all for turning Spicer into a gigantic community tailgate area for all the students with the fraternities ans sororities all lined up there.I absolutely love the design of the stadium and what they're trying to do, but I also fear that it's just a bit too small. I hope they have plans for when the need arises for a major expansion. 30k won't get us into a major conference.

They basically shut down Main St for Aeros games (8000 fans). I think it would rather easy to divert traffic around an Exchange St closure.Second the stadium is designed for expansion to 45k. The only way that becomes necessary is if we A: sell out B: win C: get out of the MAC. But for the record Nippert Stadium was just expanded to 35k in the last 5 years. Papa Johns was constructed at 42k. Rentschler was constructed at 40k.

[72 Roo]

I hate to jump the gun on the stadium, but has anyone ever seen what the design for expansion would be like?

Closing Exchange would be a mistake because it's the only main road you can use to get to campus, but I'm all for turning Spicer into a gigantic community tailgate area for all the students with the fraternities ans sororities all lined up there.I absolutely love the design of the stadium and what they're trying to do, but I also fear that it's just a bit too small. I hope they have plans for when the need arises for a major expansion. 30k won't get us into a major conference.

They basically shut down Main St for Aeros games (8000 fans). I think it would rather easy to divert traffic around an Exchange St closure.Second the stadium is designed for expansion to 45k. The only way that becomes necessary is if we A: sell out B: win C: get out of the MAC. But for the record Nippert Stadium was just expanded to 35k in the last 5 years. Papa Johns was constructed at 42k. Rentschler was constructed at 40k.

The first plan is to put seating where the grass hill is at the south end of the field. This enclosing the lower bowl would add 5,000 seats. The next phase is a little more vague. To the best of my knowledge no one has ever definitely stated what they would do, but the speculation is that stands similar to those on the east side would be put up over the north end zone service building thus easily taking the stadium into the realm of total seating in the 45-50,000 range. That's great to think about, but let's fill what we got now on a regular basis before we get too excited. Hey what the heck, it's a fun subject to dream about.

[Zipsrifle]

This will be my 16th season of watching Zips Football and I have NEVER seen a home game sold out. I have been absolutely, 100% convinced in the past that I would see a sell out a the RB and it NEVER HAPPENED. I'm not even going to think about expansion until we have 3 sold out games in a season.