Romney Stadium set to undergo face-lift
The Utah State football team will begin their spring practices on Tuesday. The team has a limited amount of practices allotted for the spring session by the NCAA and it will use three of them, then take the week off for spring break, then resume practices. The team is coming off of a season where they played in the inaugural Mountain West championship in its first season in the conference.
Renovation plans for Romney Stadium were announced on Friday by Scott Barnes, Utah State’s director of Athletics. The announcement came after the approval of the USU Board of Trustees.
The renovations focus on improving fan experience, according to a press release by USU media relations. They include improvements to the west concourse that including new concessions and restrooms. The east side of the stadium will also see those inclusions with the addition of enhanced traffic flow. A new press box will be added on the west side of the stadium that will include suites and lodge boxes. A new public address system is also expected to be added along with video boards on the north and south sides of the stadium.
The approval of the plans represents the first step for the renovations, and now Athletics can start laying out a funding model for the project.
“Our objective is to formalize our revenue model to better understand the scope of the project we can fund,” said Barnes on Friday. “Ultimately, I see two phases, and we need to answer the question of what potential funding might buy in phase one, in addition to new premium seating, club amenities and a press box structure, and how soon can we get started on design.”
Expanded seating capacity is also expected to be part of the renovations. The current seating capacity is at 25,513 people.
The new renovation plans come in light of two of the schools most successful seasons in football. The team finished in the AP Top-25 in 2012 with two losses, and the team went to the inaugural Mountain West championship game last season. The program has gone to three-straight bowl games and has won consecutive bowl games for the first time in its history. It also made the transition to the larger Mountain West Conference last season from the Western Athletic Conference.
–dahdahjm@gmail.com
Twitter: @dahdahusu