Good. It doesn't have to be much, but there's something about each group having a "home". Some of your best bonding time comes in those rooms

Indeed. Watching your coach rewind the play you screwed up on five times in a row while your buddies heckle is a tie that binds!: good times!

Haha! Equal opportunity roasting in those deals. It is where thick skin is developed

Football dorms attached to the building? Claustrophobic

This could be a realistic long term design too (this is ACU's stadium)

Love this

Wow, very impressive

Nice little stadium. Built with donor funds. Davis currently has club seats and can’t sell out of the existing inventory. What they haven’t realized and need to come to grips with is building suites makes zero economic sense right now. Someone on this board is always complaining about the tent in the end zone. That tent makes money. In fact if they had more tents, better food, and a couple of decent bars in the end zones or corners they would make even more money. Spending 50m on a few poorly placed vanity suites for the Chancellor and UCD Health will be another bad move.

Disagree with your analysis. But everyone is entitled to their opinion.

If we are talking only direct revenue, almost no stadium projects other than rental tents and trailers pencil, even at higher levels. This is an investment with more risk perhaps, but also greater potential for indirect dividends. As to whether the suites are poorly placed, I can’t say, though I will concede perching a building on top of the press box is likely to look weird and I’d probably suggest just removing the current press box and integrate into a new structure for more space.

Yeah i think we need boxes to be equal to other programs at the level we want to be at. I also think we would get people paying to be in them. The banquet room is a good idea for campus stuff as well and the premium seating will get sold. I think they obviously will still work out final plans (maybe just a whole new structure would not be the worst idea) but i think building limited suites, improving concessions and potentially filling out the grass berm near the tent is a good idea for future.

There have to be luxury boxes not to compete with the rest of the Big Sky or MWC but to attract and to offer the best product to current and future corporate partners. That's the primary reason to build those things anyway. Comparing to the MWC, SJSU has crappy, patio-like outdoor "boxes". Hawaii barely has anything. For as large a stadium as the Sun Bowl is, most of the premiums are outdoor with no luxury indoor options at UTEP.

Expanded banquet space is a win for the entire University but especially Athletics. The new design does little, if anything, with regard to substantial additional seating. There will always be space for a deck to be added over the east side, and one of the berms can be converted to permanent seating as well. This is all unnecessary as a member of the Big Sky, and not necessary early in the MWC future.

Correct me if I'm wrong, but currently there are 0 suites in the press box building for people who are willing to donate and pay. Also, I'm assuming the Fire Marshall (or whoever) won't even allow a picnic table on the deck on the ends of the building or a bar top...anything, since I've never seen anything up there. At least let a few people hang out and watch the game standing up there...

Yes exactly. This is the problem I speak of.

I don't understand the huge lines at concessions - were they fixed at big games this year? Is it bc they're run by volunteers? (The BBQ place only had one cashier, a bottleneck.)

For big games why couldn't they put up two 10' x 10' tents that sold simple items - beer, water, chips. If it has to be card only, fine.

I second this.:cheer:

it’s been a long time since I’ve been there. What do they typically have on the menu?

There is one local BBQ place - Buckhorn from Winters? - with excellent BBQ Sammie, and BBQ nachos. The standard faire at multiple locations are hot dogs, drinks, popcorn, nachos, candy. There are 1-2 tents w a local pizza place. The pizza place sells, beer, as does the BBQ location, and another spot.

For bigger games the end zones are augmented with food trucks - tacos, shaved ice, etc. So the options are good, it's just the wait times. Buckhorn has one cashier? Nice that concessions have small screens w game action live.

sounds like it needs some optimization to make the menu and process work. For a staff that may be inexperienced or doesn’t work together every day, you need menu items that are single step and don’t have to be prepared to order during a rush. For example, foil-wrapped brisket sandwiches and hot dogs can be fulfilled as fast as the customer can say the word because prep can stay just ahead of fulfillment. Beef nachos, while delicious, are better suited to a seat delivery or mobile order model due to their multi-step made-to-order nature. Pizza is hard to execute well in a stadium. It’s also important to make sure the soda wells and kegs are iced down hours ahead or beverage service will slow down in foam. Someone in athletics can PM me if they want. I’m pretty familiar with making this sort of thing work.

Beer is popular enough for some stand alone tents, not sure if they're worried about safety, or they want to curb consumption. (They cut off sales at Q3.)

Even with an overly staffed department, they still struggle to market games to a non-commuter campus.

I don't quite agree. While I don't want to get into an economic discussion. The trend lately is to get sales from premium experiences. At this point that is where the money is. Not just in Davis but as whole.

But we need to spend $50M to generate a little more revenue?

(Modern construction costs are mind boggling.)

I bet the Mondavi Center doesn’t actually pencil just on ticket sales either. There is a cost to build. Also a cost when you don’t build the right environment for the right people to do their deals. Fiduciary caution always wise but this looks like an indirect value play.

I do like the concept of a large on-site event facility / kitchen. I previously mentioned adding a component that could be used for events outside of sports. Graduation, awards ceremonies, alumni events. This adds that twist and should bring some campus funding.

We lost Freeborn, Coffeehouse (small concerts), Rec Hall no longer handles big concerts w the reduction in seating capacity, even the Grad and the Pub are gone. But it seems like when you're spending $50M you should get more than four luxury suites. I hope there is a balcony / view on the backside.

it is actually 6 full luxury suites, and 24 smaller lodge suites/premium suites. I wish it was at least 10 suites but I envision them adding another luxury suites section in the endzone above Bob Foster team center/building in the future (at least 10+ years)

exactly what I imagine!

no clue. But I know there will be many who will want a suite. Even my wife, who isn’t a huge football fan said she would definitely go if we can get a suite.

Same here. I could see us doing something for my bday. No way in hell my wife and daughter were going to sit through todays game in the cold.

In addition to phase 1 of Aggie ascent stadium upgrade. One easier upgrade that can be done quickly to our stadium is to replace the bench style seating with more individual seats throughout the stadium, and to make them different shades of blue like PayPal park in San Jose. This also gives the illusion that more people are there even if it isn’t fully sold out. I also would like some cameras on the visitor side since lately the home side has been much fuller and not seen on TV. People are always surprised by my pics of the home side crowd since they see all the empty seats on the visitor side on TV.
Many of my medical professionals/colleagues/alums would only come if they get individual seats (comfort and getting a premium feel is important to many fans now)

very much correct that there is a market for upgrades short of going business or first class. Just look at the number of “premium coach” seats on airlines. Chairs are more comfortable but they take more space, like 18-24” per seat versus bleachers are often in the 14” range so you’d trade capacity.

As for TV, sure you have more high angle shots that catch the west side when going to commercial but otherwise you don’t want to switch sides too much on the viewer. Sac does this. They put the main cameras on the east side to catch the home grandstand, maybe so you don’t notice the east side is empty with the upper level tarped. It was disorienting because the broadcasters were on the west side and they’d cut to a west side camera to show the refs. So it was a lot of wait, who’s going which direction?