Doak Renovations info from Jerry Kutz (Feb 1, 2014)

Doak Renovation info from Jerry Kutz

"Doak is beautiful from the outside and at field level but when you head back into that concourse level... well that's a different story. And yes, you are right, the last thing we want to do is shine a light on it. Someone once said that our concourses are like closing time when people don't look quite so good in the white light.

We are looking to renovate the cash cow in the very near future and its going to require a MAJOR investment of cash on the part of every Seminole fan. We're getting ready to ask our board to approve another capital campaign and a long overdue change to the priority policy for 2015, the first time we've adjusted donation requirements in more than 10 years.

I've been assigned to the project, both the capital campaign for facility enhancement and the ticket priority changes. They go hand in hand as all athletic facilities must be paid with private donations. We were supposed to increase ticket priority requirements in 2009, five years after our last increase, but between the economy and the fortunes of our football program, or lack thereof, we put it off. We're hoping to announce all the changes together so fans know what their part will be and exactly how their money will be put to use to enhance the football program and Doak.

What so many of our fans don't understand is that ALL the athletic facilities we built over the past 15 years had to be financed with 30-year bonds so we don't have a great deal of bonding capacity to do much more. It's just like your personal financial situation. If you have a lot of debt, its tougher to qualify for more.

Over the past 15 years we've borrowed more than 100 million to build Athletics Facilities including the IPF, the baseball stadium, the softball/soccer complex, the swimming pool, the indoor tennis facility, the track, the basketball practice facility, the expansion of Doak, the Moore Athletics facility. Sure, there were a lot of major gifts raised during the three Booster capital campaigns -- some $160 million in pledges -- but those major gifts were largely pledges of cash paid out over 10 or more years or will gifts and not outright cash. While payments on those pledges allow us to make our "mortgage payment" our ability to borrow more is limited by the size of our existing debt.

The estimates to rebuild the football stands and concourses (not touching the exterior) is $500 million and loss of use of the facility either for a full season or loss of use of one side, then the other, over two seasons. We don't have that kind of bonding capacity.

What we are looking at is about $100 million in enhancements including football locker room, coaches offices, apartment/dorm, complete IPF, paint and repair Doak, improve concourses and skyboxes and build a club seat section in the South Endzone.

And then there's improvements to the basketball facilities we plan to address as well.

We'll ask approval from our board to move forward with these projects in April and announce the projects soon thereafter. "