I would have thought the attendance would have been brought up higher than that? :shock: From a "structural standpoint", the new West Upper looks a LOT bigger than the previous West Upper....
In looking at the construction and the structure if the tigers want to expand to even bigger in a few years and add a couple thousand more seats it doesnt look like it would be that hard to add a couple sections to the new west side and tap in to the existing structure. Has anybody seen anything on possible expansion possibilities. Geaux Tigers
I heard Jamie just sold the MRI business for a boat load of money. $135,000 is a drop in the bucket today. But there was a time when Jamie struggled bad. Great for two recent alumni to be able to afford to rent a suite.
I think TAF and Yates both knew it wouldn't get done on time. That's was a big task to take on in less than a year ecspecially if you take the buried concrete delay in to account. Hell, Yates did not have all the finalized drawings done before they started working.
In Tiger Rag's football preview issue, there's an article on the construction. In that article, they mentioned that Tiger Stadium has gone thru construction (or in this case reconstruction) every 20 years or so, and that the plan IS to have it capable of additional seats for the future.
I don't think that end zone upper decks will ever happen. South Stadium Drive, an importrant campus thouroughfare, would have to be closed. A North End Zone upper deck would also close a street and seriously impinge on the PMAC. The tendency among schools with big stadiums (90,000+) is to add more high-surcharge premium sideline seats rather than add more capacity. This is why LSU replaced the entire west upper deck but only adding 700 seats. More importantly, LSU is not really interested in further expansion. There have been empty seats in the upper decks for many games, even in 2003. There will likely never be enough demand for endzone seats to fill an "upper bowl". It would just never pay for itself and nobody wants to see vast areas of empty seats. The problem is that the lower bowl at LSU is huge! Those upper deck endzone seats are just too far from the field, people won't pay for that poor a view, not with so many TV games. The higher parts of the present sideline upper decks are very poor seats that people avoid if they can. Joe Dean did an estimate on end zone upper decks once and found that it would be far cheaper to go over to river road and build a new 100,000-seat Tiger stadium. Complicating the situation is that the original sections of the stadium are over 80 years old, have dark and narrow ramp areas, and have some real structural issues that will eventually require their replacement. The entire lower bowl will have to be replaced before any further expansion can be considered. People paying those $400 sideline surcharges are demanding a better environment than the small, poorly lit ramp, restroom, and concession areas they are barely tolerating right now.
