IU takes next steps toward potentially significant Memorial Stadium renovations

Posted by Admin November 13, 2024 Football

BLOOMINGTON – Per a source familiar with the situation, IU President Pamela Whitten and Athletic Director Scott Dolson are currently engaged in mapping out both funding and planning for a potentially significant renovation of the Memorial Stadium football complex.

A longstanding aim for Dolson — who in an interview with IndyStar in August 2023 pointed to the renovation six years earlier of what is now Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall as an example — a Memorial Stadium makeover could take on many forms.

The infrastructure of the 64-year-old stadium can be improved. Press and luxury seating in its west-side tower could receive attention. Improvements could, in theory, even extend beyond the physical structure itself, to the areas immediately surrounding and adjacent to the stadium, like fan-service locations and football facilities.

“We know we need to modernize Memorial Stadium, just like we did Simon Skjodt Assembly Hall,” Dolson told IndyStar last year. “What I want to do is put together a plan for that modernization, from a fan experience standpoint.”

To that end, last year, Dolson’s department engaged Nations Group, a sports planning and advisory firm, to survey fans and season ticket holders about what they’d like to see from any such project. If that survey process, which was conducted roughly a year ago, marked the exploratory stage of Dolson’s move forward, he and Whitten are now engaged in the next steps of the process.

Memorial Stadium received significant upgrades in terms of athlete and administrative space when it constructed both its North and South End Zone facilities across the previous decade.

The goal for Dolson and Whitten, now, is to match that with something more fan-facing.

“Our North and South End Zone projects, which both went really well, were targeted more toward our student-athlete experience, with our fan experience sprinkled in,” Dolson said last year. “These are more targeted toward the fan experience.”

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At that time, Dolson downplayed the possibility of major structural change to the stadium — i.e. adding substantial seating or building onto the bowl — saying IU would want to “keep the same feel of the stadium.” Even ruling that sort of capital project out would leave substantial opportunity on the table.

While it isn’t immediate clear what the project might entail both in terms of capital improvements and cost, Wednesday’s news suggests Indiana is moving out of the exploratory period and on to a more concrete stage in the process of substantially renovating its football stadium.

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