Building for the Future
March 12, 2007 09:24 AM | General
March 12, 2007
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| April Messerly |
MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – April Messerly, senior manager of athletic facilities, has been busy going to meetings and overseeing the progress of six significant construction projects that are either underway or set to begin in the near future.
“We have six big projects that we will be wrapping up anywhere from this spring to August-September,” Messerly said.
All six at an estimated cost of about $5 million were made possible through the fundraising efforts of the Mountaineer Athletic Club.
Here is a brief synopsis of the six current projects:
REYNOLDS FAMILY ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE CENTER/ROBERT AND ERMA HARTLEY CLUB LEVEL
Demolition work on the Thomas Room has already been completed to make way for the brand new Reynolds Family Academic Performance Center that will become one of the centerpieces of the Milan Puskar Center when it is completed this fall.
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| The demolition work has been completed to make way for the new Reynolds Family Academic Performance Center at the Milan Puskar Center.
WVU Sports Communications |
The facility will have a large computer area with four large study rooms on the west side, three tutor rooms on the east side as well as four offices in the middle. On the back side of the study center will be an additional club seating area for Milan Puskar Stadium that will extend beyond the stadium overhang underneath the scoreboard.
“The seats will be outside and the overhang will be extended down toward the field,” said Messerly. “We will end up taking that glass wall out to where the railing is now and the seats will go out from there.”
The design will allow for multiple uses.
“The way it is designed the study center will be enclosed but every non-football game day (student-athletes) are going to be able to use the club area for additional space,” Messerly said.
When completed, another hallway will be created that will extend past the team training table all the way out to the club seating area.
“You will walk down the hall where the kitchen/serving area is on the right and you can go to the left into the study center or right into the gold coat/training table area. Continuing on the left will be the new club area,” Messerly said.
The design also calls for an open area to look down into the weight room.
“It’s going to be walled to a certain point and then glassed in,” she said.
There will also be a stairway constructed near the kitchen/serving area spiraling down to the weight room.
“The study center will be ready for use this fall and the club area on the backside of that will be ready by mid-fall,” Messerly said.
The club area has been named The Robert and Emma Hartley Club Level. Heery did the architectural work for this project.
COLISEUM ACADEMIC PERFORMANCE CENTER
The demolition phase for the new $1.5 million Coliseum Academic Performance Center is on-going, according to Messerly. This phase includes the removal of four racquetball courts and the eventual removal of a class room upstairs.
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| The Coliseum Academic Performance Center is scheduled to be ready for use this fall.
WVU Sports Communications |
“This facility will be five times the size of the one we have right now for the Coliseum,” Messerly said.
Messerly explained that construction work must be done in phases to allow time to construct a new class room for physical education downstairs. The plan is to deck the racquetball courts, create some class room and office space on the concourse level, and then finish the middle area on the second floor.
Student-athletes will be able to use the Coliseum Academic Performance Center next fall.
“This phase is going to be done in September which is going to include two computer labs,” Messerly said. “There will be computer stations along the walls with tables in the middle and two study rooms in the middle of each of them.”
The second phase will be the completion of the reception area upstairs, including student services staff offices.
“Once everything is completed we will glass-in the hallway so it’s a contained study center with a corridor and nice furniture,” Messerly said.
The general contractor for the initial phase for the Coliseum Academic Performance Center is Lytle and architectural work was done by Ellerbe Becket.
STADIUM TURF REPLACEMENT
At the conclusion of spring football drills, the Astro Play surface at Milan Puskar Stadium will be replaced with a more modern version of the synthetic surface. The estimated cost for this project is $1 million.
“The turf is scheduled to be installed by mid-June in time for football camp,” said Messerly.
She says the crown in the middle of the field will remain.
“A big factor in that decision was based on the recommendations of our architect and the turf engineering group,” Messerly said. “We would not be able to remove the entire crown anyway because it would affect site lines.”
Construction work on the turf must be coordinated with work being done on the Touchdown Terrace addition at the north end of the stadium.
“Once the turf starts coming up, the other contractor can do their heavy work,” Messerly said. “When the turf is installed sometime near May, the north end contractors can’t be on the field anymore. The rest of their work will have to be done from the concourse.”
Messerly said the old turf will not be made available to the public.
“The old field cannot be reused due to the rubber in it,” she said. “There will be no turf available for anyone.”
Ellerbe Becket and DA Hogan performed the architectural work for the turf replacement project.
TOUCHDOWN TERRACE
Preliminary work has already begun on completely enclosing the Touchdown Terrace section of Milan Puskar Stadium in the north end zone. The landscaping in the two corner areas has already been removed to make way for about 180 additional seats.
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| Construction work on the seating addition at Touchdown Terrace will have to be coordinated on the field once spring football drills are completed.
WVU Sports Communications |
“There is some TV cable that is in the northwest corner that we still have to pull back, but the landscaping is all out,” Messerly said. “For about three weeks we are going to have to coordinate the use of the field with two different contractors.”
The new seats will have additional amenities.
“These are not going to be like the existing club seating,” Messerly said. “They are going to be almost like field boxes with a small drink rail with caster seats; chairs that are not in any permanent, fixed position but instead on rollers so you can move around.”
Messerly said some additional seats will go up underneath the overhang.
“The entire area will be ADA compliant,” she said.
Including the new club area in the south end zone, Messerly estimates that less than 500 seats will be added to the stadium’s total capacity. Paradigm of Morgantown did the architectural work for the Touchdown Terrace addition.
Two other projects either underway or about to get underway are a new concession stand at the football stadium and a batter’s eye for baseball’s Hawley Field.
The concession stand will be located at the southwest concourse of the stadium near the player-guest will call area.
“For the last three years we’ve been working to improve our ratio of fan to point-of-sale,” Messerly said.
The Hawley Field batter’s eye should be completed before the end of this season. MEC is the general contractor and Ellerbe Becket is the architect for this project.
“I’m not sure of the actual height of the batter’s eye because we are awaiting the shop drawings back from the architect,” Messerly said. “That project should be completed by the beginning of May.”
Messerly said another addition to the beautiful year-old Donald J. Brohard Hall of Traditions is also in the works.
“We are going to be adding another kiosk highlighting important years and periods in Mountaineer football history,” she said. “It’s going to be another touch screen that will represent a complete history piece of the program. You will be able to push the screen and see either a span of years or individual years with a season synopsis. You will also be able to view a team photo and watch some highlights.”
A considerable amount of research will be required to complete this project.
“It’s a really big undertaking,” Messerly admitted.
The athletic department will also be soliciting pictures and artifacts from former players and fans to add to the display.
“One popular idea is to coordinate this around MAC events so people can bring their items and we can photograph them with having to send them back in the mail,” Messerly said.
And sometime after next season, work will begin on expansion of the team locker room. That project has a price tag of about $4.2 million and fundraising is ongoing for that project.
