New Coliseum Club Area Under Construction a ‘Win-Win’ for Mountaineer Athletics
By John AntonikJune 28, 2023 09:35 AM
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MORGANTOWN, W.Va. – A new premium area for Mountaineer Athletic Club members is in the works on the concourse level of the WVU Coliseum.
Although not yet officially named, Club Mountaineer or the "Apron Club" as it is sometimes being called, is a joint venture with West Virginia University Intercollegiate Athletics and Sodexo Operations to provide more premium space for Mountaineer Athletic Club members at the WVU Coliseum.
It will also serve as the daily training table area for all Mountaineer student athletes, except football, and can be used as a banquet and hospitality area.
Simon Dover, executive senior associate athletics director and chief financial officer for Mountaineer athletics, said the current project is a culmination of three year's-worth of planning. Dover and Stephen Miller, Sodexo's vice president of operations, began exploring ways to strengthen their relationship following Sodexo's $3.25 million investment in the new football training table area at the Milan Puskar Center.
What came out of that was the decision to take an existing concession area on the concourse of the WVU Coliseum and turn it into a third premium club space.
Dover and Steve Uryasz, WVU's deputy director of athletics, mapped out what they envisioned for the area with general contractor March Westin, and the two worked closely with Sodexo and architect XC Studio to come up with a design. XC Studio is a boutique and design studio located in Boise, Idaho, that focuses on hospitality projects for higher education, healthcare and sports facilities.
Then, COVID hit in the spring of 2020 and the project had to be put on hold. Current WVU director of athletics Wren Baker signed off on the plan shortly after taking over, and today, construction work is underway with the hope of having the facility operational sometime this fall for the men's and women's basketball seasons.
Sodexo is making a $7 million investment in the new facility and has permitted athletics to go out and sell naming rights for the venue. Athletics is reciprocating by extending its current deal with Sodexo and has also agreed to cover any additional construction costs above the $7 million Sodexo has committed to the project.
At the beginning of the fall semester, student-athletes will be required to eat in a temporary area in the Coliseum until the project is completed.
"It's debt service that, in effect, is kept off our books," Dover pointed out. "It's a creative way of doing things. If we can keep debt service off our books and enhance our facilities, it's a win-win for us."
This is the latest improvement to a 53-year-old facility that has undergone several much-needed refurbishments since West Virginia joined the Big 12 Conference in 2012.
Last year, Club 35 opened for premium MAC members on the Coliseum floor in the area where the old weight room once existed. The new facility under construction on the concourse will be much larger and will have an outside entrance, meaning MAC members can stick around after games to listen to the postgame radio show or watch other games while waiting for traffic to dissipate.
"In a span of two years, Club 35 opening this past season, and this club opening next year now gives MAC more areas to sell and for our donors to congregate," Dover said. "We can also have banquets in there, and our student-athletes are going to have an excellent area for meals. It's a three-fold facility: a training table, a banquet center and a donor area."
"We've already seen positive response with Club 35 and people very much desiring to be able to get in there, and we anticipate similar demand for this as well," Baker said recently. "It will not require as much of a donation and there will be more volume in the space, so I'm excited about its potential.
"It will be a great place for our development staff to be able to prospect and bring guests and families hopefully to grow our support base," Baker added. "These kinds of premium opportunities are important for a lot of reasons."
Student-athletes who eat between eight-to-10 training table meals a week are now going to have a first-class facility on par with the one Sodexo built at Milan Puskar Stadium, and the banquet and reception area planned for Club Mountaineer will be significantly larger than what is currently available in the Diversified Energy Terrace above the North end zone at Milan Puskar Stadium.
With the ability to accommodate as many as 350 to 400 people, the new club will actually become one of the largest venues in Morgantown to host banquets, birthday parties, weddings and other special events.
This potentially opens new doors for athletics to generate additional revenue throughout the year. Conceivably, a birthday party or a wedding reception might include a pre-recorded message from a coach or Tony Caridi on the Coliseum message board, or perhaps even court access including the usage of the carpet the team runs out onto during pregame introductions.
"For us to staff these types of events won't be cheap," Baker noted, "but it will offer someone a really special birthday party or a wedding reception. Imagine if we can roll out the carpet downstairs and that was part of the experience. It just opens avenues to be able to do some really neat things."
Dover notes the new facility will have plenty of parking options.
Aesthetically, the new club will be a significant improvement to the Coliseum and will be visible from Monongahela Boulevard. Dover points out it will also reduce the amount of square footage needed to be addressed on the Coliseum apron.
Baker sees non-direct benefits to this as well.
"Just getting people here and getting them in our basketball arena (has value)," he explained. "How many people at a wedding reception or birthday party maybe haven't been in the Coliseum for however long and aren't aware of the renovations that have been made recently? You never know when that becomes an opportunity to get one more season ticket holder or one more MAC member."
Club Mountaineer falls in line with Baker's vision of creating new and unique revenue streams for Mountaineer athletics.
"If we can bring this online and not eat into any of our cashflow, then it will be a positive," Baker said. "I've talked a lot about us finding ways to move up the pecking order in terms of our budget within the league and every way that we can do that helps."
He continued.
"We want to grow our budget by millions of dollars, but if we can come up with eight to 10 ideas that generate $100,000, that's how you get started. If there were all these million-dollar ideas out there, we would already be doing them.
"We've got to find ways to make sure our athletics facilities are used to generate revenue other than just the handful of days when we have games in them," Baker concluded.
April Messerly, senior associate athletics director for capital projects, facilities and events management, is overseeing the project for the department.
