The House of Blue

I LOVE the feel of The Cliff, but understand it is now cramped in there with the new track bleachers et al.

It's not really the same thing though. The stuff with Commonwealth is like a $100 million project. There is no way it can be accomplished without bonding or a major, major donation. The baseball stadium is going to come from money that's been stored little bits at a time and with a smaller donation from a baseball-friendly source.

The article reads as if UK is planning on (if feasible) building an all new state of the art baseball stadium in a different location. At the very least, any substantial expansion and renovation of Cliff Hagan as it exists is not going to be cheap. It will be a substantial financial outlay.

They are not going to build a baseball stadium (their chosen route) with a million dollars. They won't even expand and renovate Cliff Hagan for a million dollars. If the funding for a new stadium (or expansion of Cliff Hagan) is in the tens of millions of dollars, and they have gotten that money by storing it little bits at a time, where are the much larger bits at a time that have been set aside for Commonwealth and football facility improvements? Do we have more baseball-friendly sources than football-friendly sources?

Baseball deserves every thing it gets, as this was a great season. The team deserves state-of-the art facilities. This is not a post to say that they do not. But if a major expansion or renovation of Cliff Hagan, or construction of a new baseball facility happens when we've been told there is no funding to do the same for football, well that's implausible to me, to put it lightly.

Very interesting. I'm glad to hear that UK is trying to build a new stadium. Just tough to make the Cliff into much better of a venue given how it is shoe-horned into its current location.

Very curious to learn where exactly on Alumni they intend to build the new stadium if that works out. Just pulled up an aerial via Google maps, and tough to determine the best place for a new park. But they could do something pretty cool if they do elect to build a new park on Alumni.

The Legends should be playing in a renovated Coolavin Stadium right now.

Matt,
I understand the point you are trying to make, but JDHLaw11 hit it on the head. A new baseball stadium or even a significant renovation to the Cliff will take more than $10 million and likely closer to the $25-$30 million mentioned above. Couple that with the recent track and soccer expenditures and you are half way to a renovation of Commonwealth. I think baseball deserves a new venue, but NOTHING should be done for sports that don't pay for themselves until after the bonding issue is resolved. That needs to be public awareness project #1 for the Athletic Department. If you think people are unhappy right now, wait and see what happens if something like this is announced with no progress on the football front. I support Mitch. I support all the non-revenue sports at UK. I realize being good in all sports raises the level of the UK brand and may also generate some future millionaire tennis players or golfers that give back to the program. However, football pays the bills and UK is facing a horrible perception problem right now. This would pour salt into an already gaping wound.

I highly doubt UK is going to spend, for example, the 36-40 million dollars that LSU or South Carolina spent on their recent baseball stadium.

Once again, the Football dollars derived from the SEC Contract are used the same way at UK as they are throughout the rest of the conference: to fund non-revenue sports. Donations drive facilities, particularly football, in the SEC. That's not opinion. That's not conjecture. That is fact and UK for years has lagged behind the rest of the conference in fundraising for Athletics. There's 3 or 4 guys who have AD jobs right now around the country because they were a part of the team who brought UK Athletics kicking and screaming into the modern world of Collegiate Athletics without the benefit of the tens of millions of dollars other SEC programs fundraise each year. Goodness, people were pitching fits about K-Fund and that was just for seat assignments!

This isn't Louisville. Lexington flat out does not have the corporate partners with close political, cultural and business ties with the University and community to fund projects like Commonwealth. This is true at many other SEC school which means large, wealthy individual donors are all the more important. And to be perfectly honest many of those who were in a position to give didn't like the "regime change" of the Lee/Mitch administration and those that did (like Mr. Gatton for instance) are part of a group that, rightly or wrongly, believes that Athletics should be in service to the Academic Mission of the University.

Financing a 100+ million dollar project on a state owned structure is a lot more complicated as you know. They don't have the cash on hand to undertake that without significant bonding capacity. The financing structure for smaller projects is different. As an example: TCU raised from 95 donors a 143 MILLION dollars for its stadium project in 2010.

So let's say Matt's source and your estimate is correct: A donors who want to give to a potential new baseball stadium in the range of 4-5 million. That's 15-16 million left to finance on a brand new construction, on land already owned by the University. That amount, while bigger, can be had much easier outside of bonding capacity especially if you have another 5-6 million on hand to start the project.

Football, in a perfect world, would be paid like these basketball projects are: by donations. The renovations of the Rupp lockeroom/player area is being funded between private donors and the city. Coal Lodge? Private donations.

To be clear. Donations drive the servicing of debt/bonds not the actual cost of the big stadium expansions like we have seen at Alabama, tennesse, etc... Large gifts do not drive stadium upgrades. The ticket sales and seat donations are what drive stadium expansions. Our issue is that we can't go into debt to build the suites or club level seating because the legislature wont approve it.

Where donations come in are with practice facilities and that's what we've seen at uk. Major gifts built the new practice fields. A major (1 million) did the new locker rooms at Cws. A couple of major gifts did the nutter center upgrades.

Major gifts don't build stadium expansions. Bonds that are serviced by seat sales and donations are what build stadiums and their expansions.

There is a lot I could say on the subject (heh, imagine that), but I'll just observe that in my opinion the often-repeated by many theory that only $100 million and not a penny more is what needs to be spent on UK football doesnt pass the smell test. So this couldnt be done a chunk at a time? $10 million here? $5 million there? It all has to be 1 project that cannot be phased in? That doesnt seem reasonable, especially since the prospects of $100 million plopping into UK's lap (since they arent doing any capitol project fundraising drives) is very remote.

Well the problem is there is no money to be had for those football projects because the money isn't there.

If someone dropped a 30 million dollar pledge tomorrow for Football Capital Projects they wouldn't need the bonding because they could pursue other financing models. Why do you think Barnhart keeps harping on this bonding capacity stuff? Because while real revenue streams could be diverted to service the debt for these projects they don't have the capital on hand to start it themselves.

Then you say "Well, why don't they have the money! What is wrong with these people." That's a more complicated question and goes back before Barnhart even arrived. And it's not just for Football but all the other sports as well.

Teressa Isaac is the one at fault for that happening, even Alan Stein has said he wished they had built in the LFUCG property at the Lexington Center. It really is one of the dumbest development decisions we've made in a city full of dumb development decisions.

Their rationalization for putting it where they did was to spur economic development in that part of town. What they failed to realize is that nobody (outside of bingo halls and payday advance stores) wanted to move to that part of town no matter what was put there. Now we've got a very nice baseball stadium sitting on an island in the middle of one of the crappiest parts of town while were wracking our brains trying to figure out how to use the 46 acres that are sitting mostly vacant (surface parking) currently.