Inside, Tiger Stadium rattles with deafening roars, booming applause and seismic sound bombs.
And until recently, outside, its towering gray walls appeared almost bleak, without even a physical label, and were admittedly much less exciting, said Eddie Nunez, associate athletics director for operations and project development.
The Tiger Athletic Foundation is now about two-thirds of the way finished with a beautification project to help match the iconic concrete jungle’s skeleton to the pulsating electricity it radiates on many autumn Saturday nights.
The completed renovations have so far included replacing more than 400 windows, touching up the north and west facades, erecting concrete pillars for new western gates, and installing recognition plaques for national All-Americans.
Come December, construction crews will begin the second phase of the north plaza project, which will include new student entrance gates, extended sidewalks and wrought-iron barricades lining North Stadium Drive to replace the current plastic ones brought in on game days.
“The way we looked at it, if you’re coming the other 300-something days a year, do we want people to say, ‘Oh, that’s Tiger Stadium,’ or ‘Wow! That’s Tiger Stadium!’” Nunez said.
In addition to the north plaza project, activity will begin on the outside of the stadium for the south end zone expansion as early as this weekend, Nunez said, adding that the roughly 6,000-seat addition should be finished by the fall 2014 season opener.
The south end zone enlargement will add about 3,000 club level seats, 1,500 upper deck seats and two levels of 1,500 suite seats, which will connect to the current east stadium suites.
“Everything that’s happening [this season] is happening underground,” Nunez said. “But as soon as that last football game is here, you’ll see a major emphasis on getting this out of the ground.”
A $100 million TAF bond will fund the majority of the south end zone expansion, as well as the new tennis and gymnastics facilities set to open in the next few years, Nunez said.
“You’re going to be right at a hundred thousand,” Nunez said of the new stadium’s seating capacity, which would make it the seventh largest nationally, and the third largest in the Southeastern Conference, just behind the University of Tennessee and the University of Alabama.
The additions are all part of TAF’s Preservation of Tiger Stadium, which began in 2010 with the window replacements, and will wrap up with the south end zone expansion.
The costs for the west and north plaza projects totaled about $7 million, while the windows and facade renovations cost $1.5 million, Nunez said.
The new north plaza will also feature concrete award-recognition walls for winners of national awards, such as the Heisman Trophy, the Jim Thorpe Award and the Chuck Bednarik Award. LSU cornerbacks Patrick Peterson and Tyrann Mathieu won the Bednarik the past two years, respectively, for college football’s most outstanding defensive player.
A few weeks ago, the sidewalks surrounding Mike the Tiger’s luxurious 15,000-square-foot habitat were replaced and expanded with permeable concrete to better sustain the live oak trees, said TAF project manager Emmett David.
“We have found that this habitat is one of the largest attractions on campus, so providing additional hardscape will allow ease of access for visitors and simultaneously provide protection for our live oak root system,” David said of the $175,000 project.
The construction projects will eliminate the visitor parking on south side of North Stadium Drive, said Gary Graham, director of Parking, Traffic and Transportation.
The south end zone construction will also cut out parking along South Stadium Drive during the building phases, Graham said.
