The suites at the new Alex Box Stadium are now available for football tailgating, complete with a $25,000 price tag for a luxurious gameday experience.And while an existing feature of the stadium will be used for a new purpose, new features may be added in the future to upgrade the season-old ballpark.Several proposed projects for the new Alex Box Stadium, involving ideas ranging from a new Intimidator to more seating and grandstand suites.All of these projects hinge on what the Athletic Department’s budget will look like for the upcoming academic year.”We’re waiting to see how this budget crisis affects us here internally,” said Eddie Nunez, associate athletic director for operations and project development. “If the University comes in and asks us for several millions of dollars, like we’re possibly anticipating, that could affect how we do anything for the next couple of years.”The main area looking at seating expansion is right field, where options from more bleacher seats to a berm — a large grassy hill — are being discussed.Nunez said adding more seats would be more of an opportunity than a necessity, and the Athletic Department won’t go too much higher in terms of additional seats.”The wonderful thing that we have that’s a tradition here at LSU is to have it sold out, to see all our fans in there for a super regional or regional game,” Nunez said. “The last thing we want to do is inundate our stadium with all of these open seats that don’t fill up.”New Tiger Park already has a berm behind its left-field fence.”It’s one of those trends in baseball and softball that have always been a fan favorite because people go out there and lay out there on a towel and almost feel like it’s a picnic area,” Nunez said.Nunez said the Athletic Department has looked at several options to put on top of a possible berm, including a patio and “some kind of water feature.””Everything has been looked at,” Nunez said. “The question at the end of the day is what is feasible as far as cost, and what is going to make the most sense for us as we move forward into the future with baseball.”Nunez said the Athletic Department has done a cost-estimate study to see if more suites for new Alex Box Stadium would be feasible. There are 18 suites in the ballpark, available this past season for $35,000 each.”The timing would probably be very difficult for us to start now and have it done by next season,” Nunez said. “Not to say that it’s impossible — it just would be difficult.”LSU coach Paul Mainieri has also requested a larger batter’s eye for the stadium. A stadium’s batter’s eye is a solid-colored area usually behind the center field wall designed to help a batter see the ball against a contrasted surface.”I guess it was something that just slipped through the cracks,” Mainieri said.It turns out a bigger batter’s eye was accidentally overlooked by the Athletic Department, according to Nunez.”Something was missed in translation,” Nunez said. “It’s actually two feet bigger than the old Alex Box Stadium, the batter’s eye, but not as big as coaches would like it to be.”And then there’s the Intimidator, the billboard at old Alex Box Stadium that displays all the Tigers’ national championships.”Everybody wants the Intimidator over there yesterday, and unfortunately before we do so, we’ve got to see how everything lays out,” Nunez said.Mainieri said he also wants to see some kind of board to recognize accomplishments by the LSU baseball team other than just national championships.”LSU’s been to the College World Series 15 times, and there’s six national championship flags out there,” Mainieri said. “Well then there’s nine teams that went to Omaha that aren’t being recognized.”NO DATE SET FOR PMAC PRACTICE FACILITYNunez also said the new PMAC Practice Facility will only be partially ready for the 2009-10 basketball season.He said construction crews are behind on the team areas, but the gymnasium spaces should be ready by October.A July 13 report by The Advocate said the facility was supposed to be ready for the upcoming season. But Nunez said the Athletic Department had only hoped to get the facility ready for the season and didn’t make it a requirement.”The good thing right now is that they don’t need this to start the season off,” Nunez said. “The last thing we want to do now is skip steps to get something done just because we needed to be in there by October.”Nunez said contractors experienced some delays a couple weeks ago in receiving roofing materials and other supplies. But he said they have made up some lost time the last couple weeks thanks to better weather conditions.”We’ve been able to get ahead on a lot of aspects where we were falling behind before,” Nunez said.SOFTBALL ENTRANCE FACILITYNunez also said the Athletic Department will look into adding a ticket office and entrance building for new Tiger Park. The ballpark only has a chain-link fence surrounding its outer-most perimeter.”We pulled it out of the project because we didn’t want our contractors to really have to focus their efforts on that little building,” Nunez said. “This is a building that we’ll come back and add this hopefully this summer, maybe beginning in the fall.”—-Contact Robert Stewart at [email protected]