Lesniak had some tweets a couple days ago about a RU plan being released in a few months. A plan that will affect both women's and men's sports (assuming the athlete's village idea).
As to the Murray State thing, I looked it up and it's a mixed use facility not just for the college. It's used for concerts, shows, events, etc..It was originally supposed to cost 18M but over runs took the cost to 23M. It was approved by the Kentucky assembly in the early 1990s but only got done in the late 90s. It was also agreed upon that Murray State would raise 2M for it, so about 10% of the original cost. See even at a small school, there always has to be a private element to it. We didn't raise the 30M for the stadium nor 10M which would have been about 10% of the total cost.
With Minnesota, as I said it's going to cost in the 150-190M vicinity but again entirely
private. Again these things usually have a large private element, if not done entirely with private funds. Large donations are key as I've always said, it's not the little guys who move the needle for this stuff it's the whales which unfortunately we don't seem to have many of in our history. The places that don't do it privately, you ask yourself how much debt are they holding? Is it 100M like our stadium expansion?
I was curious to find out about the stadium they built and how that was funded. It was approved by the state and it was about a 50-50 split. The cost was about 250-300M. I came cross an article where Minnesota had raised privately 81M for it and their goal was to raise 86M and for the rest they would float athletic revenue bonds. Even then though, they said when they hit their goal of 86M they would keep on fundraising for it because they wanted to minimize the use of athletic revenue bonds as much as possible because it would take resources away from the athletic department's 25 sports for other things.
So again you see a large private element bearing the cost. Athletic revenue bonds aren't a panacea either. I've said the B10 revenue full share is going to be great but it's NOT a bottomless pot of gold to do this facility and that facility and hire this coach and that coach etc...Athletic revenue bonds take resources away from other things and the B10 revenue will be needed to service it.
Will we get some things done by floating bonds? Yes. But I can see it in the future where fans here are saying why can't we do this or that, after all we're full revenue partners now? Again it's not a bottomless pit of money. We need private funds to do these things. I mean I don't think of Minnesota like Michigan/OSU but look at the money they raised for these projects. It's unfortunate that the history of our school and AD isn't one that's great when it comes to raising money but going forward that's really the main way you're going to get all the stuff done that you may want to get done. Can't float bonds for every thing necessary in the athletic department. The goal has to be and I think is now to find ways to increase private donations.
Article on their fundraising for their stadium.
More than 2,000 private residents have donated a total of $81.5 million to help build the new Gopher football stadium at the University of Minnesota.
But they plan to keep raising money after they hit the goal - associate athletic director David Crum told the Minnesota Daily that they'd like to raise another $25 million to replace costs that would otherwise have to be covered by Athletic Department bonds.
Avoiding that would leave more money in the department's budget for all 25 sports programs at the college, Crum said
http://www.mprnews.org/story/2009/04/12/gophers_close_to_fundraising_goal_for_new_stadium
This post was edited on 3/15 9:52 AM by rutgersguy1
