Over 21,000 football fans screamed, booed and chanted at the first ever sold-out FAU game at Lockhart Stadium. The 1960s aluminum structure will be creaking with fans for only a couple more seasons before the Owls get one of their own. It has taken the program six years and a decent season to grab a full house at Lockhart, but will they be able to fill a 30,000-seat stadium? Not doing so could be detrimental to the funding of Innovation Village.
The new stadium has a sticker price of $65 million and operating costs will run $2 million per year. This means that in addition to ticket sales, over $100,000 in donations will be needed to meet financial guidelines. Not filling 30,000 seats or getting those extra donations could put FAU into debt for the all of Innovation Village.
“No one can say we can’t become a world class university,” Chairman of the Board of Trustees Norman Tripp said. “We have the right to do so now.”
More than just a stadium is necessary to become a “world class” university, and the board understands this. In fact, the bar is rising for incoming freshman in the next year as proposed by President Brogan. The normal 2.7 GPA and 1000 SAT score that roped in many prospective students in past years will be passé as a 3.0 GPA and 1200 SAT score will be required.
“This will be a great step for the FAU community as our standards rise,” Brogan said.
Yes, it might as well be called a “great step” for the community that will soon house nearly 1,600 new students and thousands more drivers for events and football games.
The average commuter counts as one of 71,500 average daily drivers on Glades Road (counted by Palm Beach County). This is comparable to 160,000 to 200,000 average daily drivers on I-95.
In all actuality, thousands of more travelers on random event days won’t be worse than driving next to a Boca mom who knows she’s better than you or the fellow college student who can’t wait in line for one goddamn second without throwing a hissy fit. The real concern is how I-95 and Glades road will react.
Recent issues on the docket for FAU’s Facilities Engineering Department include mapping out feasible building plans and finding a suitable contracting company to build the 2,000-space parking garages, innovation village retail space, various intramural fields and the honored horseshoe shaped stadium, but not a traffic diffusion plan.
“Yes, some articles are throwing out the stadium because of past agreements with the city of Boca Raton, but these things are negotiable,” University Architect and Vice President for Facilities Tom Donaudy said. “The Department of Transportation already has plans to help ease traffic buildup to Glades Road and the stadium.”
The esteemed Department of Transportation, the governmental organization famous for its century long Dolphin Expressway and various other road projects that pass from generation to generation, has planned to widen I-95 in light of the future FAU stadium.
DOT project manager for widening I-95, Patrick Glass, said the state wants to widen the highway to six lanes in each direction between Glades and Congress, and five lanes each way from Palmetto Park Road to Glades and from Congress to Linton.
Perhaps the alleviation on I-95 will secure more movement of FAU commuters in the future, but with hopeful plans to build the stadium by 2010, it seems likely that the DOT, given its appalling track record, will fail to meet the same due date.
